14 Feb The 5 Most Important KPIs for Field Service Organizations

In our work with some of the world’s largest field service organizations, we have seen many different business practices across various industries that are designed to improve upon all aspects of service delivery. While there is any number of KPIs a field service organization can track and optimize, the most critical align with productivity and profitability.

By design, field service organizations are laser-focused on satisfying (or, better yet, delighting) customers and being proactive rather than reactive. Based on our research and working with companies in various industries, we’ve assembled the five most important KPIs that field service organizations should strive to improve.

1. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) rate

Knowing how satisfied your customers are is critical for a field service organization. CSAT, a critical KPI, drives customer loyalty over the long-term and is directly linked to profitability. Fred Reichheld’s work with the Net Promoter Score draws a clear relationship between how likely a customer is to recommend you and business growth. Loyal customers buy more from you, stay longer, refer business to you, and recommend your organization — all of which drive the top and bottom line.

2. First-time fix rate (FTFR)

First-time fix rate is the percentage of repairs that are resolved on the first customer site visit. Being a leader in this regard indicates your field service processes are streamlined and your techs are enabled with the mobile tools they need. Recent research from the Aberdeen Group shows leaders have an average FTFR of 86 percent.

3. Average SLA compliance rate

This KPI is crucial to both customer retention and service profitability. As the main contract between the field organization and the customer, SLA compliance rates have far-reaching implications. If your service organization is routinely being penalized for missing SLAs, you are incurring financial penalties, not to mention providing less than stellar service to your customers. Enabling your field technicians with mobile applications that allow insight into the customer’s current SLA, repair history, and maintenance information can help improve SLA compliance rates. Scheduling planned maintenance rather than relying on costly break-fix operations can also be a huge help in improving SLA compliance. Industry research group Aberdeen reported that top performing companies have a 90 percent SLA compliance rate while average companies are at 80 percent.

4. Routing efficiency rates

Tracking technicians and ensuring the right tech is at the right job with the right parts and equipment at the right time can have a major impact on productivity. Location awareness and SLA mapping provide field service leaders the insight needed to make timely adjustments to ensure unscheduled customer needs are met. Technician routing via geolocation and auto-dispatch not only gets the right person on-site more efficiently and provides enhanced visibility for the customer, it allows management to better understand which techs may need additional training based on how much time they needed to complete a job compared to the amount of time it should take.

5. Field technician utilization rates

Making your field technicians more productive should be one of the main KPIs for any field service organization. It’s best to focus on making incremental improvements in field processes, as annual improvements may be smaller or less pronounced than improvements in other areas. We recommend starting by replacing manual, paper-based tasks with ones that are automated and streamlined. Task-specific mobile apps that allow field techs to update work orders in real-time, provide access to asset repair history and warranty information, and continue to work in offline environments have a direct impact on productivity and are ideal for optimizing utilization.

With the prevalence of feature-rich cloud-based field service management software and analytics, it is easy for field service management organizations to become mired in data and lose sight of what’s really important: serving the customer. In field service management, optimizing these five KPIs and improving them year over year will keep your organization vital and on a growth trajectory. 

Get more insight on improving your KPIs with our mobile field service apps guide.

For more KPIs to track for your field service organization, check out the KPI Library.