In this guide 6 sections
Write down the rules your dispatcher applies by instinct, then put them into the schedule in a fixed order that never changes from day to day. Filter by skill first, place urgent tickets next, then group by area, allow travel gaps and check spare parts on the van. Keep a manual override early on.
Capture what the dispatcher does in her head
Sit beside your dispatcher for one full morning and note every time she says who she is sending and why, even when it sounds obvious. “Ravi holds the compressor certificate.” “Keep him east, he lives there.” “She carries the control board.”
Each remark is a rule. Most are never written down, so one leave day turns the whole board into guesswork for whoever covers her desk and has no way to ask.
Collect twenty remarks and sort them. Five groups usually emerge from the pile.
- Skill: certificates, brands, machine types
- Area: zones a technician covers well
- Urgency: breakdowns, contracts, repeat faults
- Travel: time between visits, start points
- Parts: what the van carries
Skill match is a filter, not a score
Either the technician is qualified or not. Never let a nearby but unqualified person win because the map looks tidy, since a wrong visit costs the company a second trip and a second wait. Apply skill first, as a hard filter.
Store skills on each technician’s profile, and give every certificate an expiry date so that nothing depends on a supervisor’s memory. When a gas-handling or electrical licence lapses, the schedule should drop that person from those jobs automatically, before a dispatcher unknowingly sends an uncertified technician to a live site.
Add a junior flag too. A junior may ride along to learn, but the named owner of the job must always be the qualified person, whose name appears on the service report.
Urgency and contract terms set the order of the day
Tickets are not equal. A cold-room failure outranks a filter change. Define priority levels, each with a target arrival window, so the schedule can slot in an urgent job and show exactly which later visits it pushes back.
Contract status matters too. An annual maintenance customer with a response promise should rise above a one-off call, and that promise should come from the contract record and not from anyone’s memory.
Show the dispatcher the knock-on cost of every insert, meaning which visits slip and by how long, before she confirms it. The tool only shows the damage.
- Priority levels with arrival windows
- Contract or warranty status on ticket
- Repeat-visit flag for the same fault
- Customer site hours and gate times
Area clusters and travel time cut the dead hours
Group open tickets by zone and assign each group as one loop, because a technician who works down the list by arrival time spends the day in traffic. Nobody bills the customer for that.
Add travel time between visits as a real block, starting from the technician’s true first location, which may be home rather than the depot. Allow extra minutes at sites with a goods lift, a gate pass, a security desk or a signing-in register that takes its own time.
Review the clusters monthly. New customers shift the map.
Check the van before you send the person
A missing part doubles a visit. Record van stock for each technician, then match the ticket’s likely parts against it before the visit is released to the technician’s phone. Collect missing parts from the store first.
After each job, deduct the parts used. Flag anything running low. Link the service report to the ticket, so the next dispatcher can see exactly what was replaced, by whom and on which date.
Run the new rules for a week beside the old routine, compare visits completed and repeat visits against the previous week, then adjust the rules.
Dispatcher rule sheet
The worksheet fits one page. Five blocks cover skill, area, urgency, travel and van stock, and each has columns for the rule in plain words, who applies it today and the data needed. A last block logs every override.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Should the system assign visits automatically?
Start with suggestions she approves. Once the suggestions match her own choices for a few weeks, let routine jobs assign themselves and keep urgent tickets under manual control.
How do we handle a technician who is off sick?
Mark the absence on the calendar. The schedule should list that day’s open visits and offer technicians with the same skill working in a nearby zone, which the dispatcher then confirms or reshuffles.
What data do we need before we start?
You need three lists. First, a technician list with skills, certificate expiry dates, base location and shift hours, then a ticket list with priority and site address. Third, van stock by part number. Gaps will show in week one.
Can customers pick their own appointment slots?
Yes, but only slots your rules allow. Show windows that already respect skill, area and travel, so no customer can book a visit your team cannot fulfil, which protects the customer’s time as much as yours.