Automating processes in a service company: where do you start, and what stays human work?

Where manual work gets left undone

In a service company, the work passes from hand to hand: from sales to planning, from the technician to the office, from the office to accounting. Every handover comes with a small task that someone has to remember:

• letting the planner know that a quote has been confirmed;
• preparing the invoice after a completed intervention;
• reminding the customer about tomorrow’s visit;
• following up a quote that has gone unanswered for a week;
• telling the warehouse that a part is missing.

Each task is done quickly, provided someone thinks of it at the right moment. That rarely works when things are busy, when someone is on leave or when a new colleague starts.

Which processes to automate? Start with three questions

If you want to automate your administration, hold every recurring task up against three questions:

1. Does it happen often? A step that comes back every week pays off more than an exception that happens twice a year.
2. Does it follow a fixed rule? “If a quote is confirmed and no intervention exists yet, create one” is a rule. “See whether this customer deserves a discount” is a decision.
3. Does it cost something if it is forgotten? An invoice that goes out weeks late, a customer who is not at home, a technician without a part.

If the answer is yes three times, automate it. If the answer to the second question is no, leave the decision to a person and, at most, automate the reminder that something needs deciding.

Candidates in a service company

Payment reminders need an approach of their own: the tone, the number of reminders and the moment you pick up the phone. You can read about that in sending a payment reminder.

Automating a workflow without surprises

1. Write the rule in one sentence. When [event], if [condition], then [action]. If you cannot do it in one sentence, it is probably a decision.
2. Add the checks that prevent duplicate work. Is there already an intervention or an invoice? Is the intervention still scheduled? Does the customer have an email address?
3. Test on a real case, without sending anything. Take a quote or an intervention from last week and see which path the rule follows and what it would do.
4. Switch the rule on for new cases. Decide separately what to do with what is already open, and process that in a small batch.
5. Check the history during the first weeks. What was skipped, and why? That quickly shows you whether a check is too strict or too loose.
6. Give every rule an owner. Someone who knows why the rule exists, and who pauses it when the work changes.

What you are better off not automating

• Decisions about money. A discount, a credit note, a goodwill gesture. A rule can notify someone or prepare a draft; a person makes the decision.
• A dispute. As soon as a customer disputes an invoice or a piece of work, the automatic follow-up stops and someone calls the customer.
• What the technician decides on site. Whether it is safe to start, whether a unit is repaired or replaced.
• The first message customers receive. Read through the text of a new reminder and test it before it goes out for real.

An example: from confirmed quote to draft invoice

A company that installs water softeners notices that confirmed quotes sometimes sit for days before anyone schedules the installation. The managing director sets up a rule: when a quote is confirmed and no open intervention exists yet, create an intervention to schedule and notify the planners. He tests the rule on a quote that was confirmed last week. The test shows which intervention would be created and who would get a notification, and nothing actually happens. Then he switches the rule on.

A second rule follows up the installation. Once the intervention is completed and the report validated, a draft invoice is ready and accounting gets a notification. The accountant checks the lines, adds a travel charge, posts the invoice and sends it. Anything the rule skipped is in the history, with the reason.

How it works in Digitalnatie Service Suite

The automations are in the work menu. Your organisation’s administrator manages them; the other role templates do not give that permission.

• Templates: a reminder for an intervention, a draft invoice after a completed intervention, an intervention to schedule after a confirmed quote, a sales activity for a quote not yet confirmed, a payment reminder for an overdue invoice, and a notification to the warehouse for missing parts. A template opens as a draft and stays off until you publish and activate it.
• Blocks: what starts the rule, checks with a yes path and a no path, a wait, and what the rule does, up to 12 blocks. One check, for example, looks at whether an invoice, an open intervention, an open activity or a recent reminder already exists. After a wait, the rule reads the data again.
• Tester: choose a real record and read, block by block, which path the rule follows and what it would do. Nothing is sent and nothing is created.
• Publish and activate: from then on, the rule applies to new events. Records that already met the condition are processed with a separate action, up to 50 at a time.
• History: every run with its status, such as succeeded, skipped (with the reason) or failed.
• Built-in automations: the invoice reminders before and after the due date, and two follow-ups for the service CRM. You set them to off, trial or on. In trial mode, they follow their schedule without sending or creating anything, and the history shows what would have happened.

Good to know:

• An automation also runs when nobody is logged in, with the permissions of the person who published it.
• Preparing a draft invoice never posts or sends it. Creating an intervention to schedule does not set a date or a technician.
• An email to a customer is only sent once your organisation’s email account is connected and sending emails to customers is allowed. You ask Digitalnatie for that setting.
• An internal notification only goes to internal users. A technician who only has an account for the technician app does not receive it.
• During a pause, nothing starts, and events that happened during the pause are never run later.
• The check that excludes disputes is shown, but is not available: you follow up a disputed invoice yourself.

That way, a confirmed quote lands as an intervention in the queue of the schedule. What happens before the confirmation is explained in following up a quote. The path from completed intervention to invoice is in from work order to invoice, and the appointment reminder in customer not at home.

Frequently asked questions

Which processes do you automate first?

The steps that come back often, follow a fixed rule and cost something when they are forgotten. In a service company, these are usually the handovers: a confirmed quote to planning, a completed intervention to invoicing, and a reminder to the customer about a visit.

Do I need AI to automate processes?

For many follow-up steps in a service company, a fixed rule is enough: if this happens and that is true, do this. Such a rule does the same thing every time, and the history shows you why it did something or skipped it. The automations in Service Suite work with rules like these.

Does an automation in Service Suite send invoices without a check?

No. The action that prepares a draft invoice creates a draft invoice that is never posted or sent. Accounting checks, posts and sends the invoice itself.

Who can set up automations in Service Suite?

Your organisation’s administrator. The other role templates do not give the permission for automations, not even to view them; for other people, you ask Digitalnatie. Settings for the whole organisation, such as allowing emails to customers, are also handled by Digitalnatie.