By Charles Freedman
Job management is a process that starts the moment your customer reaches out – and ends the moment you’ve been paid.
Charles Freedman. Supplied by ServCraft
It’s fair to say that no two days are the same for a plumber in South Africa. One day you’re installing a new water harvesting solution, the next you’re saving a property from a monster leak, the next day there’s no water at all! Just because your days might be unpredictable doesn’t mean how you run your business should be too.
Most plumbing business owners, regardless of their size, constantly grapple with the challenges of organising tasks, tracking progress, and ensuring seamless collaboration among team members and clients. Unfortunately, this often means they lose out on work, take unnecessary time to get paid, and leave customers indifferent to their service. Job management software has been a game-changer for plumbers, offering ways to streamline workflows, enhance communication, and boost overall productivity.
Organisation Over Chaos
Let’s say you’ve got two bakkies on the road running four or five jobs daily. Without a centralised system, keeping track of job details, schedules, and client information quickly becomes chaotic, leading to missed appointments, slow turnaround on quotes, or even rework back on site. Job management software allows you to have all your information in one place, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. With features such as scheduling and dispatching, it helps you assign and schedule jobs easily, manage what the team is doing, and get the quote or invoice out without waiting for the job card to get back to the office.
It’s Good to Talk
When your team works on a big project with lots of moving parts, it’s hard for them to know who needs to do what at the right time, and hard for you to see how well they are doing it. Job management software offers advanced planning and activity management capabilities. Technicians can access job details, service histories, and parts inventory through their mobile devices so they’re always focusing on the right thing at the right time, while you benefit from real-time updates to give you and your customers peace of mind that everything is on track.
Doing More with Less
Automation and streamlined workflows are key to doing more with less. Many of the jobs you do are very similar. Repetitive administrative tasks can consume valuable time that could be better spent on actual plumbing work. If you’re handing out job cards, writing on them on-site, trying to read them at the end of the day to get into quotes or invoices—stop! Job management software helps streamline and automate these tasks, such as seamlessly creating quotes or invoices from jobs and sending follow-up emails and appointment reminders. By reducing manual and paperwork, plumbers can focus more on plumbing and less on admin.
Happy Customers = More Business
Most people I talk to say they have an average or poor service experience from their plumbers. Satisfaction is a function of expectations minus reality. Managing expectations, providing timely updates, and accurate information to clients is everything for customer satisfaction. Job management software takes your service experience to another level. You can stand out with immediate notifications when a job is booked, confirmation of the callout, reports with pictures and comments, messages when the plumber is on the way, digital quotes and invoices linked to payment, and asking for feedback at the end of the job. It all adds up to standing out in a lot of average experiences in the industry.
You Can Only Manage What You Measure
One plumber takes three hours to fit a geyser, another takes six. Most plumbers won’t know how long their teams are really taking on a job, let alone explore why there’s such a difference in them. Job management software lets you see how your teams are performing, whether it’s volume or value of jobs, time on types of jobs, or even items used across jobs. This helps in identifying bottlenecks and areas where efficiency can be improved. By having a clear view of the team’s performance, you can provide targeted training and support, helping the team operate more effectively and efficiently.
0 → 1 is Different to 1 → 10
Most plumbers are their brand. Adding teams creates the risk of losing control of the quality of the work. Effective management of the team is crucial for ensuring that work is done on time and up to standard. Job management software offers features that allow you to have better control over your teams. Tracking statuses, checklists, forms, and pictures give you visibility and control of the work at every stage, so you can scale without compromising on quality. (Unfortunately, software can’t replace finding good plumbers!)
To avoid becoming a race to the bottom, plumbers need to focus on service and customer experience to differentiate themselves and justify charging a premium for their services. Job management software provides powerful tools that enable plumbing businesses to enhance organisation, improve communication, increase efficiency, and deliver superior customer service. By investing in the right software, plumbing businesses can streamline their operations, boost productivity, and stay ahead in an ever-evolving market.
