How to Repair the Maintenance Request Process

Improving the maintenance request process can help to alleviate frustrations and unlock new opportunities. By using simplicity as a guiding principal, the request process can be simplified and streamlined, reducing errors, and creating a better experience for facilities users, and the facilities team.

When the request process involves multiple channels, visibility is sacrificed, and too many moving parts introduced. This makes it difficult to introduce efficiencies and allows issues to quickly gain momentum and get out of control.  

In this blog, we look at some of the key elements to focus on, to repair your maintenance request process.

Single channel for submissions

The first step to improving the maintenance request process is to provide requesters with a single channel for submitting requests. This not only helps to improve visibility over requests for the facilities team but reduces any confusion for the requester.

Terrific templates and mobile usability

Providing request templates takes the guesswork out of submitting a maintenance request. Rather than having to get to a desktop and be faced with a blank email, requesters can snap a photo on their phone and insert it into a simple request template.

This allows requesters to submit requests in seconds, once they have noticed something that requires the facilities teams attention.

By providing users with a simple template they can complete on a mobile device, you can improve the chances they’ll remember to submit a request. For the facilities team, this helps to ensure the correct information is received with requests, reducing the need for email “ping pong”.

Automated notifications

Automated notifications help to keep requesters informed of the status of their requests and builds their confidence in the facilities team by managing expectations.

In FMI, requesters can be automatically notified that their request has been submitted successfully. For the requester, this confirmation that their request has gone to the right place can be used to manage expectations from the outset.

Once their request has become a work order, further automatic notifications can be set up to provide requesters with status updates as their job progresses.

Active feedback loop

When work has been completed, requesters can be automatically notified that their job has been completed. Alongside this notification, teams have the option to include a prompt to the requester to supply feedback on their experience.

This helps facilities teams to better measure service delivery, empowering the team with qualitative feedback.

Often, teams only hear feedback in the form of a complaint, as requesters are less likely to proactively provide feedback if the work is in line with expectations. Creating an active feedback loop for facilities teams unlocks valuable qualitative data that would be otherwise unavailable.

While at first teams might be hesitant to elicit feedback, this data often provides positive reinforcement to the team. This helps to boost team morale and demonstrates the value added to stakeholders within the business.

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