Creating the best pool maintenance route comes with a unique challenge. However, the real trick will involve coming up with the most cost-effective pool maintenance route and still maintain a high level of service to your clients. By following several basic steps and using pool service software from Pool Office Manager, you can improve your teams’ efficiency and ultimately increase your profit margin. Here are four tips on planning efficient service routes.
Use Pool Software to Optimize Service Routes
Pool services software from PoolOfficeManager.com can help companies provide high levels of service. That’s because pool management software ensures workers instantly send back detailed information to the office. Plus, it’s directly updated on the client’s service order; including information like job materials, job status, and before and after chemical readings, time spent, and other special notes for your customer. Using pool software makes your service department much more efficient, provided you focus on planning and organizing projects. Use Google maps to plan routes, and keep full records of pool services done.
Plan In Advance to Minimize Driving Delays
One hindrance to business profitability is the bad fuel economy. Nonetheless, the best way you can fight bad fuel economy is by keeping the vehicles turned off when possible. Plan your usual route to avoid rush hour and congestion as it helps reduce idle time. Picking routes that avoid traffic also helps you reduce the time taken in transit between one job and the next. Again, pool service dispatchers need to come up with routes that avoid traffic, rush hour, school zones, and other debilitating circumstances.
Optimize Pool Technicians’ Abilities
To help achieve greater efficiency, pair up technicians with complementary skills set. Note that it’s best that you assign the most senior techs to handle infinity pools, pools with water-features, etc. Evaluate past data to establish the effectiveness of your teams. Check that the right teams are assigned the right jobs, that means their skills should be up to the task and, when not, provide them with thorough training as well as a good mentor to take them through the job.
Plan Similar Services Together
Planning similar jobs, customers, and services together can greatly reduce the time spent on one customer’s pool. Also, many stops will require special chemicals, tools, or technician skill set. Most pool companies may not have interchangeable equipment/trucks/workers, so it’s cost-effective to allocate specialized technicians to specific customers. In doing so, you will decrease the number of expensive tools needed for specialty work. Plus it helps your best techs practice doing more difficult tasks.
All in all, creating pool service routes takes work, but this will pay off. Having good pool service routes are crucial in reducing the quantity of gas each tech uses each day. As such, optimizing routes ultimately saves you time, allowing you to add more stops onto each tech’s workload, which helps increase profits. Increased predictability and reliability also leads to improved customer satisfaction. The good thing is that pool software will even provide you with the tools necessary to easily allocate an emergency job whenever it arises.
