How to set up technician dispatching from scratch

Technician dispatching means one place where it is written down who goes where and when. For beginners, three rules are enough: one plan that applies to everyone, one person who writes into it, and one route by which a change reaches the technician. The tool is only the fourth step. Without these three rules, no tool will help.

• Dispatching is a role, not software. Name it before you start choosing a tool.
• One plan applies to everyone. A second plan in a paper diary invalidates the first.
• Every assignment must state whether the appointment is proposed or confirmed by the customer.
• Qualifications and absences belong to the same plan, not in another file.
• ServisBook costs EUR 20 per user per month and can be tried for 30 days free with no payment card.

What dispatching is

Dispatching is one person's responsibility for the picture of technician assignments matching reality. It is not a program or a department. In most Czech technical companies someone performs this role, they just do not have a name for it: the owner, the service manager or a senior technician who picks up the phone between site visits and agrees appointments.

The problem starts when this picture is stored only in someone's head. As long as one order follows another, it works. Once orders overlap, appointments change and an absence is added on top, memory stops being enough. The mistake then shows not at the desk but in the field: two technicians at one site, or nobody.

So it is the operation that decides, not the size of the company. A company of two people serving dozens of supply points with periodic checks needs dispatching sooner than a company of thirty people whose team spends months on one construction site.

The three rules you start with

Setting up dispatching does not start with choosing a tool but with an agreement inside the company. These three rules apply regardless of whether you plan on paper, in a spreadsheet or in a system.

One plan. There is exactly one place where assignments are written down. Everything else is a working note with no validity. The most common beginner's mistake is running things in parallel: the plan in a spreadsheet, notes in a diary and agreements in messages. Each of these places then claims something different and nobody knows which one is current.

One person making entries. A designated person writes into the plan. Others may pass on requests, but they do not enter them. Cover is handled by designating a deputy in advance, not by everyone making entries.

One route for a change. When an appointment changes, the change has to reach the technician where they look. If the technician looks at the plan and the plan is current, no phone call is needed. If they look at a message from the previous evening, the system will not help.

What must be recorded for every assignment

The minimum is six pieces of information. Anything less leads to a phone call to the office.

The last two rows are what beginners leave out most often. Yet the difference between a proposed and a confirmed appointment is the line between an arrangement and a commitment, and that is exactly where wasted site visits arise.

The first month step by step

1. Write down who is a technician and what they may do. A list of names and qualifications. Once, by hand, ideally in half an hour.
2. Record the known absences. Holidays, planned training, regular inspection dates. Without them the plan lies.
3. Plan the first week twice. In parallel, the way you are used to and at the same time in the new tool. The aim is not speed but finding the places where the two plans diverge.
4. Compare at the end of the week. Where the plan diverged and why. It is usually an arrangement made by phone that nobody wrote down.
5. In the second week, plan in the system only. Keep the old way as a backup, but do not write into it. Two valid plans running in parallel are worse than one imperfect one.
6. In the third week, let the technicians into the plan. Not as people making entries, but as readers. From that moment, ask whether they still call the office.

The sixth step is the test of success. As long as technicians call to ask where they should go, dispatching has not been set up.

How to show the plan to technicians

A technician needs to see their day, not the whole company. That is the entire difference between a plan for the office and a plan for the field. In mobile for technicians, the technician opens the browser, sees their day including the address, starts the work and logs the tasks done on finishing. That does away with the evening round of messages and the morning phone call.

In the office, by contrast, you need to see everyone at once. The planning board has technicians in rows and days in columns, assignments are entered by dragging across cells and the application reports a clash on saving. It is the one place where you can see who is where on which day.

The question of who is free next week and has the required qualification is answered by capacity and skills. The dispatcher has the answer available while still on the phone with the customer, not after calling back.

Agreeing appointments is part of dispatching

An appointment is not agreed alongside the plan but from the plan. Three e-mails and two phone calls for one appointment are not the customer's fault but the consequence of free days not being to hand at the moment of the call.

The appointment offer for customers reverses the procedure: the customer receives a link with free days, picks one themselves and the company confirms the choice. The customer thus chooses only from what is really free, and the arrangement is made without waiting for a call back.

Order history is part of dispatching too

Dispatching deals not only with the future but also with what has already happened. The question "what was done on that machine last time" comes up most often at the moment the next appointment is being agreed. If the answer lies in the e-mails of three people and in a technician's camera, the arrangement drags on.

Orders and history holds attachments, internal notes and a record of every change with one order. The benefit shows later, typically in a complaint or in a periodic check that follows on from a previous job. This is especially clear in inspections and periodic checks, where the previous record is the input for the next visit.

The most common mistakes at the start

Introducing everything at once. Statuses, labels, appointment types and qualifications can be named according to the company's habits, but not on day one. Start with what you need to plan next week and add the rest while in operation.

Planning to the minute. The precision of the plan should be what the operation can bear. If site visits routinely overrun, a block for the morning is more truthful than a time to the exact quarter hour.

A dispatcher who also goes out. It is a common situation and is not a mistake in itself. The mistake is when the plan is stored only in their head and the company grinds to a halt the moment they are in a switch room with no signal.

Unrecorded absences. A plan without holidays creates clashes that only appear in the morning on the day of the job.

When you do not need to set up dispatching

Not every company needs this step. If the team works on one order for a long time, the plan hardly changes during the week and the planner keeps track through daily contact, paper or a spreadsheet will continue to do. The same goes for companies that do not plan people in time, for example production on a line or an e-shop. Companies with their own ERP with planning built in are solving a different task from the one this article describes.

Setting it up pays off when orders run concurrently, appointments change and the person who plans spends more time planning than on the work the company is paid for.

What setting up dispatching will not change

It will not change the fact that a customer announces that Thursday does not suit them. It will not change the fact that a technician falls ill or that a site visit overruns. The only thing that changes is how many people have to hold that change in their memory and how quickly it reaches the person who sets off in the morning according to it.

Frequently asked questions