What Does A Field Service Technician Do: Your Guide to Start A Successful Career

As someone developing software solutions for the field service industry, I have been fortunate enough to come across some amazing people who live for action. Rather than sitting behind a desk all day (not that it’s not important!), they get down to work and toil hands-on to make people’s lives better. Yes, I’m talking about field service technicians.

Of course, you have met some of them at some point in your life, unless you ARE one of them. These professionals know the value of hard work, dedication, and commitment. Their skills and experience contribute to every sphere of human society, be it large industries, small businesses, public places, or our homes. The work they do might seem easy. But once you try it yourself, you’ll know how difficult it is to fix a leaky faucet or a broken tile.

Considering the importance of the job, it is no surprise that many people contemplate working as a field service technician. But do you know enough about the job responsibilities? Do you know how day-to-day life looks for a field technician? How about the earning potential and future growth? Well, if you have ever wondered the same, I’m here to answer your questions.

In this blog, I’ll share some excerpts of my interactions with field workers that occurred over the long period of my association with them. I’ll try to give you a sneak peek into their daily lives in the field, explain their responsibilities, and finally reveal a secret that makes field service technician jobs more interesting. Read on to find out more!

Field Promax: A field service technician’s best friend in the field. Sign up now!.

Table of Contents

What is A Field Service Technician’s Job?

Let’s start with the basics.

We know field service technicians are people who work to fix things around us. But what does this job actually entail? In other words, what are field service technician jobs all about? Let me break things down for you.

In reality, field service technician is an umbrella term. It refers to a variety of professionals involved in different fields, such as electrical, plumbing, HVAC, property management, construction, cleaning, roofing, fire and security, alarm installation, painting, landscaping, and so on. Regardless of their trade, a field service technician is a professional who works on the installation, repair, and maintenance of various items for their customers in general to keep them up and running. Instead of working in an office or a shop, they go directly to people’s houses or businesses when something needs fixing.

I got the best description from John, an experienced plumber who has run a plumbing business in Florida for years. In his words, a field service technician is essentially a person you depend on to get things done when you can’t do them yourself. According to him, homeowners often take up DIY projects to fix or revamp their homes. But there are occasions when the task requires a bit more skill and finesse and, of course, some professional knowledge. For example, you might be able to unclog your toilet on your own. But changing a broken pipe will take more than your home toolbox. That is when you book a plumbing service and rely on an experienced plumber so that the plumbing in your home is not all messed up.

How Much Does A Field Service Technician Earn?

To be honest, the field service technician salary range varies from state to state, and more so, depending on your specialty.

Emma, a landscaping technician from California, reports that she started her job as a field service technician with a yearly salary of approximately $39,800. Now, after seven years of experience, she earns around $50,000 a year. Whereas Bill Cameron, a veteran electrician from Texas, earns $54,000 a year. He said the range can vary from $20,500 to even $121,500.

The highest-paid field service technician job in the USA is a lead service technician.

The average yearly salary for field technicians in the USA is $61,290 per year, with an hourly rate of $29.50 . This makes it quite a lucrative job opportunity for many. However, it always depends on how skilled and experienced the technician is or what specific trade she/he works in.

Job Responsibilities of A Field Service Technician

I have already tried to answer the question, “What is a field service technician’s job?” in the previous section. As we have seen, a field service technician is a skilled professional who fixes things or helps maintain items so that they are up and running. But what exactly do they do in this job?
The specific duties may differ depending on what kind of field service one is providing. Clearly, the type of work a carpet cleaning technician would do is very different from what a fire alarm installation technician would do. It will also vary depending on the role they play on the team. However, if I were to provide a field service technician job description, I would emphasize the following:

Carrying out field visits, offering assistance, and maintaining satisfactory customer service
Performing diagnostic tests in order to detect technical difficulties and come up with viable solutions
Taking care of on-site repairs, testing, and installations
Adhering to all safety and standard protocols and standards when doing assignments
Monitoring the progress of work
Responding to customer concerns quickly and recommending equipment/parts/items to customers
Working in accordance with customer needs and making appropriate recommendations
Processing documents to ensure accurate record-keeping and the production of thorough service reports
Establishing a long-term relationship with clients in order to encourage recurrent business
Reviewing and updating databases and field automation systems
Enhancing the customer experience by using creative ideas to analyze grievances, create effective resolutions, and provide appropriate operating practices that assure system enhancement

Secret Tip: Things Change with A Field Service Management System

As you can see, a field service technician has to take care of a lot of things while working in the field. However, they are not all they need to worry about. Field service is not all about grabbing a hammer and hitting a nail on the head; it also involves a lot of routine administrative tasks.

