My Incident Desk, a leading service management platform, has rolled out its latest update to streamline the site visit process and ensure visits are carried out, instead of just ‘called in’ by site or branch managers.
The challenge
Tiaan Janse van Rensburg, commercial director of Cape Town-based Solution House – the creator of Incident Desk – says the company noticed many of its customers starting to use WhatsApp when logging incidents.
“On investigation, we found WhatsApp was being used both for messaging, which is its intended purpose, and to log incidents that don’t require follow-up and needed to be quick and easy. So, in a way, it was understandable,” Janse van Rensburg says.
“However, on further investigation, we found that the single biggest item being logged by customers was site visits or postings – sometimes making up more than 80% of logged matters. The trouble with that is supervisors could not be sure site visits were in fact carried out,” he continues.
“Almost all services companies use site visits to log, report back and follow up on issues raised by customers. If a supervisor can’t be sure a visit was carried out without checking up on personnel, they can’t be sure of customer satisfaction.”
The solution
Janse van Rensburg says it was clear there had to be a solution to both enforce site visits and make it easier for users to log them.
“We developed an easy-to-use, one-button solution as part of the Incident Desk smartphone app.”
How it works:
- A user clicks on the ‘Site Visit’ button.
- The app checks the user’s location and, using the GPS co-ordinates, places them within a specific customer site.
- The app asks if all is in order with nothing to report. If the user answers 'Yes', the incident will be saved.
- If the user has something to report, they can do so, add text and photos, and save.
- Once saved, the incident will be centralised, routed to the correct controller or manager in real-time and sent to the dashboard.
- The controller or manager can easily run reports and heat maps on site visits and posting.
The benefit
“There is no way to circumvent the function. It is a fool-proof governance process to ensure that a site manager has visited a customer site with an auditable data trail to prove it,” says Janse van Rensburg.
The (near) future
“Next, we plan to expand this easy-to-use function to our scheduled task and planned maintenance module,” he says.
In such a scenario, a manager will load a pre-scheduled site visit, which the user must perform. The user will accept the task and this will be visible to the manager. Once the designated date and time arrives, the user will be notified that they must start the task and it will route them to the location.
If they get within two metres of the location, they will be asked if they want to start the site visit and if all is in order.
“This will be an extension of our current scheduling and tracking environment and it will further simplify our customer environment,” concludes Janse van Rensburg.
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Incident Desk
Incident Desk is owned, managed and supported by Solution House Software. Its software framework, offering rapid development and deployment of geo-located service request solutions and associated smart phone apps, provides solutions for unlimited service requests across multiple installations, mobile device integration and application deployment, dashboard and trending statistical analysis for several global multi-tenanted clients. Developed for the modern, multi-faceted management company, and catering for various industries, the framework is built on open source components and delivered via the cloud. Incubated, designed, crafted and refined in Cape Town over the last ten years, the Incident Desk solution enjoys full support from a team located in Cape Town and London.