Plant – Field service report
What is a field service report?
Field service reports are the reports created and completed by field and 'site' staff to document the services they perform during a field visit which typically include repairs, installation and maintenance.
The industries in which the 'most' field service reports are generated include telecommunications, HVAC, construction and engineering and property maintenance.
Field service reports are extremely useful for both the company performing the service and the customer requesting or receiving the service.
- For the customer, they can get a record of the work done so they know what was wrong, what was 'fixed', how things were left etc.
- For the company, they can see what resources were used, how things can be improved, and can use that record to inform when the next service needs to be.
Good field service reporting keep customers happy and companies healthy by also enabling companies to see technician productivity and performance over time.
To understand the field service report a little better, it's helpful to see what a real field service report looks like.
What does a field service report look like?
Field service reports can come in a few shapes and sizes depending on the extent of the service being performed, but they do share some common ingredients:
Customer or project data
Field service reports contain valuable information about the service, but all of this is pointless if the someone doesn't know which customer or project the record belongs to.
The start of every field service report needs to contain all of those important record keeping details including name of technician, location of service and the date of the service.
Tests
Completing some rectifying actions during a field service, or writing a useful field service report requires understanding the issue with the equipment or machine, and this often requires testing.
If getting to the bottom of an issue requires some functionality tests, then it pays to have a testing table or something similar in the report where people can fill out all of those test details.
Actions taken or work performed
Field service reports capture important information - and should also create action. Every field service report should include a section for the actions which were taken or the work performed.
This is crucial information for all parties, and needs to be documented.
Follow up actions and priorities
Not all issues can be solved or rectified during a field service report, because it can be exploratory and diagnostic in nature.
It's crucial that the technician or field service worker documents follow-up actions and priorities, and assigns them to the relevant person.
Customer and technician sign off
And finally, no record of work would be complete if it weren't signed off. Most field service report should contain an area for the technician and customer to sign - and these sections should ideally be able to be signed off digitally.
You can see a proven and reliable field service report framework below, which is broadly applicable to most field services and can also be customised to suit specific industries and use cases via the form builder.
Use this field service reporting framework for free.
How do companies and workers manage field service reporting?
Managing field service reports and an inherently mobile workforce can be a lot of work. Just keeping tabs on who's going where and what's getting done can be a logistical nightmare.
The mechanisms for some companies to track all of this information are still paper-based documents, word docs, PDFs and spreadsheets, which creates a lot of these headaches.
All of the information being collected during the site visits needs to be reconciled, made sure it's standardised and accurate, and then actioned through email and phone calls.
But other companies have innovated on their field service reporting using field service reporting software and apps.
There are a few different systems 'on the market' but the premise is largely the same:
Streamline field service reporting process from start to finish by digitising the processes involved in documenting, organising and tracking all of that information.
The output of this looks something like you see below, where companies can enable their technicians and service workers to access and complete information on mobile devices.
From here, all of the data is synced to the cloud where it can be stored, update databases, be converted into a hard copy report or displayed in tracking analytics charts.
These type of digital systems can drastically improve the productivity of field service workers while reducing the admin burden placed on administrators and project managers who are charged with doing something with all of this information.
Field service reporting isn't going anywhere any time soon, but the methods in which companies and workers engage in these activities will continue to change - to the benefit of everyone.
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