That’s where notifications and alerts come in. With customisable notifications in service management software, you can set up automated reminders to help you stay on top of everything.
Here are some of the best ways to use custom notifications with service management software, as well as how to set them up in Clik Service.
What Are Notifications?
Custom notifications are messages to notify the selected user(s) about a change to a property in Clik Service. These messages can appear in the form of an internal pop-up message within the software, a text message or an email. These will keep you informed about what is going on across all modules in Clik Service.
Customise the subject of your notifications to make sure you know about any important changes. You could set one up to notify you when a customer approves or rejects a quote. this way, you can then either provide an amendment or move along in the sales journey. Field service notifications can inform you when a job status has been updated so you can keep in the loop with your ongoing work.
We’re introducing a big update for the property change notifications in Clik Service soon. The update will introduce new notification types and even more ways for you to customise your reminders and messages.
Why You Should Be Using Custom Notifications
You can set up custom notifications to trigger after a number of different scenarios, but why are they so useful?
Firstly, and most importantly, they can help you and your team stay on top of everything, even if you’re away from the office. They keep you in the loop with ongoing work without having to check on every job or customer throughout the day.
You can customise every element of the notification, from the type to the message itself. Include tags to add variable information, such as company name, assigned engineer or job sheet number so you can identify the subject of each alert at a glance.
Types of Notifications
There are a few ways to receive these custom notifications in Clik Service. You can select the one most suitable for each message type to make sure the right people see it. Here are the different types of notifications available in Clik Service.
Internal notifications
You might already be familiar with internal notifications in software. They are used to bring your attention to something that recently changed or if there is a new software update available. These notifications are ideal if you are using the software a lot or if you want to be notified about something as soon as you log on in the morning of each day.
These types of push notifications are great if you want to work in Clik Service and receive updates from your engineers. You might want to be kept in the loop about a high-priority reactive maintenance job that is currently in progress. Once an engineer completes that job, you will receive a pop-up notification in the software. This alert is interactive, so you can immediately view the job sheet in question to check the completed work. That’s another job successfully completed to a high standard.
Email notifications
The next possible route for your notifications is ideal if you might not be using Clik Service constantly during the day. Email notifications can alert you of important changes to jobs, quotes, invoices and more, so you can then check over and finish off the work.
You might want to be informed as soon as a customer accepts or rejects a quote from their Clik Remote login. Customise your notifications to include the name of the company, the quote number and the result of the changes so you can log on and send out a revised version if needed. This way, there are no roadblocks, and you don’t need to wait around for a phone call. You can pick it up immediately and keep the process moving.
The Clik Service Teams integration
The Microsoft 365 integration in Clik Service now also includes a link to Microsoft Teams. With this upgrade to property change notifications, you can set up notifications to send to specific teams when certain conditions are met.
In Teams, you then have a few options to share your notification message. You can copy it and share it with a different team channel or in a chat with a team member. Utilise those existing Teams features to send notifications to the right person or pin a message so you can easily come back to it at a later time.
The Microsoft Teams integration is now available in Clik Service.
SMS alerts
If you use Clik text messages, you can also select SMS as a notification option. This will then send a text message to your selected contact number when your selected conditions are met.
Text notifications are another great option to use if you’re out and about a lot but still want to be kept in the loop. This is ideal for sending information to your engineers when they’re on the go. Whether that is to notify them when they’ve been assigned to a new job or to tell them which vehicle is assigned to them.
For more information about using Clik text messages, please get in touch with your account manager.
Examples of How to Use Notifications
We’ve already covered a few different examples of how to use custom notifications, but there are so many ways you can set up these alerts.
With the upcoming update to property change notifications in Clik Service, you’ll be able to stay informed across all modules, without having to manually search for the information you need.
Here are some notable examples of how you could use custom notifications.
1. Payment reminders
From time to time, you might need to follow up with a customer about a payment.
In this scenario, there are a couple of ways you can incorporate notifications to bring attention to overdue payments.
Firstly, you might want to send payment reminders to your internal team. Maybe you want to alert the account manager of a company that there is an invoice that hasn’t been paid yet. Your team can then check the relevant documents to make sure the details are up to date and follow up with the client if needed. You can include the invoice number or reference and customer details to make it easy to know what the alert is referring to at a quick glance.
Secondly, you might want to set up overdue invoice reminder emails to go out to the company contact. These automated payment reminders can encourage clients to follow up on an invoice that is now overdue.
2. Job status change
In the office, you might sometimes feel out of the loop with your engineers out in the field. When onsite, engineers might not have the time to relay updates about the job via email, text message or phone call.
With the right notifications in place, you will always be aware of jobs currently in progress, no matter where you are. You can be notified when a job has been completed or when a job needs attention. Get alerts to appear on your Clik Service or automatically send a message to a group in Microsoft Teams. This way, your team can invoice the client or follow up with the assigned engineer straight away, speeding up the entire job process.
3. Breached service level agreements
Service level agreements (SLAs) help you and your team to keep response times down and set realistic expectations for your clients. To ensure you stick to your service level agreements, you can set up notifications to alert you when an SLA has been breached.
This then brings the relevant job in question to the attention of the relevant engineer or staff member. It might be that the assigned engineer is off sick and hasn’t been reassigned, or it just slipped through. Whatever the reason for the breach, notifications are a great way to get it back on track.
4. Certificate completion
Similarly to the job status change example, you can also set up notifications to notify your team when a certificate has been marked as complete. With the Shared Database solution, you can connect and view your Clik Service job sheets alongside your certificates from Clik Cert. You can also link certificates to your job sheets so it’s always easy to find what you need.
You can use notifications to let your colleagues in the office know when a certificate has been finished. That way, they know it is ready to be sent to the client, printed and stored for your records. This can also help notify a member of your team so they can then invoice the client accordingly so you can get paid quicker.
5. Engineer planning
Engineer planning is more than just assigning new jobs to your engineers. Notifications can help bridge the gap between the office and the field, without back-and-forth emails. When you’re busy it’s difficult to find the time for long phone calls. Communication can sometimes be difficult to maintain with your colleagues when they’re always on the move.
You can set up notifications to go directly to engineers when they have been assigned a new job to make sure nothing gets missed or overlooked. This could be best suited as an SMS message to your engineer’s mobile, or through Teams if they have the app. Customise the message with details to help them easily find the job sheet in question, including the job number, customer and site. If they use Clik Remote, internal notifications will also appear in their dashboard for even easier access.
6. Low stock levels
Stock take can be a long task if done manually. Clik Service has its own stock take tool to help make that process straightforward.
Notifications can help here too. If your stock level is reaching a specific level – perhaps lower than 10 or 100, as an example – you can create reminders to let you and your admin team know. Set them up so that the right members of staff receive the notifications so they can immediately reorder and restore stock levels.
This way, you never have to worry about running low on specific parts or other important stock items.
Get started with your own customisable notifications by downloading your free trial of our service management software, Clik Service.
