It costs a lot less to retain an employee than find and train a new hire, so employee retention keeps costs down, quality of service up, and business continuity running predictably. Employee retention rate is the percentage of people who stay during a specified time period, such as a quarter or year. Employee turnover rate is the percentage of people who must be replaced during that specified time. Planned reductions, such as with software that makes employees more productive, do not count toward turnover rate.

Would an airline pilot ever take flight without knowing that all of the plane’s gauges were functioning and understanding what they were displaying? Of course not! The gauges on the instrument panel are the pilot’s eyes into how every component of the craft is working and where the plane is in the sky, relative to expectations and other aircraft. Flying by gut instinct in today’s crowded skies is essentially flying blind and completely ill-advised.

Similarly, key performance indicators (KPIs) are like those gauges, enabling owners and managers of field service companies to operate with the same degree of visibility and confidence about how business is performing. These metrics demonstrate how well a company is doing relative to expectations and how much actual value the company is delivering to customers. Continually monitoring KPIs can help you minimize business expenses, provide better service, optimize technician productivity, and drive profitability.

Before Smart Dispatching, the dispatcher would take the call, look at the day’s schedule, check technician availability, and dispatch the closest tech to the customer’s location.

After talking to the customer, the technician can then start to troubleshoot to find the source of the problem. Unfortunately, more often than not, the tech either doesn’t have the skill set to fix the particular piece of equipment or doesn’t have the parts necessary to do the job on the truck. The project is now delayed, wasting time and narrowing profits.