Running a field service business is a bit like keeping a machine running smoothly—every cog needs to function perfectly. When one part of the system stalls, whether it’s a technician arriving late or lacking the right parts, the whole operation grinds to a halt. And in field service, that can mean lost revenue, frustrated customers, and a whole lot of wasted time.
So how do you prevent that? The answer is data. Field service companies are sitting on a goldmine of valuable data, but the trick is turning those numbers into actions that improve efficiency, boost customer satisfaction, and drive profits.
In this blog post, we’ll show you the top 10 field service metrics you need to track—and, more importantly, how to make them actionable so they don’t just collect dust in your reports.
Actionable Field Service Metrics You Need to Track
1. First-Time Fix Rate (FTFR)
If there’s one metric that’s guaranteed to give you a headache if it’s low, it’s this one. The first-time fix rate measures how often your technicians resolve an issue on the first visit. If your rate is low, you’re doubling (or tripling!) your costs with repeat visits. And your customers? They’re not thrilled either.
Example: Let’s say your first-time fix rate is 60%. That means for every 100 jobs, you’re sending a tech back to 40 of them. Ouch. By focusing on proper technician training and ensuring the right parts are always available, you can bump that number up, save money, and make your customers love you a little more.
Actionable Steps:
- Ensure proper parts and tools: Equip your techs with better parts inventory visibility and mobile tools that show real-time part availability.
- Additional training: Offer specialized training for technicians to tackle complex or frequently repeated issues.
- Root cause analysis: Regularly analyze failed first-time fixes to identify patterns and take preventative measures.
2. Technician Utilization Rate
This metric tells you how much time your technicians spend on the clock doing actual billable work. If your techs are spending more time driving or wrestling with paperwork than fixing things, you’ve got a problem.
Example: Picture this: your technicians are only 60% utilized. That means almost half their time is spent not making you money. Fixing this might be as simple as optimizing their schedules and routes, ensuring they spend more time fixing and less time sitting in traffic.
Actionable Steps:
- Route optimization: Invest in field service management software that automatically calculates the best routes to reduce travel time.
- Digital tools: Minimize admin tasks by using digital forms, mobile apps, and real-time job reporting.
- Job clustering: Schedule jobs based on location to reduce time spent driving and increase time spent on billable work.
3. Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
How fast can your team solve problems? The mean time to repair tells you how long it takes your technicians to fix an issue once they’re on-site. The faster the fix, the happier the customer, and the less downtime they experience.
Example: Imagine your MTTR is two hours, but industry standards hover around one hour. What’s slowing your team down? Do they need more training, better tools, or faster access to spare parts? Solving this could mean the difference between happy customers and clients jumping ship to your competition.
Actionable Steps:
- Predictive maintenance: Use IoT sensors or historical data to anticipate issues before they arise and prepare technicians accordingly.
- Inventory management: Ensure quick access to parts by implementing mobile warehouses or strategic stocking.
- Task efficiency: Evaluate and refine processes for diagnosing and repairing issues to reduce time on-site.
4. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
If your customers aren’t happy, nothing else matters. The CSAT score is a direct reflection of how your customers feel after interacting with your technicians.
Example: A low CSAT score might mean your techs are running late, not fixing issues on the first visit, or just having a bad day. Improving this score might involve investing in customer service training or tightening up your scheduling processes to make sure customers aren’t waiting around all day.
Actionable Steps:
- Customer feedback: Implement post-service surveys to get immediate feedback from customers on their experience.
- Improve technician communication: Train technicians on customer service and communication to set clear expectations during visits.
- Optimize scheduling: Reduce wait times by improving your scheduling process and keeping customers updated on arrival times.
5. Travel Time
Travel time is the silent killer of productivity. The more time your techs spend in transit, the less time they spend fixing things. Reducing travel time is key to increasing the number of jobs your team can handle each day.
Example: If your travel time is eating up 30% of your technicians' day, you’re essentially burning money. Better route optimization or clustering jobs geographically can cut travel time in half, letting your techs do more billable work and your bottom line breathe easier.
Actionable Steps:
- Job clustering: Schedule jobs in the same area back-to-back to reduce travel time.
- Advanced routing: Implement field service management software that dynamically adjusts routes based on traffic and technician location.
- Vehicle tracking: Use GPS tracking to monitor and optimize technician travel patterns.
6. Jobs Per Day
How many jobs can your technicians complete in a single day? The higher the number, the more efficient your operations—and the more revenue you generate.
Example: If each tech is handling only 4 jobs per day, you might be scheduling inefficiently. By clustering nearby jobs or reducing job complexity, you could boost that to 6 or more, resulting in increased daily revenue.
Actionable Steps:
- Reduce job complexity: Standardize job procedures and reduce unnecessary steps to increase job completion rates.
