How AI Empowers Service Technicians | ZenTrades

Where AI Shines (And Where it Doesn’t) For Service Technicians

Flat rate pricing is where you charge a single price for a product or service, regardless of how much it costs to produce or deliver. This cost remains constant regardless of how much time or work is required to finish. An adequately calculated flat rate will cover direct and indirect costs and a healthy profit. Let’s take a case of flat rate pricing in the HVAC business if you’re an HVAC technician and charge a flat rate of X USD for an AC startup. You will receive $X whether it takes one hour or 2 hours, or even if the client requests several adjustments. Whereas in the case of time and material pricing, pricing would change after every hour and every additional request made. Now that we understand how flat rate pricing works let’s know how we should decide on flat rates for products and services for a healthy profit.

Personal Assistant Technology for Service Technicians

In 2011, Apple launched Siri, a personal assistant for Apple devices. In 2016, Google rose to the challenge with Google Assistant for Android devices. Since then, a race has raged to develop increasingly advanced personal assistants that rival the capabilities of Marvel hero Iron Man’s JARVIS AI. That race has pioneered the development of generative AI solutions that are definitely moving the needle in the right direction. However, personal assistant technology isn’t just a convenience product for consumers: it also stands to benefit trades like yours.

ZenTrades developed an AI personal assistant, LISA, for service technicians. When a worker arrives on site, LISA can help them perform a number of tasks all powered by conversation:

• Provide technicians with a daily agenda.
• Clock in & out.
• Route optimization to customers of the day.
• Setting reminders.
• Pulling customer data from CRM.
• Finding equipment manuals.
• Matching technicians with colleagues with more experience in a specific area.
• Providing upsell suggestions to increase revenue.
• Automatic invoice generation.

Predictive Maintenance

Artificial intelligence is much more efficient at predictive maintenance than humans are. Using a combination of IoT sensors and past maintenance data, AI can determine when the most optimum time is to schedule maintenance for equipment. This helps to minimize downtime, reduce unnecessary maintenance costs, extend equipment life, and improve workplace safety.

Customer Service

AI isn’t going to replace human-to-human interactions entirely, but it can help technicians provide better service to their clients. For example, Zentrades’ LISA AI helps technicians get information about past service history and other relevant details from their CRM. It quickly informs technicians about previous work done at the location, who did it, and what the work was. This helps you meet customers where they are rather than going to a job blind.

Regulatory Compliance

The rules are always changing, and keeping up to date with the latest regulations can be challenging for everyone. AI is great at paying attention to details. Setting up news alerts and having AI analyze those details is a fantastic way to get around the problem. It’s always important for a human expert to review the AI findings for errors.

AI Helps You Focus on Your Trade

At the end of the day, AI is a tool that helps you focus on what matters most: your work. The work you provide as a professional is the most important part of your business, and that’s why AI is so helpful. Automation tools help you cut down on the time you’re spending creating invoices, sifting through customer records, and doing regulatory research. Instead, you can spend that time providing high-quality service for your customers. See how LISA AI and the Zentrades software suite can focus on your business by booking a free demo now.