Salesforce for Field Service: Your Handbook to Optimise the Implementation of Salesforce Field Service

For companies that provide field service, the quality of this service is critical to brand advocacy and building repeat business. Field agents work on the frontlines, closely interacting with customers. Thus, their interactions with customers are truly make-or-break moments. 

Customers want quick and convenient ways to contact businesses; they expect experienced service technicians and agents to resolve their issues instantly. To match customer expectations, field service teams need a connected field service strategy - a combination of customer insights, easy work order management, and bridging customer experience gaps if any.

Salesforce Field Service is a holistic solution that makes delivering exceptional customer experiences on the field a breeze. It provides each field service team member (manager, dispatcher, agent) with optimisation tools and powerful insights to resolve customers' issues faster with higher accuracy. Salesforce Field Service unifies the entire field service ecosystem, and it is also mobile-first, which means — 

• dispatchers can prioritise work orders and efficiently manage the crew from anywhere
• mobile workforces get the support to fix customer issues the first time
• contract managers can better manage contracts, maintenance plans, inventory, etc., even remotely

We created this guide so you can optimise the implementation of Salesforce Field Service and get the most out of the solution. It includes explainers, best practices, and tips for you to optimise the implementation of Field Service and make the most of it.

Let’s dive right into it!

Salesforce Field Service connects your workforce, products, partners, and customers on the same platform so you can deliver exceptional on-site service. This dedicated field service management solution brings AI-powered scheduling, resource optimisation, guided safety protocols, van inventory status, knowledge articles, and more on a single platform.

Three main components provide your team with an end-to-end field service management solution. These are:

1. Core Field Service features
2. Scheduling and optimisation from a Managed Pack
3. A mobile app for the mobile workforce that also works offline

Core Features

Enabling Field Service gives you access to a suite of standard objects that you can find in Setup and as tabs in Salesforce. These objects are the core Field Service features and also include work orders and service appointments.

Managed Package

Build on the core features using the Field Service Managed Package which includes:

• A Guided Setup tool that walks you through the steps to creating Field Service records and customising your settings
• A dynamic scheduling console that gives dispatchers and supervisors a bird’s-eye view of all team members and scheduled appointments
• A scheduling optimiser that allocates the right agents to appointments based on worker skill level, travel time, location, and other factors
• Scheduling policies and triggers that help you customise your scheduling model and display preferences

Mobile App

The Field Service mobile app is offline-friendly and available for both iOS and Android users. App users can update work orders, track parts, gather customer signatures, and connect with dispatchers from their mobile devices. Download the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Service Appointment: Object to store an appointment with details of Work Order

Skills: Required skills to perform field tasks

Service Territories: Object to store territories where Field agents are available to work

Work Type: Templates for common field service work, such as cable installations or furnace repairs

Service Resources: Mobile employees who can perform field service work

Operating Hours: Times when field service work can be performed for service territories, service resources, and customer accounts

Product Items: Parts or services that can be requested, required, transferred, and consumed in field service work

Product Requests: Stores all the Requests for a part or parts

Time Sheets: Tools to track the time your field service employees are spending on tasks

Product Requests: Stores all the Requests for a part or parts

Service Report Templates: Templates for customer-facing reports summarising the status of service appointment and work orders

Click here to watch the Field Service Lightning demo.

Salesforce Field Service is designed to deliver speedy and efficient on-site service at scale. It seamlessly integrates with your other Salesforce orgs and third-party systems, like IoT devices, to provide field service teams with accurate, real-time data at their fingertips. 

It has an interactive, easy-to-use interface and offers various useful features. Service agents and admins can set up Salesforce Field Service in minutes and customise it to meet their organisation’s specific needs.

Here’s how you can enable Salesforce Field Service to start using its features:

1. From Setup, enter Field Service Settings in the Quick Find box, then select Field Service Settings.
2. Enable Field Service, and click Save to display more settings.

Customise the dispatcher console to put all the tools and information your team needs in the forefront. You can adjust the console to see specific contents of the appointment list and Gantt from a chosen time frame. You can also customise each section’s layout, create custom actions for dispatchers, and create custom appointment list filters.

Let’s take a closer look at some of these customisations. 

• Customise the dispatcher console to only see appointments that match specific criteria - Dispatchers can view and filter service appointments in the appointment list and in the Gantt chart based on criteria like dates, resources, territories, and custom filters.
• Use field sets - to control which fields appear in different sections of the Field Service dispatcher console. For example, choose which fields appear as columns in the appointment list.
• Create custom actions for the dispatcher console - to put the right actions at your dispatchers’ fingertips. Custom actions can either call an Apex class or open a Visualforce page, and can be run on records in several areas of the dispatcher console. Actions are present in dropdown action lists with icons to keep the dispatcher console de-cluttered.
• Create custom appointment list filters - to control which appointments appear in the dispatcher console service appointment list. Base your filters on service appointment fields and add custom logic. Dispatchers can create private filters or share them with others.
• Create custom appointment icons - to service appointments on the Gantt, map, and appointment list so dispatchers can quickly identify the nature of the appointments. For example, use a custom icon to indicate that an appointment is for a VIP or first-time customer.

