Smart Service Blog

How We Support Our Smart Service Customers

Luke — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:47:27 +0000

My name is Lucas Askins and I am the Help Desk Manager here at My Service Depot. I have been an employee here for almost 3 years now. I originally started on the Help Desk as a technician then moved to a Senior Help Desk Technician role where I would handle advanced problems our entry level technicians could not fix; among other tasks I also create custom work orders. I am now in the Help Desk Manager role and loving it! Please feel free to email me any questions or comments you may have at laskins@myservicedepot.com!

Here at My Service Depot, we strive to provide the best possible customer service to all of our customers. We pride ourselves in the level of customer service each customer receives. Since April 1st our Help Desk has received 2,448 calls; of those calls only 157 have had to leave a message for our technicians to call back. That means 2,291 calls were answered and transferred to a Help Desk technician on the spot and helped right away! That’s a 94% live answer rate over the past 6 weeks! The 157 calls that had to leave a message were called back, on average, in only 14 minutes.

Some people have trouble finding the time to call the Help Desk or are hesitant to call for help because their day is filled with important meetings or other calls. I would like to suggest a new alternative to actually having to call in and be tied up for however long it takes to ask that how-to question. Support@myservicedepot.com is an option that is available to you in addition to the traditional over the phone method. During our business hours of Monday through Friday 8:30 AM through 5:30 PM we will usually respond to emails within ten minutes. You can then reply with your follow up questions when you to have a free few seconds to reply!

Please remember to visit our blog often, our trainers Ross & Wray will be posting new content every week regarding the most common how to questions that our customers have!

Eliminate Drive Time with Smart Find

Ross — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:42:39 +0000

Have you ever scheduled your technician for a full day of jobs, only to find they drove all over town and went through a tank of gas? Worry no more, using Smart Find and Smart Service you can choose the best dates and times to suggest to your customers; set appointments that are beneficial for you! With just a few clicks, you’ll have your jobs scheduled and a more efficient route for your employees.

Step by Step Instructions

Create the job inside of the customer
Go to the scheduling tab and click on the Smart Find icon.
Find: Select how long the job takes
In the Next: Select within how many days you need to schedule the job
Select your starting date
For: you have tww options, you can schedule by an individual employee or select department and look for multiple people in a single department.
Then select if you want to see by the Mileage based on line of sight(fast) or Actual drive time and mileage.
Click on Lookup Available Slots
Once all your available slots come up, select your best fit in Step 2. (First Miles will show you how far the employee is away from his previous job and the second miles is how far you are away from this job and to the next).
Once you have your selection click on Use Selected Time Slot
Now you have the scheduled date, time and employee scheduled.

Next upcoming Blog post: Prospects and Estimates

Ross Hamill

Training Implementation Specialist

Save Time By Setting Up Checklists!

Wray — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:46:38 +0000

Do you find yourself entering the same instructions on your technicians’ jobs day in and day out? Are you spending too much time expanding on item descriptions so your customers can see in detail the services you provide to them on the invoices you post to Quick Books? Do your iFleet technicians leave you wanting more in their notes and item descriptions? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may want to build a checklist (or ten!) to speed things up in the office and in the field.

Setting your checklists up is easy!

The clipboard icon lets you access your ‘Add Checklist to Job” menu; select “New” to begin building your checklist. You can find this icon next to your Customer Notes and Memo, Job Instructions and Memo and it’s also available next to each item in the Job Items tab.

Set a name for your checklist that will clearly describe its purpose; if you will use this checklist to add to a particular item’s description, and then choose that Quick Books item in the drop down next to Checklist Filter. Be sure to leave your Check List Status set to “Active”.

For each task on your check list, choose between “Short Answers” if your comments will generally vary or ‘Multiple Selection” if you would like to present a range of commonly used options; these can be selected quickly. If you add your tasks and later decide you would like to present them in a different order, you can always change the number listed under ‘Order”. To populate your responses, click on “Details”.

Short answers details: When you enter a phrase under Task Results, this will be the introduction to your answer or comment. If there is a default answer, you can populate that here.

Multiple selection details: Enter a series of possible options that may be used, there will be no “default answer” for these details.

Using your checklists is even easier!

In your customer notes and memo or in your job instructions simply click your clipboard icon to use any of the checklists you have prepared. In the Checklist Filter dropdown, choose the checklist you would like to use. You will see each of your tasks listed, click on those tasks that you would like to use, in any order, and select your details. When you are satisfied with your Checklist Results, displayed to the right, you can click “Save to Job”. If you would like to make additional comments in the Checklist results, uncheck “Locked” and you may type directly into the Checklist Results field before saving. To use a checklist associated with a particular item, simply add that item in your Job items tab and select the clipboard located at the far right- if you set the Checklist Filter to that Quick Books item, your checklist is ready and waiting for you to use!

Wray Withers

Training Implementation Specialist

Another Great iFleet Update 3.3.8!

Ross — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:57:16 +0000

We have yet another great iFleet update ready for download in the App Store. In this update, we will help you find your customer equipment and add job items faster.

New GPS option in the equipment to get the location in the field
Barcode scan option when adding job items.

When adding or updating equipment inside of the customer’s job, you can now scroll down and tap the GPS icon to populate the Location field with the latitude and longitude of the equipment.

