Increasing First Time Fix Rates
By Service Geeni Team | 26 Jun 2023
Every business is affected by rising costs outside of their control. But there is one major area businesses can control and that’s improving their internal efficiencies using First Time Fix Rates (FTFRs) as the key measure, and research shows that this alone can ensure not just survival but positive growth rates too.
Research found the top 20% of service-related businesses have a First Time Fix Rate of 88%, with those considered as best in class achieving a FTFRs of +98%. Whereas the bottom 30% of companies have first-time fix rates of 63% or less. Demonstrating the link between efficiency and the success of a business.
Cost reductions you can control. FTFRs are affected by the following factors:
- Parts unavailability – 29%
- Customer/asset not available for service – 28%
- Improper diagnosis at time of dispatch – 19%
- Technician did not have right skills – 15%
- Resolution was only temporary – 8%
Service Geeni’s service management software enables businesses to better manage all the factors driving First-Time Fix Rate. Investment in technology is vital to enable optimisation of all the different variables involved in maximising efficiency.
Service management software needs to capture and maintain an extensive set of constantly changing data including:
- engineer skillset
- van stock
- parts inventory
- locations and routes
- customer contract requirements
- planned and reactive service visits
- asset status data
- contract SLA’s and more
Management boards might assume such significant efficiency gains must come at a big ticket price for service management software.
But the fact is good service management software is proven to help increase efficiency, improve profitability and boost revenue potential. Building a business case for the right service management technology to support Service Managers is vital.
Example improvement value calculation
- 50 engineers assigned 10 jobs per week each, means in total the company is attending 26,000 jobs per year.
- At a First Time Fix Rate of 70% this means only 18,200 jobs are completed in the first visit. If you improve this by just 10 % you can complete 2,600 more jobs, increasing your total jobs completed first time to 20,800.
- If each visit takes on average 4 hours and engineers are paid £20 per hour, then the 2,600 extra jobs completed first time save you 4 hours per job in second visits, that’s 10,400 hours per year or a labour cost of £208,000.
- If you use just half of the time you have gained you will have an extra 5,200 hours so you can effectively complete 1,300 more jobs. And if you charge this out at £400 per job you can make additional revenue of £520,000.
When you crunch these basic numbers, you realise how working on your FTFR can deliver efficiencies, profitability and capacity for growth.
Service Geeni’s service management software is an integrated platform, which gives technicians access to critical service data, ensuring inventory demands are based on planned service visits and essential parts availability remains high, dramatically improving FTFRs.
Additionally, Service Geeni service management software gives technicians working remotely complete visibility of contract requirements, asset status and job history, outstanding jobs by site, van stock, parts across the network and upcoming scheduled maintenance. Improving transparency and collaboration between all aspects of your operations gives Service Managers the tools they need to make significant improvements in FTFR.
