How software makes Coffee Machine Servicing less of a grind

Something is brewing in the Coffee Machine Servicing industry. This highly competitive market is being changed by Field Service Management Software and its ability to streamline processes, automate communication and help businesses to achieve SLAs.

Any downtime of food service or vending machines can cost a customer revenue, reduce profits and create poor experiences for their customers.

One of the key challenges Coffee Machine Servicing businesses are facing every week is ensuring all Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) jobs are carried out, while at the same time being able to respond to a call out.

Field Service Management Software helps Coffee Machine Servicing businesses provide a smooth service while delivering the added kick of operational efficiency this software offers.

Challenges faced by Coffee Machine Servicing businesses

In the Coffee Machine Servicing business the cream rises to the top by being able to juggle the demands of planned maintenance schedules while still completing reactive jobs and communicating effectively with their customer.

Here are some of the typical challenges faced in Coffee Machine Servicing:

Carrying out annual Pressure Vessel Inspections (PVI)

It’s a legal requirement for a PVI to be carried out in accordance with the Pressure Safety Regulations (PSSR 2000) at least every 14 months. These inspections ensure the boiler in the coffee machine is safe to operate.

Planned Preventative Maintenance schedules help identify issues early on and aid the longer life cycle of the coffee machine. Coffee Machine Servicing businesses are encouraging their clients to commit to regularly servicing to ensure they pass PVI inspections. The challenge they face is ensuring the expiry dates of the last service don’t over run, making the equipment unusable.

Completing repairs or inspections in difficult to access locations

Coffee Machine Servicing businesses often have to make a judgement call on whether to repair the equipment on site or off site.

When the machine is located in a bustling cafe, restaurant or hotel it’s not always practical to carry out repairs or even inspections surrounded by the public or the customer’s employees.

To mitigate disruption Coffee Machine Servicing businesses may choose the off site option when completing services. They may need to document the extraction of the equipment with photo evidence or leave detailed notes for their colleagues to ensure correct installation when the inspection or repair is complete.

Quickly responding to breakdown call outs

Unexpected downtime of Coffee Machines or Food and Drink Vending Machines can cost your customer revenue.

A call-out can play havoc on the job schedule for Coffee Machine Servicing businesses. You can plan for the preventative scheduled jobs you have in a week but not an unexpected breakdown.

This puts extra pressure on the whole field service team. It could also mean re-scheduling a planned maintenance job, in this instance excellent communication is required with your customer and visibility of your schedule is a must. Without an up to date view of your team’s schedule servicing businesses will be unlikely to respond fast to call-outs without it affecting another part of the business.

How Field Service Software helps Coffee Machine Servicing businesses meet SLAs

Field Service Management (FSM) Software comes with a range of features that can help Coffee Machine Servicing businesses meet the demands of their customers.

It keeps them out of hot water when unexpected jobs are required. It helps create smoother running engineer schedules and improves the visibility business owners have over the whole organisation.

Asset Management Features

Coffee Machine Servicing businesses are responsible for great numbers of assets, in multiple locations each with their own service history.

Asset Management Features in FSM software help identify each asset, when the next service is due and assists by gathering insights for each customer.

It gives the servicing business a top down view of each client, their assets and their service schedule.

From an engineer’s perspective they will benefit being able to instantly see the location of the asset from their mobile device and view it’s service history. No more arriving on site and not being sure what equipment needs servicing or having to scan codes to find the right one, it’s all available on their app in real time.

Preventative Maintenance Scheduling

Planned Preventative Maintenance schedules help create a consistent and more predictable operational performance of the coffee machine.

Coffee Machine Servicing businesses use them to provide a more proactive approach to maintenance. By regularly monitoring the condition of the equipment they will spot faults early and reduce the number of breakdowns.

FSM software helps plan out PPM schedules by creating recurring jobs into your schedule. Once those jobs are set up you can assign an engineer or do this closer to the service date. This has two key benefits to the Coffee Machine Servicing business; it can help secure regularly income and it also helps to create a more predictable service schedule for their engineers.

Automated Customer Communication

When a job is created to inspect or repair a coffee machine, automated customer communications send out a notification to the customer. This can also occur on PPM jobs providing the client early notice of upcoming .

These automated communications help the Coffee Machine Servicing business focus on completing the jobs, while the customer feels reassured their needs are met.

Job Routing

Field Service Management Software instantly gives your field teams details on the best possible route to their next job. This will greatly improve the efficiency of your team, reduce the time spent travelling and how much you spend on fuel.

Working Remotely

Nowadays Field Service Engineers expect to have everything they need at their fingertips.

By using a tablet or smartphone in the field with a FSM app, engineers can complete inspections, repairs and view their schedule while on the go.

One of the big advantages of using FSM is the fact your field team no longer needs to bring their completed paperwork back to the office. All they need to do is sync their app and the office team have all the information they need to raise an invoice or mark the job as complete.

Complete operational Visibility

There’s a lot of moving parts in a Coffee Machine Servicing business. Keeping on top of all the scheduled jobs, upcoming service dates and your inventory would be quite challenging without having a single source of information connecting it together.

FSM software pulls everything you need to run a successful servicing business into one, easily accessible, constantly updated platform.

Stock Control

First Time Fix Rate is vitally important for Coffee Machine servicing. You’re expected to minimise the downtime of equipment and arriving without the correct parts or enduring long waits while parts come back in stock will affect your performance.

Your ability to repair the equipment at the first time of asking will be greatly increased when you have visibility of your stock lives. Avoid overstocks, misplaced parts and improve how easy it is for your field team to get the parts they need by using FSM with Inventory Management.

How to provide real time communication with your Coffee Machine Servicing customers

On-demand services such as Uber, Just Eat, Netflix and DoorDash, have changed the expectations of your customer.

The modern service customer expects to know exactly where their engineer is? Who is coming? What time will they get there? And when their next service is due?

To provide a competitive and reliable service you need to be able to provide your customer with all the information they need, while automating as much of it as you can, after-all your job is to keep their equipment in top condition, not answer emails!

Interested in more? Here’s our article on what it takes to deliver an Uber-like experience in Field Service.

How Klipboard serves up exactly what your Coffee Machine Servicing Customers ordered

We understand that you need a way of professionally communicating with your customers at key points of a job such as:

• Notifications of an upcoming service
• Confirming a job booking
• Confirming an engineer is on the way
• Confirmation the job is complete
• Invoicing the customers for a completed job

We’ve created a simple and easy to use feature to set up these communications, in a way you can make them bespoke for each customer or asset and they are completely automated.

This leaves you to concentrate on providing an excellent service, meeting your existing SLAs and have enough time to respond to unexpected call outs.

How software will improve efficiency for your Coffee Machine Servicing jobs

When a Field Engineer arrives to service a Coffee Machine with Klipboard they have instant access to everything they need.

Klipboard is the modern answer to simplifying Field Service processes. It offers job scheduling, report building, mobile forms and automated communications to reduce inefficient processes and keeps your Coffee Machine Servicing business moving forward.

With Klipboard your Field Team will have:

• Efficient routing to the Job
• All the Client Details they need
• Details of the all the assets that require repairing or inspection
• Full details of the previous services
• Locations of all the assets
• Photos of the assets
• Real time Part and Inventory Information
• The ability to capture client sign off on their device
• No further need to return completed job sheets to the office

You can make big improvements to your Coffee Machine Servicing business by streamlining your processes, automating communication and managing your operation from a single Field Service Management platform.

Start a Free 14 day Trial with Klipboard today.