Organizing Your Time For Service Calls

Time organization is often a constant struggle for many business owners, and that includes Techs. Our industry requires a lot of flexibility that often isn’t needed in other career paths. For instance, someone might bring in a machine that just needs simple maintenance, or so you thought. Suddenly you realize it’s running an extremely outdated operating system on limited RAM, and the time you had allotted for that job suddenly isn’t enough. That’s just one example, but here are some tips to help you stay organized through the day with service calls and jobs.

Always Be A Step Ahead

Sometimes your customers won’t be able to provide you with the specific answers that you need to estimate how long a task will take. In some cases, you can get them to navigate to where the information is on their machine, but often they’re clueless as to what they’re looking at, so you just have to plan ahead and save some extra time for what might take longer than originally planned.

Another way to stay a step ahead is to have your daily schedule worked out a few days in advance, or at the very least, a whole day in advance. Often we look at a task and think it will only take 15 minutes, but it will actually take 45 minutes, because you have to account for the slowness of the machine, or discussing the problem with the client, or downloading and installing drivers that fix the issue you’re there to work on. Make sure you schedule in a little extra time for each job, if you notice this tendency to underestimate the time needed for each job.

Make sure you call your clients the day before to reconfirm the time you are to arrive at the location, and reconfirm the address too. Occasionally I’ve been called to do work for a client only to find that the location for the job is another business, but the invoice will be billed to the client instead, so it’s important to confirm the location.

Communicate

If you arrive at a job and have either been misled as to the scope of the job, or seriously underestimated the time needed for the job, and you have appointments with other clients later the same day, you’ll have to make the call on which clients to give the bad news to. Of course, if you’ve been misled as to the scope of the job, you might find it’s easier to reschedule the job than to call your other clients and attempt to reschedule later appointments, and explain why it’s necessary. Of course, this is why many Techs schedule extra time for each job just in case, and if it takes less time, you have a chance to take a quick break before the next service call.

Obviously, don’t wait until you’re running late to the next appointment to give your clients a call informing them of what’s happened. If you’re really in a tight spot, it might be best to quickly call your clients you need to visit and ascertain which ones can be easily rescheduled without any problems and which ones you cannot reschedule. If you have to reschedule a client, apologize for the inconvenience, and briefly explain why it’s necessary.

Schedule

I know many people still keep paper appointment books, while many prefer to use an app or scheduling calendar system, like Google Calendar, to keep track of service calls and appointments. There are also options like Wunderlist, with list sharing, reminders and alarms, in a to-do list format. Whichever option you use, if it’s going to be useful to you, you need to have it with you all the time so you can make adjustments and add tasks and appointments as they come in. Don’t rely on your memory for service calls, when you get the call, mark it down so you won’t risk forgetting and missing out on business.

When you lay out your schedule in this way, it helps you view your time and service calls in an organized fashion, which helps you stay focused and organized during your work hours. If you choose an option that allows you to access it from any device, you won’t have to worry about carrying around a paper planner in addition to your mobile device, tablet or phone, if you use those on the job.

If you have any tips on organizing your time and schedule for service calls, drop a comment below!