A number of industries are taking notice of a general shift in social perspectives. Customers are placing more and more value on corporate social responsibility. This gives companies ready and willing to create sustainable business concepts an added advantage in a market saturated with products and services. One way to show your commitment to ecological sustainability is to adopt a crowd service solution. A crowd is a pool of qualified and certified service technicians made up of your employees, partners, subcontractors, and freelancers. Here are three ways a crowd can help your business become more sustainable.

1. Reduced Carbon Footprint:

With a large pool of available service technicians on hand, companies can determine what field service workers are best geographically positioned to respond to a service request. With the help of scheduling tools powered by artificial intelligence, appointments can be arranged taking into account a technician’s availability, skill set, and location.

On the one hand, this minimizes the distances driven and, as a result, fuel consumption. On the other hand, it cuts down on the need for repeat visits as the best equipped and qualified technicians are matched to individual customers. This increases the first-time fix rate, which eliminates the need for repeat visits.

2. Optimized Scheduling and Routing:

FSM solutions like those initially designed by Coresystems also evaluate a service technician’s schedule and customer locations. Based on this information, the best possible route is compiled to cut down on avoidable backtracking and unnecessary detours. This helps technicians save valuable time and fuel. Even better, this can all be tracked and monitored on a technician’s mobile device and without excessive communications with the company’s back-end offices.

3. Augmented Reality Remote Support:

AR technology integrated into FSM mobile apps is making it possible to connect on site service technicians with remote experts. Rather than having a specialist drive or even fly around the world to remote locations, you can train staff on the ground with basic necessary skills. Once they are onboarded into the crowd, they can use their mobile device to communicate with specialists off site to gain access to knowledge and additional expertise.

Thanks to augmented reality tools, the remote expert can assess the issue and even walk the local technician through the proper maintenance and repair steps.

Many technologies emerging during the digital age are helping companies streamline processes, decrease spending, and boost revenue. In fact, crowd services have already revolutionized the field service industry by providing a way for companies to guarantee reliable, real-time service even in the case of bottlenecks and high demand.

Now it’s time to consider what benefit these new technologies can have for the environment. It’s time to take a look at your carbon footprint! It’s time to turn to the crowd!