One of the biggest issues that service businesses often have is communication. This is an issue when service companies do not fulfill work orders in a timely manner, when they don’t communicate adequately to employees and contractors, and when they don’t communicate internally to improve their processes. To fix this, service businesses need to understand their business model in an out, and holistically evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Communication tends to be a weakness of service companies, and these companies need to evaluate better ways that they can organize their business and increase their communication.

With that in mind, here are the common problems that service businesses face when it comes to communication, as well as some ways they can improve them.

Organizational issues
Service businesses are notoriously difficult to operate. There are a number of moving parts, including assigning work orders, communication with contractors, and assuaging client’s concerns. To do this, you need to create a system to determine who is doing what at what time. To ease the process, this can be done through technology, particularly service dispatch software. This software can help with scheduling and organizational issues, as well as creating assignee flexibility and creating automated email and text notifications. This can help to create a lower sense of confusion among contractors and employees, especially if multiple people are assigned to the same work order or task.

Communication breakdown between clients and contractors
A lack of organization and communication can cause a lot of issues, both with clients and with contractors. On the client-side, service businesses are notorious for not showing up when they say they are going to and delivering shoddy or unfinished work. This can cause a sense of annoyance or mistrust among clients, who may have had their perspective altered by their perception of the service business as a whole. To assuage these needs, it may make sense for you to have a customer service representative on hand to handle these issues as they come in. You can also have a dispatcher or service dispatch software help to improve your scheduling so that you do not run into issues with contractors struggling to make it a to a job site in a timely manner.

For contractors, it is important that you make your service business accountable to their schedules. Using software, you can sync their personal schedules to the assignment border so that you do not assign them to a work order when they have blocked out personal times. Many contractors like to be independent contractors due to the flexibility of the role, so it is important for you to respect that in your scheduling. This all comes down to communication, and making sure that contractors make sure their personal calendars are available to you will help you know which jobs to assign to them and at what time.

In summary
In order to stay organized and make sure their communication is up to par, service businesses need to tackle their organizational issues and up their communication with their clients as well as their contractors. This can be done using service dispatch software, a physical dispatcher, and a customer service representative or team of customer service representatives. Doing so will ensure that you have the support system in place to grow and to complete more work orders than your competition in a more timely manner.