- Automate admin work: Free up technician time by digitizing paperwork and admin tasks.
- Assign jobs by skill: Ensure jobs are assigned based on the technician’s expertise, reducing the time it takes to complete each job.
7. Call Volume
Tracking the number of service requests (or calls) coming in over time can help you gauge demand and plan your resources accordingly. It’s also a useful metric for spotting trends in peak times, whether that’s due to seasonality or marketing efforts.
Example: If your call volume spikes during certain months, you’ll need to adjust staffing levels accordingly. You might automate simple service calls to free up your team for more complex tasks during busy periods.
Actionable Steps:
- Automate scheduling: Use a call management system that routes service requests directly to available technicians.
- Forecast staffing needs: Monitor historical call volume data to predict when additional technicians may be needed.
- Use self-service tools: Provide self-service options for customers to resolve minor issues, reducing the burden on your service team.
8. Service Contract Compliance
Service contract compliance measures how well your team is adhering to the promises made in service agreements, especially in areas like response times or issue resolution within guaranteed timeframes.
Example: If your team is missing service-level agreement (SLA) deadlines, it’s a sign that something’s off in your scheduling or job prioritization. Tighten up your scheduling and ensure technicians are meeting contract obligations to avoid penalties and improve customer trust.
Actionable Steps:
- Monitor SLAs: Set automated alerts to notify your team when a job is nearing its deadline or falling out of compliance.
- Proactive scheduling: Review upcoming SLAs and prioritize jobs accordingly to avoid missed deadlines.
- Regular audits: Conduct periodic compliance audits to ensure your team is hitting contract KPIs and resolving issues in time.
9. Contract Attach Rate
This measures how often a technician’s visit results in a customer signing a new contract or renewing an existing one. A high attach rate means your technicians are effectively upselling additional services during their visits.
Example: If your attach rate is low, you might need to train your technicians on how to identify upselling opportunities, like offering maintenance contracts during routine visits.
Actionable Steps:
- Upselling training: Train technicians to recognize and communicate the value of additional services during customer visits.
- Offer incentives: Encourage contract renewals or upgrades by offering limited-time discounts or added benefits.
- Real-time contract data: Equip technicians with mobile access to customer contract details so they can make informed offers on-site.
10. Repeat Visit Rate
A high repeat visit rate is usually bad news. It means your techs weren’t able to resolve the issue the first time, forcing another visit. This frustrates customers and hits your bottom line with extra costs.
Example: If 20% of your jobs require repeat visits, that’s a huge efficiency problem. By improving technician preparation or giving them real-time access to customer data, you can slash the repeat visit rate and save on operational costs.
Actionable Steps:
- Post-job reviews: Conduct reviews after each repeat visit to understand what went wrong and how to prevent future repeat visits.
- Prepare techs better: Provide techs with detailed customer and job history data before they arrive on-site to increase the chances of solving the issue on the first visit.
- Quality checks: Introduce a quality assurance process to ensure jobs are completed to a high standard before closing them out.
Data: More Than Just Numbers
Here’s the truth: field service management is as much about strategy as it is about boots-on-the-ground repairs. Collecting data is a no-brainer, but data without action is like a map without directions—it’s interesting to look at, but it won’t get you anywhere. The real magic happens when you take those metrics and turn them into insights that drive real change.
Let’s break it down. Say your technician utilization rate is sitting at 55%. That’s a lot of downtime. But why? Are your technicians getting stuck in traffic, or are they spending hours filling out paperwork after each job? By digging into the data, you might find that a simple change—like using a mobile app for real-time job updates—could boost that rate by 10-15%, giving you a more productive team and a fatter bottom line.
And don’t forget about your first-time fix rate. If your technicians are heading back to the same jobs over and over again because they don’t have the right parts or aren’t trained for the specific issue, you’re throwing money away. By analyzing the data, you can spot patterns and fix the root cause, whether it’s improving inventory management or offering additional training to your techs.
Real-World Example: How James CRAFT & Son Inc. Boosted Efficiency by Tracking Key Metrics
James CRAFT & Son Inc., a family-owned mechanical and HVAC contractor, was dealing with a common problem—too much paperwork. Their technicians had to fill out paper work orders, drive them back to the office, and wait for data entry to process everything. This led to lost documents, delays in billing, and way too much time spent on non-billable tasks. It was clear they needed to step up their game to improve their key metrics like technician utilization and first-time fix rate.
The fix? They switched to FieldConnect’s FieldAccess mobile work order system, and the results were immediate:
- Technician Utilization Rate went up as technicians stopped wasting time on paperwork. Everything could be done on their mobile devices—clocking in, accessing job details, and submitting reports.
- First-Time Fix Rate improved, too. Now, techs had real-time access to customer history, job notes, and parts inventory, so they arrived on-site fully prepared.
