Salesforce Field Service Implementation Guide

Salesforce field service implementation guide is not an action guide. It’s instead a set of recommendations that I came across over the years with Salesforce. Probably if you are reading this, you are looking towards implementing field service in your business. Whatever is what you do, most likely you have agents, and you need a tool to control them and help them do better what they currently do.

I remember my conversation with one fire equipment company that is doing installation and maintenance of fire alarms. These guys are doing a great job in improving fire security across the country. Still, the company was missing tools to have a better overview of what the agents were doing. We helped them implement Salesforce maps and field service tools. After we finished the project, I’ve asked the founder if their performance had improved. He said, “It’s hard to tell exact numbers because we were not tracking our performance before, but I can say for sure that every technician is doing one address a day more. We used to have four addresses per day; now we do five.” [this is how they call every site they work on].

After doing multiple projects with salesforce field service, I thought it would be helpful To share some basic knowledge. So I decided to produce this salesforce field service implementation guide. Enjoy and don’t forget – you can always hire an experienced consultant and save yourself plenty of time (and money).

What is Salesforce field service?

Salesforce field service is an add-on to salesforce Service Cloud product. It extends your standard objects and fields in Service Cloud. It adds mobile app functions to the currently SFDC edition you already have. Salesforce field service helps your employees and service agents to

• Plan field works
• Plan routes
• Perform on-site works
• Get more insights into what’s happening in the fields
• Work offline
• Gain access to all contacts and accounts on the go

And many more.

What are the costs of Salesforce Fields Service?

If you were reading my previous posts, you have noticed I never jump into the details before getting an overview of the products. This is the case with this salesforce field service implementation guide. Before we jump into steps to implement SFDC Fields Service. I want to share what’s available in the plan and what plans (editions or add-ons, how Salesforce calls them) are available with the platform.

Currently, Salesforce has five editions of Field Service: Dispatcher, Technician, Contractor, Contractor Plus, and Fields Service Plus. All four are used for different purposes, and most likely, you will buy additional licenses for different employees. But let me, deep-dive, into every one of these offerings.

Please note: Salesforce Field Service is only available with Salesforce Service Cloud Enterprise and Ultimate editions. It is not available with Essentials and Professional editions.

Fields Service Dispatcher

Dispatcher license in SFDC fields service is used for…dispatcher. Employees who plan your field works and coordinate your on-site employee. The license cost starts at $150 per employee (€150 in Europe) and allows to:

• Schedule resources (on-site employees)
• Gain access to the dispatcher console
• Customizable dashboards and reports

An all other feature Salesforce Field Service has to offer. I would say this is one of the most advanced licenses (I’ll discuss the most advanced license later). With a dispatcher license, you can take control over all your field agents and coordinate them.

I love the dispatcher license because it has access to the dispatcher console, which allows you to use multiple windows without clicking the control button on the keyboard. I don’t know how they managed to do this, but there’s a magic behind every SFDC console app. It works fast.

Fields Service Technician

Technician license is used for on-site employees. Think of a technician who is inspecting roofs. This license will enable these employees to take pictures, fill in a checklist, and do on-site whatever they have to do. And did I mention, there is an option to use the app offline. Even if you are on a remote building site where the internet was not yet invented, a salesforce technician license will empower your employees to excel in front of your customers. The cost of the license starts at $150 per employee (or €150 if you are in Europe)

Technician license includes:

• Salesforce field service mobile app
• Self-scheduling function
• Ability to be scheduled by another employee
• Customizable dashboards and reports
• Sequential feature selection (in plain English – guided interface or step-by-step guides)

Plus all other features SFDC field service has to offer.

Fields Service Contractor

This edition of salesforce field service allows you to grant access to your service cloud for external contractors. In other words, it will enable you to provide access to your partners, who do the job for your customers. That way, you ensure that customers get similar or the same experience as they would do with your employees. Its pricing starts at $50 per employee (or €50 per employee if you are in Europe)

Salesforce field service implementation guide is not an action guide. It’s instead a set of recommendations that I came across over the years with Salesforce. Probably if you are reading this, you are looking towards implementing field service in your business. Whatever is what you do, most likely you have agents, and you need a tool to control them and help them do better what they currently do.

Fields Service Contractor Plus

Field Service contractor Plus is an extended version of the Fields Service Contractor license and enables your partner to upsell or cross-sell the products. Pricing starts at $75 per employee (€75 in Europe). It gives access to the dispatcher console, so your partner can plan their employee field service works.

Fields Service Plus

Field Service Plus is worth mentioning because you will have to buy at least one of these licenses. It gives every single feature Field service has to offer. We use these types of licenses for our administrators to check functionality and save some time so they don’t have to switch between users with different licenses. Alternatively, this license is used by power users, who help other system users.

