Some of our larger customers, restaurant chains with a regional or national footprint, are starting to see the benefits of a comprehensive planned maintenance plan. They are specifying a comprehensive menu of services for the HVAC and refrigeration machines at their locations. For some of our customers we have a list of 40 or more service items to complete some quarterly, some twice a year.
How do we keep track of all that in an organized way so that our technicians know what to do each time, and our customers know that everything they are paying for is getting done? We use cloud based software with a smart phone app for the technicians.
The interface for entering and tracking services to be performed on a planned maintenance visit.
You can see from the screenshot above that some services are quarterly, some are semi-annually. We can easily keep track of when things are next due. And when the technician shows up at the job site, he sees the list of services to do just that day. He can mark them off one by one as they are completed. And he can take photos and attach them to the job to document his work. For instance a before and after cleaning photo of the condenser coils, or a photo of a new belt in place on a ventilation fan motor. We can later send these photos to our customers along with the invoice.
Another benefit for our customers is that if we find a problem that needs to be fixed, but is not urgent, we can put it into the software, order the parts, and have them on the truck to be installed at the next planned maintenance.
Down the road we’ll have the ability for customers to log into the software and see what services have been done at their locations, see when the next service call is scheduled, and see the history of repairs on their equipment.
By using software wisely, we can work together with our customers to set up a planned maintenance plan that reduces their costs, and allows better visibility into the service we provide.