- Travel Time got slashed thanks to better route planning and fewer back-and-forth calls with dispatch.
The result? Faster invoicing, fewer errors, and a lot less frustration for both techs and customers. By focusing on these key metrics, James CRAFT & Son Inc. turned their field service operations into a smooth-running machine.
Here's a link to the full case study: James CRAFT & Son Inc. case study
10 Steps to Make Your Field Service Metrics Actionable
Alright, you’ve got your data and you’ve got your metrics. Now what? Let’s walk through the steps to turn those numbers into action.
1. Data Collection
First things first: you need accurate data. And that means no guessing. Use field service management software to automatically track everything from first-time fix rates to travel times and technician utilization. Manual data collection is like trying to fix an engine without any tools—slow and error-prone. Digital tools make sure your data is accurate and available in real-time.
2. Data Analysis
This is where the magic happens. Analyzing your data helps you see where things are breaking down. Are your travel times too long? Are your jobs per day lower than industry benchmarks? Maybe your CSAT scores are dipping. Look for patterns that tell a bigger story about what’s working and what’s not.
3. Identify Opportunities for Improvement
Now that you’ve crunched the numbers, it’s time to spot opportunities. Is your technician utilization rate lower than expected? Is your contract attach rate low? These are areas where small adjustments—like improved scheduling or better customer interactions—could lead to big gains.
4. Prioritize the Right Metrics
Not every metric matters equally. Focus on the ones that will make the biggest impact. If your team is struggling with efficiency, hone in on mean time to repair (MTTR) and jobs per day. If customer loyalty is a challenge, give extra attention to your CSAT score and service contract compliance.
5. Create an Action Plan
This is where you get specific. Want to improve your first-time fix rate? Perhaps your technicians need better training or access to a mobile app that provides real-time parts inventory. Want to boost technician utilization? Consider tweaking your job scheduling to minimize downtime.
6. Implement the Plan
Now it’s time to put that action plan into place. Roll out the changes you’ve decided on and make sure your team understands why these changes are happening. Whether it’s route optimization to reduce travel time or improving job clustering to increase jobs per day, your technicians need to be on board for it to work.
7. Monitor Progress
Keep a close eye on your metrics after you’ve made changes. If your KPIs aren’t improving, it might be time to reassess your strategy. If your MTTR is dropping or your repeat visit rate is falling, you’re on the right track!
8. Leverage Real-Time Data
Don’t wait for the end of the quarter to find out if your plan is working. Real-time data analytics let you see what’s happening as it happens. If your travel time suddenly spikes, adjust your routing immediately. Staying on top of things in real time means quicker fixes and fewer surprises.
9. Use Predictive Analytics
Take your data a step further with predictive analytics. This allows you to forecast issues before they occur. For example, if your mean time to repair is rising, predictive analytics might alert you to upcoming problems with tools or equipment. Proactive fixes mean less downtime and happier customers.
10. Celebrate Successes
Finally, don’t forget to celebrate your wins. If you’ve slashed repeat visits or cut service contract compliance issues by half, share the good news with your team. Acknowledging progress keeps morale high and motivates everyone to keep improving.
Overcoming Common Challenges
Turning data into action isn’t always a walk in the park. There will be bumps along the way, but here’s how to overcome some common challenges:
1. Inaccurate Data
Garbage in, garbage out. If your data isn’t accurate, your decisions won’t be either. Make sure you’re collecting reliable, real-time data by using field service management software that automates the process. Manual data entry? That’s a relic of the past—and it’s error-prone. Don’t risk it.
2. Data Overload
It’s easy to drown in data. With so many metrics to track, it’s tempting to try to tackle them all at once. But here’s the secret: don’t. Focus on the metrics that matter most to your business goals. Start with first-time fix rates, technician utilization, and customer satisfaction scores. If you try to fix everything at once, you’ll end up fixing nothing.
3. Resistance to Change
Let’s face it—no one likes change, and implementing new processes can be met with resistance. That’s why it’s important to involve your team from the start. If they understand the benefits (like how a higher first-time fix rate means less stress for them), they’ll be more likely to buy in. Communication is key.
Turn Data Into Growth
At the end of the day, data is the foundation of growth in field service management. But data only becomes powerful when it’s used to drive action. By focusing on actionable metrics like first-time fix rates, technician utilization, and mean time to repair, and by following a clear process to turn those metrics into real-world improvements, you can transform your operations.
The companies that succeed are the ones that take their field service metrics and run with them—optimizing processes, cutting costs, and improving customer satisfaction along the way. With the right approach, your data won’t just sit there collecting dust. It’ll be working hard to drive better decisions, improve performance, and lead to sustainable business growth.
So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and start making your metrics work for you. Your technicians—and your bottom line—will thank you.
