Scheduling and Dispatch for Service Companies
Who goes where, when and with what, seen by the office and the teams at the same time
In many service companies, the schedule lives in one person's head. Requests come by phone, email or WhatsApp, and the dispatcher keeps everything in a notebook or a spreadsheet. When that person is away, everything gets harder.
This page describes what we would look at with a service company before building anything. Nothing on it is built. We publish it so you can see how we think.
Where this work standsExploration only: a direction of travel. Nothing described on this page has been built, demonstrated or deployed.
The problem
Where the time goes
The information exists; it is just spread across phones, messages and people.
- Requests taken by phone and noted on paper or in messages
- The schedule held by a single person
- Technicians called several times a day to find out where to go
- Customers calling to ask when someone will arrive
- Jobs moved from one day to another without everyone finding out
- No clear view of jobs that are open, scheduled and finished
The workflow
The direction we would explore
An illustrative flow, not a built system. Each step would be agreed with the company before anything is designed.
Request recorded
A request arrives by phone, email or form and is recorded once, in one place.
Job scheduled
The dispatcher picks the day and the team, taking area, skills and needed parts into account.
Team informed
The technician sees on their phone where to go, at what time and what to bring.
Customer informed
The customer receives a confirmation and, where useful, a reminder.
Job closed
The job sheet is linked to the appointment, and the job closes when the work does.
Overall view
The office sees open, scheduled and finished jobs without chasing calls.
Illustrative diagram: a request is recorded, the job is scheduled, the team is informed, the customer is informed, the job is closed, and the office sees the status of all jobs.
Areas to explore
What we would look at with a service company
These are the topics we would agree on together. None of them is built, and none is a promise of a result.
Requests and scheduling
- Which channels requests arrive through today
- Who decides which team goes, and on what basis
- How often an appointment is moved
In the field
- What the technician needs to know before setting off
- How arrival and completion are confirmed
- What happens when a part is missing
Office and customer
- What the customer wants to know, and when
- What the office needs to see every morning
- How the appointment links to the job sheet and the invoice
Nothing on this page has been built. It is a list of topics and questions, published as an honest picture of a direction we would explore.
Example data only. Illustrations on this page use example data created for this website. No customer, vessel, employer or personal data appears anywhere on this site.
Honest limits
What it is not
Stated plainly, because it matters more than any description of possibilities.
- Exploration only: nothing has been built, demonstrated, piloted or deployed.
- Not a ready-to-use dispatch system, and not a claim that one exists.
- No integration with other software is promised before we have looked at it together.
- No customer, technician or employer data is used anywhere on this site.
- No savings, response times or results are promised or implied.
Discovery
What we would need to look at with you
Discovery starts with the process, not the technology. These are the first questions we would ask.
- Which request do you lose track of most often, and how does it arrive?
- Who schedules the work today, and how do they decide?
- What information do technicians chase by phone?
- What do customers ask most often when they call?
- Which documents have to exist for a job to be closed and invoiced?
- Which systems already hold the official records, so a new tool can feed them?
How we start
How a project like this would begin
We do not ask you to change anything at the start. We begin with a conversation and one process.
A free 30-minute conversation
You tell us where time is lost in your company. We tell you honestly whether we can help.
A diagnostic session
Half a day with the people who do the work. We follow one process from the first step to the last.
A small pilot with one team
We build for a single team and run it alongside your current process. We go further only if it helps.
Next step
Bring us one process
You do not need a specification or a plan. A description of how the work happens today, and where it costs the most time, is enough to start a conversation.