How Tom Bleys schedules preventive maintenance with automated communication

Tom Bleys Woning Ventilatie is a specialized installation company focused on installing and maintaining ventilation systems in homes, apartments, and non-residential buildings. They offer a wide range of systems, including C, C+, and D, ensuring their customers enjoy optimal air quality and comfort in their living and working environments. They set high standards not only for their installations but also for operational back-office processes. Customer satisfaction is central to their approach, starting with the scheduling of appointments.

Challenges

Managing the scheduling of installations is relatively straightforward, but the planning of periodic maintenance was a time-consuming and inefficient task for Tom Bleys Woning Ventilatie. Technicians can handle up to six assignments at different locations per day. Monthly, the scheduling manager would extract a list from their CRM system, Teamleader, of customers with service contracts requiring preventive maintenance to be rescheduled. Each customer received an individual email asking if they wanted to schedule the maintenance. If the customer confirmed, they were scheduled based on regions and received a new, manual email with a proposed date and time. Once the customer was definitively scheduled, they received another manual confirmation email beforehand to avoid no-shows. This approach presented several challenges:

• Time-consuming: Emailing, occasionally calling, and following up with customers to schedule appointments took up a lot of daily time for the back office, at the expense of other important tasks.
• Inefficient planning: Manually scheduling appointments in the technicians' calendars was done based on fixed regions per day. This structure and clustering of assignments ensured technicians did not have to travel long distances in one day. However, efficient route planning within the regions required a lot of thought, and regions were not always optimal, resulting in sometimes unnecessary kilometers.
• Lack of overview: It was difficult to maintain a clear overview of all scheduled and yet-to-be-scheduled maintenance tasks. Keeping track of which customers had responded and what communication they had received was a time-consuming task.

Approach with Movetex Services

Movetex offered a solution with their innovative software, Movetex Services. This field service scheduling software is specifically developed for service technicians and helps automate the scheduling and communication process. The following steps were implemented to address the challenges of Tom Bleys Woning Ventilatie:

• Integration with Teamleader CRM: Thanks to the standard integration with Teamleader CRM, service tasks flow seamlessly from Teamleader to Movetex. New assignments received through the website also flow automatically after customer approval of the quote.
• Automatic scheduling: With a single click, Movetex Services now generates the most efficient schedule over multiple days for all maintenance and service tasks. This includes meeting all requirements such as preferred days, time windows, and skills, as well as the most optimal routes to minimize kilometers. The planner can also find the right solution for a single assignment in the existing schedule, supported by data and best proposals.
• Digital appointment processing: Customers now receive digital appointment proposals via automatic emails that they can accept or decline without needing to call or manually email. If a customer accepts, the status change of this task is immediately visible in the software. If a customer declines, they are removed from the schedule for that day, and the task is moved to the open ticket pool. Continuous optimization takes place, considering the time margins communicated to the customer. This saves a lot of time and ensures a smooth process.

Benefits

Since implementing Movetex Services, Tom Bleys Woning Ventilatie has achieved significant results in both the back office and on the road:

• Time savings: Automating the scheduling and communication process has drastically reduced the time spent on making appointments, allowing employees to focus on more important tasks.
• Increased productivity: Thanks to Movetex Services' smart algorithms, scheduling is now continuously optimized and highly efficient. Regions are no longer used, yet kilometers have been reduced, and technicians' working hours are filled with as many customer assignments as possible.
• Clear overview: Planners now have a clear overview of all scheduled and yet-to-be-scheduled tasks, as well as the status of scheduling proposals. This contributes to better organization and less stress.
• Improved customer experience: Customers can easily and quickly accept or decline appointments, enhancing their service experience. They no longer need to take action by responding to emails or calling the back office.

With the help of Movetex Services, Tom Bleys Woning Ventilatie has taken a significant step in optimizing their scheduling process. This has not only led to higher efficiency and productivity but also to greater satisfaction among both employees and customers.