Email Options and Use Cases for Field Service Businesses

Email represents a quick and effective way to communicate information to your customers. Often, it makes for a much better option than dialing by phone or printing and mailing a letter. Below, we've listed some of the ways to use email to effectively communicate with your customers. 

Email Job Reminders

You can remind your customers of upcoming service appointments via email. Most field service software will have a feature to email reminders for upcoming appointments. This allows customers to confirm their appointments, and if needed, they can communicate back to reschedule. You can even use email templates to avoid typing each reminder email one at a time. Reminders don't have to get super fancy or complex, you can simply include the customer's name and address, and the date and time of service. If you want to go the extra mile, provide additional information on the service your business will provide. 

In the field service software Smart Service, users can set up job reminder email templates quickly, by job type. Right clicking on the body of the email template will display the list of merge fields available. After setting up a template, the office dispatcher can send a list of job reminders by simply tapping a button.

Follow Up Emails

Following up is an important part of the customer service process. Not only can you use a follow up email to let your customers know when the work is completed, but you can also request a customer’s feedback. This lets you find out if the service that they experienced went well or not. In case of a bad experience, you can reach out and offer help. Doing this can often turn things around and make a disgruntled customer a lifelong customer. When you receive positive feedback, send a followup asking those happy customers to write an online review. 

Your business can also use follow up emails to introduce the other products and services that your business offers. For example, after doing a one time landscaping service for a customer, you can mention a recurring lawn fertilizing service. 

Once again, you can set up follow up email templates by job type in Smart Service. When jobs have been completed in Smart Service, the follow up emails get sent automatically. 

Email Invoices

Sending invoices by email will help you get paid quickly. Printing and mailing invoices takes time and postage. Plus, mail sometimes gets delayed or lost. At best, sending by mail takes several days, then you have to wait for the customer to write a check and get that mailed back. With email, an invoice gets sent out instantaneously. And, if you sign up for a payment service, your email can also include a link for your customer to securely submit their payment online. This eliminates the need for someone to take the check and deposit it in the bank, then wait for the check to clear. With all these benefits, email gives you a time-saving option for sending out invoices. 

In Smart Service, users can set email invoices to automatically go out when jobs get completed and posted to QuickBooks. If you use Smart Service payment processing, a payment link will be added to the invoice so that customers can submit payment through a secure, online payment portal. 

Email Service Agreement

If your service business provides service agreements, then emailing service agreements will quickly confirm the agreement after your customers have signed up for one. In Smart Service, contract information gets created as an email template so that it can be emailed when a service agreement has been added for a customer. Different service agreement templates can be created based on service agreement type in Smart Service. Important information such as contract date, expiration date, and contract period will appear in the service agreement email. 

When you create a service agreement invoice from Smart Service, Smart Service automatically creates an email for the service agreement and attaches the service agreement invoice to it. Once again, if you use Smart Service payment processing, a payment link will get inserted into the invoice so that customers can submit payment. 

Conclusion

As you can see, email can improve many processes for your field service business. Setting up your email to work in Smart Service only takes a minute. To learn more about these Smart Service features, request a free Smart Service demo today.