Digital pens spell problems for pests
Pest control firm improves customer service with new field reporting technology
Digital pen technology can help customer service
Pest control company Pestproof is using digital reporting technology to provide fast and accurate data capture, speed up invoicing and improve customer service.
Pestproof technicians make approximately 10 calls a day for company clients and can now write assessment reports complying with health and safety regulations using supplier Destiny’s digital pen and paper technology.
Previously, Pestproof’s 25 field-based technicians, with clients dispersed from the Welsh border through to South Yorkshire, relied on a manual reporting system and could only file copies of reports to the Manchester-based head office sporadically.
‘As our technicians are home-based, they often only visit the office once a week to file their forms,’ said Steve Ivell, managing director of Pestproof.
‘This not only creates an administrative bottleneck and delays invoicing, but it means that we do not have an up-to-date record of site visits. If a client were to contact us for advice, we would have to get back to them once we had received the report.’
Now, technicians complete forms in the same way as using traditional pen and paper. A camera built into the nib of the pen records pen strokes against a small micro-dot pattern that is embedded into the paper form and the data is transmitted to head office via a Bluetooth connection on the technician’s mobile phone.
The report data is then collated and integrated directly into a Microsoft Excel or Word document for analysis.
Customers can access reports online via a log-in address and password and receive instant advice about the type of pesticide used, the work carried out and action to take in case of an emergency.
‘It now takes a matter of seconds for us to get detailed customer reports. Not only is this great for our own internal processes as we can now invoice before our technician has even left the customer site, but we can now offer our customers a better quality of service,’ said Ivell.
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