First steps in field service from Salesforce

Before you read this salesforce field service implementation guide, mind hiring a professional. If you are an experienced user, that’s fine. Still, the field service module from Salesforce is a very task-specific app, and you will save yourself plenty of time. But let me outline what the steps of implementing fields Service from Salesforce are.

Understand your field service setup

It might seem obvious, but before you get involved in field service implementation, it is good to understand your current user setup.

• How many dispatchers you have
• How many field agents do you have
• What about partners and partner managers will be using an app.

After you study how many field agents and dispatchers you have, it is good to understand how their roles are split. In many cases, field agents have various skills, and you want these skills to be visible in the system. Consider describing their skills like if you were to explain this to a kid. I always recommend doing this to my customers because otherwise, you become dependent on your dispatchers. The whole point of having a field service app is reducing your dependency on one single dispatcher and sharing knowledge about your workforce and its availability with your entire organization (and partners)

Study your procedures

The next step is to study your processes. I have noticed, companies tend to self-organize themselves into teams. Even if couples have similar competence, they still can have different business processes. I recommend studying the best practices of groups who show the best performance across your organization and producing a document that describes the process.

Process description will help you understand which practices will be the only source of truth for your future field service app. Remember – when you build a software solution for your company, you have to be very specific about your processes and procedures. It gives you better visibility and the ability to track your performance.

Build your solution

When you have studied how your field operations work, it’s time to build your solution. You will have to go through multiple-step steps to set up the Salesforce Field Service app for your company’s needs. You will take your process description as a starting point and improve it as you learn more about the field service app.

Work orders

You will have to start with work orders. Work orders help you track things to be done with the customer. It’s like tasks, but it’s more than just tasks. They include information about customer inquiry or the information about planned works, site address, and more. Work orders have much knowledge and will be used in your future reports.

They can also track costs of the works you have to make for the customer, so make sure you set them up.

In other words, work orders are the primary object you will be using for your field service. Study available options, like work order line items, child work order, and service appointments to get up and dash.

Shifts

If you are reading till now, I believe I don’t have to explain to you what work shifts are. In salesforce field service, you will have to set up your work shifts. You should know that you can create flexible work shifts, restrict working time by area, and allow emergency shifts for unplanned and urgent works.

Service appointments

Once you are done with the previous two, you will have to set up your services appointments. Salesforce has powerful tools to group, merge and fix overlapping service appointments. What I love most about them is that they allow you to optimize your employee routes. In my opinion, service appointments bring the most significant value in terms of time optimization across whole field service products from Salesforce.

Schedule

Once you are done with previous tasks, set up your schedules, and you are good to go. Programs help you define either group or each separate employee working schedules. So every time you plan an appointment, you have an overview of who is available within the select timeframe. Assigning a service agent was never easier with Schedules.

Mobile app

The last thing you will have to do is set up your mobile app. The whole point of having a field service app from Salesforce is using mobile devices on sight to register tasks and go through the checklists. Once you are done setting you your mobile app, you are good to go and roll out your app to your employees.

Rollout

The rollout is the essential part of the field service from Salesforce. From my experience, it is also the most complicated part. The key challenge with salesforce Rollout is user onboarding. In the last couple of years, we have tried to

• Create video tutorials
• Make on-site training sessions
• Produce myTrailhead courses

You know what? The most efficient approach appears to be finding someone from the team who gets involved. If someone from the field service team becomes a fan of the app, all other guys are getting onboarded faster. Find someone from your team who does better with tech and find a way to make him love the app. That’s the shortest and cheapest way of rolling out your solution.

Improve

Once you are done with the initial solution, you are good to go with the improvement of the app. My only recommendation is to not rush with modification before you roll out. Sometimes process owners fall in love with salesforce capabilities and tend to start improving an app much earlier than necessary.

Expand

Once you feel that an app is ready to be expanded to other company branches, go ahead and scale it. I would recommend getting you field service guys who are most successful with the app onboard, which will save you tons of time.

Bottom line

Hire a consultant. This is my best advice for this salesforce field service implementation guide. Not because I’m a consultant myself, but because field service implementation is connected to multiple challenges. One of them is onboarding field service agents. These guys are not IT people, and they’ll need much more support than office workers would need. A professional consultant who has worked with field services in the past will have an easier time building an app suitable for field service workers than any manager. That’s my personal experience, and it’s up to you to take this advice or not.

Thank you for reading this. I would highly appreciate it if you could share this post to your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn; it helps build this blog.

Anyway, have a great day/night, whatever it is now when you are reading this.

Jeff.