Learn how to customise the Field Service mobile app’s screens, actions, and branding settings, and create unique mobile experiences for different user profiles.

• Customise the Field Service mobile app by user profile - Add specific configurations to different user profiles to accommodate the needs of contractors, supervisors, and other app users.
• Customise screens in the Field Service mobile app - Update page and search layouts to control which fields users see in the Field Service mobile app.
• Add a profile tab background image in the Field Service mobile app - Upload your image as a static resource or create a custom attribute to use the static resource on every user’s profile tab.
• Customise push notifications for the Field Service mobile app - Push notifications alert your mobile workforce of upcoming appointments and scheduling changes.
• Track service resource geolocation with the Field Service mobile app - Use geolocation to manage your mobile workforce. You can also exclude certain users from geolocation tracking.
• Set up custom actions in the Field Service mobile app - Configure quick actions, global actions, flows, and app extensions to help your team work more efficiently from the field. Actions are displayed in a predefined order in the action launcher on record pages in the app.
• Appointment Assistant for Field Service Mobile - Appointment Assistant helps you keep track of your customers’ service experience from the moment they contact you to the moment your mobile worker arrives at their doorstep.

Once setup is done, here’s how Salesforce Field Service features can help you deliver the finest on-site service:

One of the biggest challenges field service teams face is keeping track of work orders and scheduled service appointments. This gets harder when service requests come through different channels – like phone, email, chatbots, etc. But with Salesforce Field Service, all on-site service requests flow right into the dispatcher console, giving you a complete view of all the jobs that need to be completed.

To enable connected field service, integrate your work orders with additional information from other areas of your business and CRM solution – including service contracts, accounts, entitlements, reports, etc. This will give your dispatchers a complete view of customer needs to create work orders and schedules accurately.

Other important aspects of connected field service are proactive service and preventative maintenance. When creating work orders, having complete customer and asset data allows dispatchers to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities and any additional maintenance that may be required. This helps increase asset uptime and reduce the number of service requests generated. (Available in Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience).

Often, companies miss out on a wealth of customer feedback that can help them better understand their customer’s needs and monitor their resources’ performance. With service reports incorporated right into the Salesforce Field Service mobile app, field agents can create a summary of the tasks completed and get customers' feedback and signatures then and there. An electronic copy of the same is emailed to the customer for the record. 

Your managers can view these reports to stay on top of field agents’ work quality and extract actionable inputs that can help improve the quality of service delivered over time.

Click here to see how you can create service reports using templates.

Inventory management, when done manually, can lead to errors, fraud, and an insufficient supply of essential parts and tools. So, for any modern company providing field service, inventory management becomes crucial for the continued delivery of timely and quality service. Proper inventory management also ensures customers never find asset parts ‘out of stock’ when needed.  

With Salesforce Field Service, managers and dispatchers get a complete view of your stock and track the consumption of various items. You can manage the repair and return of items sold to customers or supplied to field resources. You can also request specific items to be replenished before stock runs out or transfer products from one field service location to another and track them when in transit. 

Click here to learn more about inventory management with Salesforce Field Service.

Einstein is the in-built Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine that makes Salesforce Field Service smarter and faster. AI plays a significant role in enabling connected field service. It can automate repetitive, manual tasks and help your field service team do what they do, only better.

Note: Einstein works best when coupled with the correct configuration and latest data. Like any AI system, Einstein’s results improve with time.

Here’s how Einstein can help field service actors:

Dispatchers – With schedule optimisation, dispatchers can automatically create the most efficient work schedules with a fraction of the effort required to do it manually. You can set the rules and objectives that drive your team’s scheduling policies – whether it is for a single day, one or more service territories, the entire fleet, or individual resources. This also helps you comply with service-level agreements and reduce costs incurred due to delays, overtime, and no-shows, ultimately improving the quality of service delivered.

But dispatchers can also tweak auto-generated schedules manually when needed, and work orders are automatically assigned to the resources best suited for the job. They can also find the nearest remote workers and identify the best routes for them to reach job sites using Smart Map Overlays that integrate with proprietary or Google Maps. This increases your response times and saves a massive amount of the dispatcher’s time, helping them focus on fine-tuning operations and providing field resources with much-needed support.

Field agents – Remember, we mentioned providing field agents with the correct information to help them increase first-time fix rates? Well, Einstein enhances that capability. In the Salesforce Field Service mobile app, Einstein can automatically deliver the most relevant articles and reports as recommendations right where field agents can find them.

What’s more, Einstein Vision uses image recognition to help field agents identify the correct parts that need to be fixed within images, and even locate them in your inventory. And based on the identified parts, Einstein can automatically prescribe the best steps, so field agents can provide faster, smarter service even in complex cases. Your field agents never have to guess which assets or parts need repair and how they can do it, ensuring the highest levels of professionalism and safety. 

Additionally, Einstein can remotely solve simpler customer issues and take service requests via chatbots that use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to deliver more personalised, human-like interactions. This can help reduce case volumes drastically and divert your field service resources to take care of on-site appointments and on-call remote service assistance.