In this month's issue we continue to explore leading-edge Internet strategies that can help your organization rise above the competition.

Service solutions provide tools that help organizations deliver ’in-the-field’ service to customers. Service is delivered by technicians and drivers who travel to the customer site in order to deliver, install, maintain or repair company products.

Service solutions help administer the service delivery process by managing the following functions:

• Driver or technician scheduling and dispatch



• Mapping and routing



• On-site information visibility and data collection



• Real-time truck tracking

Unfortunately, many service-based businesses have long been plagued by low customer satisfaction due to a lack of responsiveness and reliability as well as poor quality of service.

Even the largest service-based organizations, in particular cable providers, phone companies and utilities, continue to find it difficult to overcome this long-standing reputation of providing poor service.

Fortunately, this perception creates an opportunity for businesses to set themselves apart from the competition by finding ways to provide top quality service. And today’s leading-edge Internet-based technologies offer a cost-effective way to do this.

By using the Internet and wireless technologies, today's leading service solutions provide the real-time information required by all stakeholders in the service delivery process to provide cost-effective, timely service.

These solutions use wireless Internet technologies such as GPS tracking and wireless-enabled smartphones to ensure that the right information is in the hands of the right people when and where they need it most.

Imagine a service technician at a customer site who has immediate visibility to the customer’s entire service history. Furthermore, the technician is able to easily collect and record the relevant information related to the incident that will assist in dealing with any future problems.

These solutions also integrate mapping and routing functionality in order to assist in crew scheduling and dispatching. This results in reduced travel time and helps ensure that the driver or technician shows up at the customer site when promised.

All these improvements in managing the service delivery process ultimately lead to happier customers, resulting to increased sales and higher customer retention.

Service no longer needs to be perceived solely as a cost of doing business, but can actually become a way to improve profitability by improving customer satisfaction.

In the past, many smaller businesses have ignored these service solutions due to the high-cost of acquisition and implementation. However, with today's technologies, even very small companies can deploy effective solutions for a reasonable price. Furthermore, a high return on investment through efficiency gains and improved customer satisfaction means these solutions pay for themselves over a short period of time.

Datapro has helped a number of clients, including companies in the areas of retail security, industrial roofing and drapery manufacturing, implement leading-edge service solutions. These organizations continue to realize the high return on investment that results from more satisfied customers.


Next Steps?

Depending on the specific requirements of your business, Datapro can help you put together the service solution that is right for your organization.

We can help determine the appropriate pieces of a system and how these pieces fit together to create a service solution that will help you rise above your competition.

So call us today at 416-977-1991 or email us at info@dataproforbusiness.com to find out how.


In Next Month's Issue...

In our next issue we will change course a little and talk about Business Intelligence software, what it is and what it means to your business.