How to Manage a Field Service Team

Hire for attitude, train for skill

Most owners hire on skill and end up firing on attitude. A tech with three years of experience and a bad attitude will cost you more in lost customers than they earn you in productivity. A green tech with a great attitude can be trained.

Things to look for in interviews:

• Do they show up on time for the interview?
• Do they ask questions about the work, or just about pay and time off?
• Can they explain something they fixed and what they learned?
• How do they talk about their last boss? Look for accountability, not blame.

Set clear expectations on day one

Most field techs never get told exactly what is expected. They are handed keys and told to go. Then they get yelled at when they do something wrong that nobody told them about.

Write it down. Cover at minimum:

• Start time and what counts as being on time.
• Truck cleanliness and inventory standards.
• How they communicate with the customer.
• How and when they call you for backup.
• What gets done before they leave the job (photos, customer signature, payment if applicable).
• What gets done at the end of the day.

Pay structure matters more than pay rate

Three common structures for field techs:

Straight hourly

Easy to administer. Predictable for the tech. But it does not reward speed or quality. Lazy techs get paid the same as hustlers.

Hourly plus commission

Base hourly so the tech has predictable income, plus a commission on materials and add-on sales. Encourages upselling without sacrificing customer trust if structured right. Common: base $25 to $35 per hour, plus 5 to 10 percent on materials sold.

Pay per job or pay per ticket

The tech gets a percentage of the invoice (typically 25 to 40 percent of labor revenue). This makes them want to work fast and sell more. Watch out for corner-cutting if quality is not monitored.

Quality control

You cannot watch every job. So you build systems that surface bad work.

• Before-and-after photos required on every job. They go in the invoice.
• Customer signature required at completion.
• Random call-backs (a quick text or call to the customer 24 hours after the job asking how it went).
• A weekly review of every negative or three-star review with the tech involved.

Train continuously, not once

A one-week onboarding and then nothing else for three years is how techs get stagnant. Pick one topic a week. Spend 30 minutes on it as a team.

Could be a new tool. A common customer complaint and how to handle it. A type of repair you are seeing more of. The investment is small, the compounding is huge.

Communicate constantly

The number one complaint from field techs is "I never know what is going on." Solve that with predictable communication:

• Daily schedule sent the night before.
• A 5 minute morning huddle (or quick group text) covering anything unusual today.
• Weekly team check-in to discuss numbers, problems, wins.
• Monthly one-on-one with each tech. Not a performance review. Just a check-in.

Tools that make management easier

A field service app that puts the schedule, the customer history, the photo log, and the invoice in the tech's pocket cuts your management load by half. Most of the questions techs call you about all day get answered in the app instead.

Closing thought

Good field techs are hard to find. Once you have them, the goal is to keep them. Pay them fairly, communicate clearly, give them the tools to do the job well, and they will run through walls for you. Skimp on any of those and they leave.

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