Proactive Dispatch In Field Service: Exception Management For An Effective Mobile Workforce

In mobile workforce management, there’s a lot focus on the plan. Because you can’t expect your field resources to be more effective than the plan you provided to them. And that makes sense. But planning is an ongoing effort. “The plan” is really only the plan at the start of the day. Because there are exceptions all the time.

When dispatchers don’t handle exceptions properly, all the benefits gained by starting with a good plan are lost. If dispatchers can’t make decisions effectively, then you can’t expect your field technicians to be effective. This is the heart of managing your mobile workforce.

How do your dispatchers usually find exceptions? By manually searching for problems or by field technicians calling with a problem. Typically, a dispatcher is managing 50 field service technicians. Let’s say each technician has 8 work orders. And there are another 100 work orders not yet assigned. Every time there’s a problem to be solved, the dispatcher can’t focus on 50 technicians, 500 work orders, and the organizational structure (e.g., employee type, geography, work type) without losing track of progress in other areas.

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