Also, a barcode scan option is now available when searching for items to add to your job. When you tap the barcode icon at the top of your Item selection screen, you can take a picture of the barcode and iFleet will search and find the item you need to select for that job, making it that much faster to add items named by barcode.

Ready for the latest version? Click on the App Store on your device and click updates to download update 3.3.8 or click the link here.

Ross Hamill

Training Implementation Specialist

Follow Smart Service on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.

How To Complete a Job and Invoice to QuickBooks

Ross — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:22:06 +0000

In this video I will go over two ways for you to complete your jobs in Smart Service and send over the invoice to QuickBooks. Not only you send over the invoice to QuickBooks but it also creates a history record of all the jobs you complete in Smart Service under the customer.

Ross Hamill

Training Implementation Specialist

Print Technicians’ Work Orders

Wray — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:19:04 +0000

Do you need to get your technicians out the door quickly, with their day’s work orders in hand? This short video will help you use your Office and your Scheduling tabs to print summary sheets and work orders and send them on their way.

Don’t see a summary sheet like the one displayed in the video? Check your work order settings by opening Set Up, Work Order and be sure to check off “Include summary sheets with work orders”.

Wray Withers

Training Implementation Specialist

What’s New in iFleet 3.3.7?

Wray — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:33:09 +0000

A new iFleet update is now available for download in the App Store! This update will improve performance for our customers with especially large item lists (over 3500 items) but can be installed by all iFleet users. Notable changes in this update are:

Improved performance of large file synchronization.
Increased large item list threshold to 3500 items.

Most of our customers will notice no change in usage, but if you have more than 3500 active individual items in your QuickBooks item list your method for choosing items to add to your job will differ very slightly from our current iFleet Documentation.

Inside of your job, when you select items and tap the plus button in the upper right of your screen you will be presented with an Item selection screen. As soon as you begin typing the name of your item or part of your item description, possible matches will appear in the space below your search field. To add one of the results as your desired item, simply tap its name.

If your item list is under 3500 items and all of your item names display, you can always search your names and descriptions by tapping the magnifying glass button at the top right of your Item selection screen or jump to part of the list by tapping a number or letter!

All ready to download the update? Tap on the App Store on your device and tap updates to download iFleet update 3.3.7 or click the link here.

Wray Withers

Training Implementation Specialist

Quick and Easy Way to Schedule Your Jobs

Ross — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:58:37 +0000

In this video, I will go over how easy it is to schedule your employees using Smart Service from the scheduling board. With a couple of clicks you will have the job scheduled and ready to dispatch to your employee.

Ross Hamill

Training Implementation Specialist

What’s New in iFleet Update 3.3.6?

Ross — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:21:14 +0000

The latest update for iFleet has just been released to the App Store. Below are some of the new features that have been added to the latest version.

You now have the ability to print work orders or estimates through Air Print enabled printers.

Enabled start and end timer on labor items to keep track of how many hours employees spent on the job site.

Search equipment by bar code. This feature is only available on devices with a camera, sorry original iPad users.

When using the finalize job option at the bottom of the job screen, it will automatically mark the job as complete with a time stamp.

Customer and job user defined fields will now be displayed on the PDF work order. Both the label and the result will be displayed on the page.

Users can now clock in/clock out and enter starting and ending mileage without any jobs assigned to the device.

A calculator will be available at the item quantity, item rate, and checklist fields. Use this if you need to do some calculations on the fly without leaving the app!

Job price levels will now display in the Customer and Job Information screen.

Ability to add equipment per job item.

Ready for the latest version? Click on the App Store on your device and click updates to download update 3.3.6 or click the link here.

Ross Hamill

Training Implementation Specialist

Smart Service Software Reviews and Testimonials

Bruce — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:14:13 +0000

Picking the right service software for your business is not an easy choice. Figuring out what will work best for your company, features, pricing, and support must be taken into consideration before making a purchase. User reviews and testimonials are equally important; if a customer is not happy with a product chances are you will not be satisfied either.

We are constantly striving to improve our software and services every day and we love to hear from our customers! With that in mind I wanted to take some time today to share some recent smart service software reviews and customer testimonials. All comments below have not been altered in anyway.

“I feel bad that I have taken so long to write you about the support and performance of one of your stellar employees. Wray has been extremely patient and helpful in getting us started with Smart Service. As new questions have arose, I have sent numerous emails to Wray and she has always been thorough and prompt in her responses. If Wray’s customer service skills are indicative of your employee base, you have done an excellent job in your employee selection. Her patience, help and support is greatly appreciated.”

Jeff, Total Refrigeration Service

“I wanted let you know that we really appreciate the work of Lucas Askins in the customization department. We are new subscribers and we needed some report customization done very quickly so we could roll out the system to our employees. He went above and beyond the call of duty in order to expedite our requests working through his normal lunch hour and staying past his normal end of shift. He was very professional and understanding of our needs. He represents your company very well.”

Chuck, Aussie Pet Mobile

“Overall we are very happy with the customer service we are receiving. We understand that there will be occasional problems with software but what impresses us the most is your ability to address our concerns and make corrections in a timely manner.”

Steven, C. Sharkey Enterprises

We love hearing from our customers, and always feel free to let us know how we’re doing. You can read more smart service software reviews on our reviews page. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to keep up with the latest Smart Service news.