Optimizing Field Operations: Features & Benefits of Salesforce Field Service Lightning

In a digital landscape where customer satisfaction reigns supreme and streamlined operations are the backbone of success, Salesforce Field Service Lightning emerges as the game-changer.

According to research in North America, 52% of organizations rely on manual methods for field service. This represents a significant challenge, as it involves navigating the balance of providing efficient service while ensuring that customers not only receive solutions timely but also ensure after-sales customer satisfaction.

Is your field service operation stuck in the slow lane? It’s time to shift gears by Implementing Salesforce Field Service Lightning (FSL) – a powerful solution that revamps your service game from the ground up.

This blog will deep dive into what is FSL in Salesforce, its features, benefits, and so on.

What is Salesforce Field Service Lightning?

Salesforce Field Service Lightning (now known as Field Service) is a power-packed platform that provides robust, customizable, and mobile-friendly field services within Salesforce. This tool is an integrated part of Salesforce Service Cloud that helps you track your team in real time, manage orders, and perform tasks such as repair and installation more effectively.

From scheduling to dispatching and tracking to reporting, FSL in Salesforce offers comprehensive solutions. It can also easily integrate with Salesforce products such as Salesforce Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, and IoT Cloud to streamline customer services.

Why Field Service Lightning (FSL)?

Businesses utilizing traditional ways for field service management are often overwhelmed to provide on-time field services to their customers. However, running field service management businesses brings various challenges, including delivering on-time customer service. 

If your business faces similar challenges like inefficient dispatching and scheduling, tracking technician performance, poor communication with users, and lack of data-driven decisions, choosing Field Service Lightning in Salesforce can be valuable to solve all the problems. Furthermore, companies were unsure about customer satisfaction when installation and repair tasks were managed manually via phone calls and spreadsheets. Salesforce FSL eliminates the question of efficiency with real-time tracking of field technicians.

7 Key Features of Salesforce Field Service Lightning

Salesforce FSL is a powerful software; here are the key features of Field Service Lightning. 

1. Trusted AI for Increased Efficiency

Field Service with AI and automation helps organizations balance customer demands and drive more productivity. Also, FSL can prioritize jobs based on customer issues and technical skills to solve the prior queries earlier with the Trusted AI feature. This will even help to suggest predictive maintenance for customers to minimize equipment downtime while providing personalized and quick customer support.

2. Mobile App Accessibility

Field Service Lightning in Salesforce is also available as a mobile app for both iOS and Android. It is designed to tailor today’s workforce demands with an “Offline-first” feature that allows front-line ones to save changes even without wifi. With the app’s highly customizable features, it can align with any unique business requirements. Businesses can provide timely assistance with its in-built app Slack for seamless connectivity. It is designed with a user-friendly interface ensuring easy collaboration while keeping your team connected. 

3. Scheduling and Dispatch Management

The FSL feature allows businesses to boost productivity with a dispatch console that helps create and update resources (absent or available) directly into the console. It will enable to identify the skilled candidate for the appointment query and organize their availability.

FSL in Salesforce provides an AI assistant, Agentforce, that handles workflow for businesses to streamline scheduling. Also, dispatchers can use natural conversation to find appointments that require attention and take action promptly with a single-screen view. It provides scheduling and optimization that align priorities and limitations, ensuring minimizes travel time, and efficient resource allocation. 

4. Manage Work and Assets

FSL enables you to shift from reactive to proactive service or approach to anticipate customer requirements before they arise. This allows for monitoring service outcomes and preparing preventive maintenance plans based on different criteria such as asset condition and use. It will allow you to anticipate asset downtime and upcoming service needs with the AI and data cloud. Also, the FSL AI training model can identify common issues from the service history of similar products. With this feature, businesses can increase customer satisfaction while driving higher service margins. 

5. Work Order Management

Salesforce’s sixth edition state of service report discovers, “74% of mobile workers say that customers expectations are higher than before. This indicates field service agents need better work order management to provide better customer service. Thus, Salesforce FSL streamlines the Work Order Management process by simplifying the assigning, creating, and execution of work orders. It helps by seamlessly organizing and handling various orders at a time, ensuring they are addressed promptly. This feature empowers business field service agents to stay agile by removing manual paperwork.

6. Field Service Intelligence

Field Service Intelligence provides valuable insights from identifying trends across work orders, assets, service appointments, and service resources. Its access to a dashboard that displays centralized service data makes operational decisions easier. This provides the right information that ensures teams make quick and smart decisions to improve field services. 

