5 Proven Ways to Increase Your Team’s First-Time Fix Rate
1. Improve Inventory and Spare Parts Management
In today’s environment, competition is intense. So, if another company proves they can show up with all the right parts, you may miss out on a client’s business. Gone are those days when engineers would say they ‘need to order in a new part’ and let the customer wait another week. Getting the right parts for the job makes a huge difference.
2. Make Sure of Access to a Job
When your technician can’t gain access to a site it’s frustrating for everyone. Not only that, it’s a very expensive cost to your business. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence. Of course, not being able to complete the job at the first site visit will impact your first-time fix rate.
3. Assign Your Best Skilled Workers
Ideally, all your field staff would carry the necessary skills to fix any job. In practice, however, things are never that simple. When more experienced technicians are in demand, your FTFR will be at risk when less experienced engineers get left to attend first-time jobs.
4. Improve Your Job Planning Process
Leaving technicians without enough time to complete a job can reduce your FTFR. If there isn’t enough time or the site’s about to close, there’s a good chance they’ll need to return to finish the job another day. Remember, to qualify your FTFR, you need to ensure there are no follow-up jobs or call-backs.
5. Improve Communication Between Office and Field Staff
Inaccurate or improper diagnosis of issues can lead to many of the problems outlined above. Without a clear and precise diagnosis of issues, workers may have to return to the site. So, getting the diagnosis right the first time will save you time, money, and a lot of unnecessary frustration from customers.
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What Type of Field Jobs Do You Do?
How to Calculate and Measure Your First-time Fix Rate
To calculate a first-time fix rate and get an accurate picture of how your field staff are performing, simply divide the total number of jobs fixed on the first visit by the total number of jobs performed. Once done, you’ll have your team’s FTFR.
Once you’ve worked out the percentage of your first-time fixes, you can perform this calculation for individual tasks that have been assigned to technicians, engineers, and even office-based staff. This ensures teams are hitting targets and meeting their KPIs. If you notice one of your mobile workers with a poor FTFR compared to other workers, there could be an opportunity to provide individual training.
Why a High First-Time Fix Rate Is a KPI Among Field Managers
Your first-time fix rate has a significant bearing on the success of your organisation and workforce optimisation. A recent study showed that companies with an FTFR of over 70% achieved customer retention rates of 86%.
Where customer retention links to customer satisfaction, knowing your CSAT score is important too. Short for ‘Customer Satisfaction’, CSAT analyses how well your customers view your performance. So, it’s of high importance that you deploy regular surveys to gain your client’s feedback. With this, you can create your CSAT score and be more confident to assess the true impact of FTFR.
What’s more, good levels of customer satisfaction will impact your overall bottom line. For example, best-in-class field service providers that hit 90% greater CSAT scores were able to increase their revenue margins by 30%.
What Field Service Leaders Say About First-Time Fix Rate
The field service leaders who track first-time fix rate most closely don’t treat it as a number to chase in isolation. Two perspectives from the Comparesoft Field Service Management podcast show why, and they don’t entirely agree.
Get It Right, Not Just Done
For Geraint Evans, Field Service Engineering Manager at B. Braun, first-time fix is decisive because his engineers service active medical devices such as dialysis and infusion equipment. He describes constantly training for a first-time fix and ranks it, alongside uptime, as the KPI that matters most in a compliance-driven environment.
But he’s clear that a first-time fix should never mean a rushed one. A device goes back into use only once the team is completely sure it’s right, not simply to close the job.
At one NHS trust, that discipline, backed by preventative maintenance and scheduling, helps his team keep 95% or more of roughly 2,700 devices available. Get the right part and the right engineer to site, he notes, and the first-time fix rate rises as a result.
The Metric That Can Backfire
Jean-Claude Jobard, who led field service at Tetra Pak for 24 years, offers a deliberate counterpoint. He agrees first-time fix is popular, but warns it can quietly reward the wrong behaviour.
To guarantee a fix on the first visit, you might make a customer wait two or three days for the top expert to become available. He’d often rather send an available engineer sooner, backed by remote support, and measure time to restore instead.
He also argues that first-time fix is an internally focused metric, and that customer-outcome measures, such as improving a client’s overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) or reducing their total cost of ownership (TCO), often say more about the value service actually delivers.
Direct Workplace Benefits of High FTFR
While you should expect to see an increase in customer loyalty as a result of high first-time fix percentages, you can also expect other benefits such as:
Increased Productivity
Setting FTFR as a KPI in your performance reviews will help get more done in less time. By ensuring queries get resolved the first time around, workers will gain more time to complete further tasks. When technicians are freed up to focus on first-time visits and not repeat visits, you’ll improve your response time on future service requests.
Reduced Costs and Increased Profitability
With higher FTFR rates come fewer site visits. This means wasting less time and fewer resources on the cost of expensive repeat visits. Also, by boosting customer retention rates, first-time fix rates will reduce the level of investment you make to acquire new customers.
Improved Efficiencies
By achieving high FTFR scores, you demonstrate to clients how much you care about delivering high-quality service. Increased efficiencies in your service will also lead to better CSAT scores. This improves customer retention and reduces the risk of losing clients.
How Field Service Management Software Ensures More First-Time Fixes
While there’s no single cure to resolve every risk that can damage your first-time fix rate, there are steps you can take to help improve it. This is achieved through the use of a digital service management system. Field Service Management Software provides the tools and capabilities to:
Deliver Robust Planning Methods
Using data to review service history and client information will help you to better forecast future needs. Also, consider how IoT monitoring could benefit your operation and fast-track improvements to your FTFR.
Drive Collaboration Between Teams
Your technicians and managers must be able to communicate with ease. Let them access technology that enables real-time communication and collaboration. Including working from a shared dashboard where job, customer, and inventory data is visible to all.
Improve Inventory Planning
Having access to inventory numbers in real-time will help field staff to streamline their operations and make better assessments of what’s needed to complete a job. If they know a spare part is available, they have a better chance of completing a job at the first time of asking.
Driving customer loyalty relies on high levels of first-time fix rates. FTFR’s also work to improve productivity and support your field service engineers to deliver exceptional results. Using the right Field Management Software can give you the platform you need to reduce any risk to your FTFR and drive improvements.