"We Will Be There Between 8 am And 5 pm."

This is one of the last things a customer wants to hear when they ask for an onsite service call for a broken appliance. Unfortunately, I was put in this predicament only a few days ago in the middle of a summer heat wave when our AC went on the fritz. Since we are in the business of building applications to improve customer service, I feel compelled to propose a solution for this service no-no in a world where the customer is supposed to be front and center.

In this day and age with the advent of smart phones and devices such as iPad, there is no reason that a customer should have to stay at home between 8 to 5 waiting for their service technician. While I would love an exact arrival time, even narrowing it down to a two hour window is a huge leap forward. How would I do it if I am a business providing this service to my customer?

First thing would be to equip all the technicians with a device with internet connectivity. This could be a smart phone like iPhone or an Android variant or even an iPad. The technician can get all their service tickets on one of these devices. There could be a few buttons such as “On my way to fulfill order X”, “At location X”, “Finished Order X”. This would give central dispatch or supervisors a real time view of order fulfillment along with precise location information.

A subset of this information could also be available to actual customers. E.g. you could display information such as “You are 4th in queue”, or “Your technician is on the way and will be at your home in the next 30 minutes”.  A best guess time window could also be published Based on minimum service times and distances. This information could be updated continuously on a website, or sent to the customer via email. When the technician clicks on the “On my way to fulfill my order” the system can immediately notify me about that and calculate a time of arrival based on distance from my home. While this information is not going to eliminate time windows completely, it is a great improvement over the 8 to 5 window. Also the technicians could use Square to charge the customers on the spot and send invoices via email.

Which brave service company is interested in partnering with us to do a pilot of the above mentioned system?