6 ways to take the stress out of an Unplanned Maintenance job

Unplanned maintenance jobs create unique challenges for Field Service businesses. When your customer calls your team out for a reactive repair they tend to be stressed and concerned about their ability to continue to generate revenue or keep their businesses operating.

This situation does give your business a chance to impress your customer with your calm approach and professionalism, but your team needs to be on their A-game to handle the call and carry out the work.

What is Unplanned Maintenance?

Unplanned Maintenance is a job where the customer’s asset requires immediate attention due to a breakdown or fault. This may also be referred to as reactive jobs or corrective maintenance.

Unplanned Maintenance is outside of the expected plan or schedule of work. These jobs tend to be urgent and pressing by nature. Successful Field Service businesses handle these calls with measured calm and fast response times.

In most instances Unplanned Maintenance is very costly to the customer both in terms of financial outlay for call out charges and potential revenue disruption while the equipment is being repaired. The average manufacturer has to deal with around 800 hours of downtime per year, that’s more than 15 hours a week.

Types of Unplanned Maintenance

Reactive Maintenance

When an asset or piece of equipment breaks down unexpectedly this requires reactive maintenance. This type of Unplanned Maintenance can happen spontaneously and the causes can vary depending on the equipment and type of use but in most cases these are avoidable with regular planned preventative maintenance inspections (PPM).

Corrective Maintenance

When an asset starts to perform at reduced efficiency or slows, it will require corrective maintenance. This type of unplanned maintenance can happen over a period of time and is often seen in machinery with moving parts that require regular inspection or replacement such as fans, seals, valves and filters.

Opportunistic Maintenance

Should there be an unexpected stop in production or usage of a piece of equipment. Either by a forced and planned shutdown of a building or manufacturing line, servicing businesses may wish to carry out Opportunistic Maintenance. These Unplanned Maintenance jobs offer a chance of accessing equipment that would previously be unavailable.

6 ways to take the stress out of an Unplanned Maintenance job

1. Prepare your team for Unplanned Maintenance

To successfully manage reactive or unplanned maintenance jobs, asset breakdowns or faults leading to inoperable machinery, and minimise anxiety from your customer your team has to be ready to take the call. Ensure your customer support or office teams have been fully trained on the way to handle these calls.

In these situations the customer tends to have heightened stress levels so managing their concerns has to be their first priority.

Create a procedure for Unplanned Maintenance

Your business model might be focused around carrying out planned preventative maintenance programmes however, from time to time the unexpected will happen and your team will need to be ready.

Start by training your team on the correct way to gather the details you need:

• Who? The name and contact number of the person they are speaking to
• What? Get a brief description of what’s happened
• Where? The exact location of the asset or machinery with the issue
• When? How long has this been the situation

Once you have those details your team can ease the stress experienced by your customer and reassure them someone will be on the way to handle the Unplanned Maintenance job.

2. Show empathy when handling Unplanned Maintenance calls

Once your team has the basic information from the customer on their situation, it’s time to show empathy and ease their concerns. Empathy is about listening and communicating a shared understanding of their situation. Simply repeating back the details of the situation is a good place to begin, reassuring the customer your team has correctly gathered the information.

Followed by statements such as “I understand this is frustrating for you but it’s ok now, our team will help you”. Your customer will feel they aren’t just speaking to a business or service provider, they are speaking to the solution to their problem.

3. Don’t take it personally

If the situation is particularly stressful for the customer they may react negatively to your team. This is especially true for Unplanned Maintenance call outs when your team might not have the capacity to immediately respond to the request. When people are experiencing stress or they are angry, their patience is thin. That is why it’s important that your team remember to focus on delivering a solution.

Empower them to elevate above a stressful situation and their professionalism and speed of response will be remembered and appreciated.

Tip: Hiring the right attitude

Something to consider when hiring for roles in your customer support or office based teams is their ability to handle difficult people and stressful situations. Everyone reacts differently and can manage different levels of pressure but kindness, empathy and a calm head is what wins on the day.

4. Get complete visibility of your maintenance team’s availability

A flash point in a stress situation such as the emergency call out from an unplanned maintenance job is obscurity or the inability to provide a definitive answer.

“When can you send someone out?”

If you can’t answer that question immediately then you’re not helping the situation and the answer may increase your customer’s stress levels.

Use a Job Scheduling Tool to manage Unplanned Maintenance jobs

Being able to click one button to immediately see when the next engineer should be free to handle the call, where they currently are and what time they can get to the unplanned maintenance job is going to help relieve stress levels.

This is what sets apart Field Service businesses from the best in their markets. It’s easily achievable by using Job Management Software and will greatly improve your service.

5. Don’t waste time

Once you have collected all the details of the job, eased the customer’s stress levels and explained the availability of your field team all that’s missing is to fully inform your engineer. When your field team has a better understanding of the Unplanned Maintenance job you’re sending them on they are more likely to provide a great service and a First Time Fix.

Sending all the details over email or explaining the details over the phone is time consuming and might not be totally accurate, that’s why Field Service businesses use a Job Management Mobile App.

Apps provide answers

By having the ability to collect all the details of the maintenance job and add them to a record of a job on your software, your team simply performs a sync on their mobile app and will have everything they need at their fingertips. Using a Job Management App can save you hours every week.

6. Automate your Unplanned Maintenance job confirmations

Once you’ve successfully managed the incoming call for an Unplanned Maintenance job, your team has gathered all the details they need and passed these over to your field team, you’ve got one last job to tick off and that’s confirming the maintenance job booking.

Modern expectations require modern solutions

The modern customer expects to have greater visibility of their services. That’s not just true for their Maintenance Service provider but all aspects of their life. They use apps to see when parcels will be delivered, pizzas are on the way and taxis are about to arrive.

Poor communication can trigger a negative reaction from your customer. While the unplanned maintenance job is in the process of being completed, you need to avoid further, time consuming inbound calls asking where the engineer is and what time they will arrive?

To provide a truly excellent service you need to meet those expectations and that’s why more Field Service businesses are using Job Management Software to automate these communications.

Remember there’s a person on the other end of the call

Unplanned Maintenance jobs are stressful situations and although you can be better prepared with the right Job Management Software and training for your team. Your customer might not be so well equipped to handle the issue.

Empathy is your best tool in handling the heightened emotions Unplanned Maintenance jobs can create. Having people in your team that can show empathy and quickly defuse what could be a stressful situation is a true asset in your business.

Confidence and calmness is contagious. To achieve this you can’t simply rely on good attitudes and training you have to empower those high performing customer support team members with the tools they need to manage Unplanned Maintenance jobs. When your team has instant access to the customer’s details such as location and asset information and your team’s availability, it reassures them the issue will be managed by your business.

Make every Unplanned Maintenance job an opportunity to impress your customer!