Employees take it for granted that the equipment they need will be available and working properly when they need it. But without efficient service request management, it's easy to fall behind and accumulate a backlog of repairs.
Staying on top of service requests is not only important for productivity. It's also essential for the health and safety of your workforce at a time when expectations for cleanliness have never been higher.
Here's an overview of what a good service request process looks like and five steps you can take to improve yours.
Good service request management comes down to a few basic things:
For instance, an employee who reserves a conference room wants to know it has been properly sanitized before their meeting. They need to be able to request cleaning services and know they can expect a response within a reasonable time frame.
Your facilities team should start by evaluating your current work order process and identifying any gaps or areas where there's room for improvement. For instance:
An optimized service request process doesn't happen overnight. It stems from a deep understanding of the factors that affect your business, including the organization’s size, the relationships between service technicians and workforce, and the core nature of your business.
Follow these five steps to improve yours.
Without facility maintenance software, it's impossible to track and manage service requests. In other words, you have no service request process — just a pile of paper or emails.
The right software will make it easy for employees to submit both service requests and IT support tickets using a mobile app. You can set up a workflow to assign the request to the right person, whether they're on the facilities management or IT team. The technician can see the location of the request within your floor plan so they don't have to wonder which one of the 50 printers in your building needs a new cartridge.
They can get instructions on how to fix it right within your facility maintenance app.
And if you use asset management software, they can see when the last repair took place, when the warranty expires, and how much your company has spent repairing that particular piece of equipment in the past. Depending on the type of asset and how much it's costing you, it might make more sense to replace it rather than continue to repair something that frequently breaks down.
Meanwhile, employees can easily see the status of their request.
Implementing the right software for service request management is half the battle. The other half requires evaluating your current processes and customizing your technology to support them.
For instance, you can set up your software so it pre-populates details and assigns requested tasks, based on the nature of the work order. If prior approval is required for service tickets, have a built-in feature set up that assigns a work order immediately when an emergency or safety request is submitted. Limit options to no more than 15 categories or groups with no more than four to six items/request types to choose from per group. By working the details beforehand, you can reduce downtime and save your employees the trouble of having to scroll through hundreds of options.
Many service requests are predictable. You know your team will need to perform certain tasks when new employees start, when you're relocating a department to another floor, or when the changing seasons impact certain building systems. This is where automation can make your team more efficient.
For instance, you can use sensor integrations to trigger service requests after an employee has used a desk or a conference room.
Sensors can also alert you when restroom supplies are running low so you don't have to wait for someone to tell your team you're out of soap and toilet paper.
And you can set up standard tasks to assign to your team as you're planning an office move so you don't forget to address something.
Regularly scheduled preventive maintenance helps alleviate reactive situations, which can cost your company anywhere from two to five times more than planned work.
It reduces equipment downtime, which can cost as much as $260,000 per hour, according to the Aberdeen Group. Those are just the direct costs. Waiting days to repair an important piece of equipment also results in lost productivity, strained customer relationships, and poor morale at your organization.
Facility maintenance software makes it easy to manage preventive maintenance. You can schedule PM tasks at certain time or usage intervals, based on the manufacturer's recommendations.
This will streamline your service request management and help you determine its effectiveness over time. Careful data analysis sometimes reveals that it is more cost effective to operate equipment until it breaks down, preparing for corrective action or replacement, once breakdown occurs. The one variable that remains the same for businesses spanning every size and scope, is that those who ignore the advantages and profitability of a solid preventive maintenance plan will miss out on finding their true profit potential.
One of the most powerful tools built into your FM software is metrics and reporting. This is your opportunity to learn from past triumphs and downfalls, to take predictive measures, and to communicate this data across your organization. You have control over what reports are generated, how often they are generated, and who gains access to this information.
Before you set up facility maintenance dashboards, consider:
Our clients have found success by including these common reports:
Long-term success is measured by our ability to learn from both triumphs and failures. Access to accurate, reliable, and timely information is critical for the management of your organization, and the work order process is no different.
Taking the time to review the most common service requests can provide insight that further improves your efficiency. If you realize a significant percentage of service requests appear to be seasonal, you can schedule certain tasks to align with the changing of the seasons.
Or if you see that a certain technician is consistently falling behind on work orders, he or she might need more training.
With systematic coordination of your company’s tools, resources, and information, your facilities team can improve service request management and maximize productivity.
iOFFICE + SpaceIQ offer service request software that makes it easy to manage preventive maintenance and on-demand work orders.
Employees can send requests through mobile apps, and you can dispatch requests to the appropriate maintenance or IT professional on your team. You can also provide a centralized, self-service portal for the most common service requests in the office, such as a request to clean or sanitize spaces after employees use them.
If your organization has heavy equipment, such as machines, warehouse assets, or vehicles, your maintenance technicians can conduct on-site inspections, perform preventive maintenance, and submit detailed work orders anywhere.
And you can track important maintenance KPIs with easy-to-use dashboards within all these systems.
Ready for a closer look? Request a demo today.
George Banos, joined iOFFICE in 2010 and specializes in solving workplace management challenges and improving facility operations by engaging with clients from discovery to implementation.