Plumbing Service Dispatch Automation for a Regional Provider

Dispatch was a whiteboard and a dispatcher's memory. Technicians were sent to jobs based on who was free, not who was close or qualified, so drive time ate the day and the wrong specialist showed up often enough to matter.

Truck inventory was its own problem: nobody knew what parts were on which vehicle, so technicians made supply-house runs mid-job, and the warehouse over-stocked everything as insurance. Paper work orders rounded out the picture — lost, illegible, or filed weeks late.

We created a field service automation system with smart dispatch at its core: jobs are assigned by technician location, skill set, and current workload, with routes optimized continuously through the day as calls come in.

Every truck's parts inventory is tracked in real time, restocked just-in-time, and matched against the likely needs of each assigned job. Technicians document calls digitally — photos, notes, signatures, payment — from their phones before they leave the driveway.

Completed service calls per day rose 37% as drive time shrank and the right technician arrived with the right parts. Average response time fell from 3.2 hours to 1.4 — a number the company now advertises.

Parts inventory costs dropped 25% under just-in-time stocking, and customer satisfaction climbed from 4.1 to 4.8 out of 5. The paperwork backlog is gone because the paperwork is gone.