Source of Jobs survey

This is a feature that, even if ServiceDesk did nothing else for you, should easily repay the purchase cost, and many times over. With use of this feature you can easily generate iron-clad, scientific data regarding the type of jobs you are doing (i.e., new, recall, etc.), where you're getting them from (i.e., repeat customers, referral, OEM or home-warranty types, etc.), and of those customers that found you in the Yellow Pages, which ads they used and in what quantity.

You’ll notice this feature can be turned 'on' or 'off' from the Settings form. The reason is because, simply, it is not necessary to conduct your survey year-round. In fact, there are important reasons not to. At some point in the year you've got old telephone books being retired and new ones delivered. Conduct a survey during this period and you'll have mixed results, failing to show clearly what the performance is in any particular book. You'll want to conduct your survey, therefore, during a non-transitional time, when the set of books you're interested in is not being changed. Typically, two months of survey time is all that's necessary to produce solid, statistically significant results.

When you have this feature turned on, an important event occurs just as you finish entering a customer's appointment in any Callsheet. At this moment, a survey form will pop into your Callsheet, prompting you to ask the customer a brief series of questions. The survey is designed to invoke in this manner, and at this time, for three reasons: first, it is really only those customers who've scheduled jobs that you're interested in surveying, and this method assures exactly that; second, it delays the survey until after you've taken all the other information, made the appointment, and secured a service commitment from your customer (thus, it's generally too late for them to be annoyed and call someone else); third, you're asking the questions while they're still on the line and have the ad they used in front of them (thus, there's no need for investing the time to call them back, and you're able to secure real information).

There are actually only a few questions in the survey, and often you can fill in the answers without even querying your customer, depending on the circumstances. As in other forms, you may indicate the appropriate response from among listed alternatives either by clicking with your mouse or by moving over the item with your cursor and pressing Enter or the spacebar. The questions are also structured so that if a particular response logically makes the next inquiry unnecessary, that inquiry simply does not appear. On average, the survey should consume less than 30 seconds.

Of course, even 30 seconds can be too much when you've got three other calls on hold, and perhaps you'll have some customers who'd rather not be surveyed regardless, meaning there must be a provision for your operator to skip the survey when needed (she can merely hit Esc). Yet, there is a design concern here, for if there was anything systematic about which kinds of calls tend to go un-surveyed, it would skew the reported results, making them invalid. In fact, by its very nature the SourceOfJobs survey is easier to complete in some cases than others (if the job's a recall, for example, or from an OEM or home-warranty company, there are only one or two questions needing answered, and no inquiries are needed from the customer—meaning that an operator will tend to complete the survey much more often in such cases).

To correct for such bias among initial completions, we must assure that every job makes it at least partially into the survey, eventually at least, and with at least the information that's essential for adjustment purposes. Thus, in all cases when the normal survey has been avoided, before it creates a JobRecord ServiceDesk will demand completion of a mini-survey, a briefer query that requires no questions from the customer. This can easily be done after the flurry of calls is over, and corrects for any bias in the kinds of calls initially not surveyed. In fact, by tabulating the total number of incoming orders (whether fully surveyed or not), it allows ServiceDesk to infer (on the basis of the total figures and the answers among those fully surveyed) how many total callers would have fit into each of the answering categories, as though all had actually been fully surveyed.

To setup the survey, you must first create a list of your various Yellow Page ads (see the Appendix). To view the data that's been gathered, at any point either while the survey is in progress or afterward, press Ctrl-F11, which will load the SourceOfJobs form, showing several successive pages (use the PgUp and PgDn keys) of up-to-the-minute, tabulated results. To print the data, press Alt-P from anywhere within the form.

The reason this feature is so valuable, obviously, is because it will quickly reveal which of your ads work, and which don’t. Thus, you can in the future spend your advertising dollars much more effectively, perhaps investing more in those locations where you now know it’s effective, and perhaps eliminating entirely your spending in locations where, you now know, it’s not effective. Likely, you will be surprised to discover how totally ineffective some of your past expenditures have been. In our area we’ve found that only two (out of approximately ten available books) have any significant advertising effect. This, obviously, is very valuable information.