So, what does a field technician do during his regular workday? What responsibilities do they have to fulfill in order to carry out their job? Let’s hear it from some of my esteemed friends working in this industry.

Minhwan, a 37-year old painting contractor, lives in Santa Barbara. He started his career as an apprentice at the age of 20 in Los Angeles. At that point, a regular day looked like reporting to the office in the morning, getting assigned to a team of painting technicians, leaving for the job site, carrying out instructions and learning through the process, and reporting to the supervisor before clocking out for the day.

Eventually, he was promoted to lead painting technician and had to supervise his own team. During that time, he had to make a list of job orders he had to complete during the day, assign roles and responsibilities to his team members, and take stock of tools and equipment needed for the jobs before he left the office in the morning. Upon returning to the office in the evening, he again had to take care of all these things, including filling out a log book reporting equipment, billable hours, material, and parts, as well as any other issue that came up during the work, to his manager. Also, he had to hand over the car key they took to the job site.

Of course, this was a long time ago, way before smartphones and tablets were commonplace. Most of the administrative tasks were done using pen and paper. But now that digital tools are readily available at our disposal, field service does not look like this anymore. Well, for a major part at least!

When I met Mark, an HVAC technician and business owner from Columbus, Ohio, a few years ago, he also explained this entire tedious process to me in his business. He wanted a solution that would save him from drowning in paperwork and make life a bit easier for him as well as his field technicians. To this end, he signed up for a field service software system. However, that did not work out for him as much as he would have wanted. He said it was rather difficult for him and his technicians to get the hang of the tool. But more importantly, it was not suitable for a small business like his. But at the same time, he had his doubts about switching to a more affordable option, thinking it would not meet his needs once the business grew.

I tried to help him with that to the best of my ability and asked for his feedback later on. I wanted to know how a field service technician explains his day-to-day routine once he gets hold of a cutting-edge digital tool like Field Promax. And if I may say so myself, things looked a tad bit brighter than what Minwhan told me earlier.

Mark said that with field service software available, his technicians do not need to come to the office in the morning anymore. They can clock in straight through the integrated mobile app and start their day. They can also check all their schedules, routes, customer information, and historical data on the same platform. So much so, the mobile app also enables them to update job progress, attach photos and documents for generating reports, add items to the invoice, even send the invoice directly to the customer from the job site, and get paid instantly. That saves a lot of time in a field technician’s life by eliminating the need to visit the office or ask for assistance from the back office multiple times a day.

This is not just for field technicians. As Mark said himself, Field Promax has made his life easier as well. Now he can view his entire staff schedule on the dashboard, assign technicians to job orders, keep track of employee time, create estimates with a click of the button, generate invoices, and monitor his employees in real-time thanks to GPS tracking—all from his own mobile phone. Even when he is not in the office!

This is what Diana says as well. She feels that Field Promax is an absolute lifesaver for her organization. She especially mentions the QuickBooks integration feature that makes accounting and bookkeeping so easy for her without having to ever leave the platform.

Wrapping Up

All in all, one can say that the introduction of field service software has been a paradigm shift for field service technicians. It has changed the way a field service technician carries out routine tasks on a daily basis for the better. It has taken the burden of paperwork off of their shoulders and given them more freedom to actually focus on the work they are meant to do—delivering high-quality services to their customers.

So, if you are contemplating a career in field service, there has never been a better time than now! Not only do you get to live your dream of doing something that requires hands-on action rather than sitting behind a desk all day, but it also gives you a chance to dabble with the latest technology. And if you are running a field service business without field service software, well… You do know what you need to do, right?