Powercode provides automatic emails to provide top-notch communication to your customers and alert employees of important events within the system. If you haven’t looked at your system emails lately to see what’s active and what’s not now would be a great time to review them. At the time of this article we have thirty different events that can send emails to the contact(s) listed on an impacted account. There are thirteen different triggers to let employees know of changes that they should be aware of and one for anyone who has a schedule set up.

From the ‘Config’ tab a the top and select ‘System Email’ to see which emails are currently setup, check the status column to see if they’re actively in use or not. If you don’t see an email you want already in the table, click on the ‘+Add System Email’ button in the upper left. Name the email in the ‘Description’ field and chose what should trigger it from the ‘Send Event’ drop down. Note that some events allow for a ‘Days Prior’ field. The email can be set to only send for one of your companies or all from the ‘Company Email Association’ field. The option is given to include the latest invoice each time this email is triggered, this is only recommended for new billing or delinquency warning emails. Set the from address and subject for the recurring message. Fill out the body of the email which gives basic formatting features including hyperlinking. Choose a attachment if relevant and click ‘Save’.

Make sure you are taking advantage of the dynamic variables to personalize the message to each customer. Click on the Powercode logo on the far right of the email body to show the available fields that will be populated by the associated info from each customers account, see the chart below. In addition to providing details about the triggered event this is a good way to encourage use of customer portal or provide other helpful info about their account.

When Powercode was installed default system emails were loaded with generic messages. It is a good idea to review each and make sure it captures your company’s messaging tone and includes the info you want for each type of event. To do this from the action column click the ‘Select an action’ drop down and choose ‘Edit’, then do it again on the next page. Edit your message and take full advantage of the dynamic variables.

Effective use of templates is a great way to increase efficiency, visibility and productivity in your field tech teams. Days can be completely filled with jobs eliminating waiting around and managers can set mandatory fields for text, numbers or files (images) to guarantee the right information is being recorded for the specific job that was done. There’s also a ‘Request Rescheduling’ checkbox on the failed templates which drops the job into the stand-by list to make sure these not completed jobs don’t slip through the cracks.

To begin using templates start by creating a ‘Completion Template’ from the ‘Install’ tab. Give the template a name, be sure to include if it’s of the success or fail variety, and if it should bring up a contract at completion for the end user to sign. From there add the fields of your choosing for text, number, image, file or selection and if each is mandatory to complete the job. For an install, some popular fields are speed test of the radio, signal strength or other radio stats and length of cable used can be handy too. A picture of the install itself can be used for training and a picture of the radio’s view to the access point can help with troubleshooting in the future. The ‘Completed Jobs’ report will show the successful and failed jobs by ‘Job Template’ based on a date range with all of the completion fields for helpful analysis.

The same completion template can be used for one or many different jobs so only make additional ones to capture different information.

These completion templates can now be added to ‘Job Templates’ also under the ‘Install’ tab. It’s encouraged to create a new job template for each type of job a tech might do as opposed to just having an install or service call. A realign shouldn’t take the same amount of time as a cable run nor would the information needed on completion be the same. Then over time comparing these job types to the historical check-in/check-out duration data it can be seen whether the time given to complete is sufficient, too little or too much. Take note that in addition to the basics of name minutes and type can be set to not show drive time or require notes. Also, jobs can be restricted to specific techs which is helpful when applied to some of the more complex or involved scenarios.

From the billing tab above the ‘Transactions’ window lives a handy tool called ‘Scheduled Events.’ The ‘Close Account on Next Billing Day’ button allows your customer to stay active for the remaining billing cycle they’ve already paid for but cancel the account prior to the next bill cycle and be sent a final bill.

The green ‘+Add’ button brings up the ability to schedule a payment, add/remove/switch services or change the status of an account on a set date. Any of these actions can be set to occur only once, every month or annually. Scheduling a payment can be used to split up an install fee or other large amount over a few months. It’s also useful in tandem with setting a temporary grace period ensuring a customer’s payment gets automatically applied before the account is disconnected. Setting an account to change statuses can be handy for customers with vacation homes so they can preset when to turn on and off their service again or for advanced cancellations more than a billing cycle.

A better way to handle customers with second homes it to create a $5 per month ‘Service Hold’ service with a minuscule upload/download throttle allowing the equipment to stay live keeping its place on the access point and maintaining monitoring abilities.  The ‘Switch Services’ event type can then be used to turn effectively turn on and off the customers service by moving to and from this new limited service. Automatically switching services is also a great way to let a customer trial a higher level package, especially if you’re unsure about delivering the committed speed. Just add the upsold service now and then advise the customer to call back in two weeks to confirm they want to stay on the new service or it will automatically switch back to the original one. Then create a scheduled event to switch the service back. Just make sure to pay attention to the billing cycle and the proration check box to accomplish the desired billing.