The key to unlocking a super-responsive automatic door aftermarket service offering

Nothing is more discreet or functional than an automatic sliding door. We probably don’t even register when we walk through one, because they are a standard feature of almost any public or commercial building, whether it is a high street shop, supermarket store, school, office, hospital, airport or station.
 
However, for any establishment with automatic doors installed, maintenance is critical. If something should go wrong, access to and from a building is likely to be impeded and some establishments and premises simply cannot afford for their building’s automatic doors not to work for any extended periods of time.
 
The market has witnessed steady growth over the past decade, though previous legislative changes have helped underpin demand for retrofits and replacement using automatic and power doors and controls.
 
While the leading manufacturers and suppliers of automatic doors include installation, maintenance and repairs as part of their services, the UK market also includes providers that specialise in maintaining and repairing various automatic revolving, sliding, swing and pass doors.
 
When it comes to providing aftermarket services for automatic door installations, responsiveness should be the number one focus, especially when emergency repairs may be required. Downtime must be minimised to reduce inconvenience, enable customers to get back up and running as quickly as possible while also reducing any security or health and safety risks too.
 
Using intelligent field service management software can boost performance of teams of technicians trained to maintain and repair automatic doors in a number of ways.

Optimise field service fleet schedules to speed up repair situations

Top field service management software organises schedules of every fleet team member for days, to weeks in advance, in real-time, so that any emergency repair jobs or a maintenance job that is time critical can be prioritised to the top of the technician’s schedule.
 
Cutting edge field service management platforms are flexible, agile solutions designed for companies that may have to assign hundreds of work orders to field technicians, inspectors or drivers. This type of software not only enables dispatchers to save time and money scheduling work orders and minimises the distances that field personnel travel but optimises schedules, even with restrictive operational parameters.
 
When new information is fed in, such as following a customer logging an emergency repair call, smart scheduling features can assist the dispatcher and ensure the closest technician can carry out the job as a critical, or prioritised work order, by the ability to modify schedules on the fly.
 

Boost communication between technicians and back office teams

Field service management software improves internal communications between dispatchers, within back office teams, and technicians in the field. Dispatch scheduling software, which enables technicians to communicate with dispatchers through a simple-to-use app interface, improves the quality of information exchanges between back office teams and field technicians.
 
Using field service software helps to structure communications between teams in a more standardised and transparent way, compared with communicating using phone calls and texts. Using this type of software ensures that automatic door repair technicians have all the information they need at their fingertips to complete repair jobs and other maintenance tasks.
 
Establishing clear and structured communication channels with field service management software enhances the overall responsiveness of field service teams by also providing dispatchers the opportunity to monitor technician’s progress in real-time throughout their work day, helping identify areas where aftermarket services can be improved.

Improve the customer’s experience

With field service management software providers of automatic door maintenance and repairs can ensure that customers are kept informed about progress and status of repair jobs and be alerted as soon as repairs are complete and doors are back to full working order, with real-time notifications by email or SMS. This can be really crucial in public areas with lots of footfall, such as shopping centres, or large transport hubs, for example, where customers may temporarily have to rerouted while a major entrance is out of use. At smaller sites, a rapid response service is important if the door is the only public entrance and exit into the facility, which can effectively mean the business owner may have to close until the repair is completed.
 
In some cases customers may own or operate buildings with multiple exits and entrances, across multiple sites, with facilities management teams that may often be in charge of overseeing and managing multiple types of equipment and infrastructure within buildings, including lifts, escalators, HVAC equipment and security systems. In such instances, field service management software’s ability to seamlessly integrate with maintenance plans and schedules can help facilities management teams in managing all these various assets, in terms of preventive maintenance, emergency repairs, replacements and upgrades or other types of jobs and can also improve first time fix rate.

Give technicians all the support they need to complete repairs fast and without hassle

With field service management software technicians can create work orders directly in the field, self-schedule jobs and even allocate work orders to colleagues where required. Any relevant information needed to complete work orders can be easily accessed by field service engineers and technicians so they can complete jobs easily, such as previous service reports, diagrams, images and instructions.
 
For automatic door repair jobs that require replacement parts, field technicians can use their field service management software app to check stock levels in their vehicle for any given part or through enterprise resource planning (ERP) view closest stock and quantity available, then reserve or order the part.
 
Sometimes repairs are tricky and so the only way to resolve an issue is to tap into advice from more experienced technicians or use input from others to help come up with a solution. With advanced field service management solutions technicians can take images and easily annotate them before sharing among other technicians in the field service team, enabled by remote collaboration features.