Field Service Intelligence provides pre-built analytic dashboards to gain visibility into technician utilization, team availability, and much more. It provides real-time data on resources and travel time to optimize and refine scheduling policy. Its work capacity feature aligns to respond to emergencies and urgent queries by controlling service resource capacity. Also, businesses can create limitations to optimize and manage the workforce for criteria such as work type, timeframe, and location. Field Service provides a dashboard feature of Operations Home to optimize back-office operations to track critical business metrics in a unified manner. 

7. Visual Remote Assistant

Visual Remote Assistant helps businesses increase the first-time fix rate with its real-time video stream from anywhere (no download required). This feature enables customers who want immediate solutions without on-site technician visits, to connect with experts. Specialists can streamline issue resolution by providing on-screen solutions without compromising customer satisfaction. 

It also provides an appointment assistant feature, so customers can automatically schedule appointments and receive real-time updates. It even provide updates of technicians visits, increasing customer satisfaction with such self-service features. 

These are the key features of Field Service Lightning (FSL) that businesses can utilize to streamline operations and drive customer satisfaction.

Who Uses FSL?

Salesforce Field Service Lightning is for businesses running on field services such as managing moving parts. These companies get the tools required for managing field service mobile workforce, orders, dispatching, scheduling, and many more.  Here is the list of Salesforce field service lightning users:

1. Admin and Agents

A Salesforce admin uses Field Service to integrate its features with the platform. The admin also sets up user permissions as required for businesses. It can be valuable for businesses to hire a Salesforce admin to ensure smooth integration. Apart from this, Agents can handle work orders and schedule appointments using actions. 

2. Dispatchers 

Dispatchers are users who create and manage appointments. They then assign mobile workers based on their routing, skills, job priority, etc. Field Service Lightning streamlines dispatcher work by combining all mobile worker lists, availability, and job priority. 

3. Mobile Workers (Technicians)

Mobile workers receive work orders and service appointments directly from respective dispatchers or agents. They then can conduct site visits and update job progress on their own by using the mobile app of Field Service or Salesforce. 

4. Users (Self-Service)

Self-service is for customers or users of business services. Enterprises or companies can grant self-service access to consumers so they can schedule and manage service appointments on their own. Also, it can be completed through Experience Builder sites. 

Benefits of Field Service Lightning for Businesses

Salesforce Field Service Lightning is a power-packed software that ensures businesses get a wide range of benefits, including:

1. Centralize Access

FSL in Salesforce connects the field workforce on a single platform and offers centralized access to field technicians’ customer information, equipment details, and job requirements. Also, this enables service managers to get mobile workers (technician) information including schedules, skill sets, etc. This allows enterprises to automate complex processes from technician scheduling to work order management and job scheduling. 

2. Real-time Visibility 

Salesforce FSL allows businesses to track and manage field operations in real-time. It provides managers with a view to check technicians’ real-time availability and track service progress. Also, FSL sends automatic notifications to keep teams (back-office and technicians) informed while sending alerts for high-priority tasks. Overall, real-time visibility allows businesses to respond to changing events in a timely and make informed decisions.  

3. AI-Powered Efficiency

Field Service Lightning in Salesforce leverages AI to help businesses by streamlining operations, and customer service, increasing efficiency, and boosting productivity. Field Service Mobile powered by Einstein GPT enables customers to resolve common issues with self-service tools. Also, Einstien GPT enhances these tools’ capabilities and suggests knowledge articles and step-by-step guides to resolve customer technical issues.

4. Improve Customer Service

FSL automatically assigns service requests to the most suitable technician based on job requirements, availability, skills, and locality. It minimizes the customer wait time while improving customer satisfaction. It also allows customers to see their service request status and know when their technician is on the way. Apart from this, it streamlines communication between dispatchers, technicians, and customers, leading to better issue resolution and customer updates. 

5. Mobile Ready Customer Information

The Salesforce FSL app is available for mobile, enabling businesses to provide the mobile workforce to perform tasks. Also, this app ensures users update their appointment status even without an internet/ wifi connection. From updating work orders to collecting customer signatures and connecting with dispatchers to rescheduling appointments, FSL has specifically designed an offline-first approach for the mobile workforce. 

These are the main benefits of Salesforce Field Service Lightning businesses can get by leveraging the tool effectively.

Conclusion

Now that you understand how Salesforce Field Service Lightning can help businesses with its power-packed features. It can be valuable to implement this tool carefully to improve your mobile workforce capabilities. 

If you are unsure about leveraging the power of FSL in Salesforce, we at Cyntexa provide Salesforce consulting services where our experts hold expertise to streamline the implementation process. This will ensure you get high accuracy and results while delivering customer satisfaction services.