A water purifier service company lives on annual maintenance contracts and filter changes visited one home at a time. Technicians work alone, on their own phones and vehicles, so attendance, area cover and visit quality all depend on trust and good routines.
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Share your requirementsA water purifier service provider sells installation, annual maintenance contracts and filter, membrane and part changes to homes, flats and small offices. The work is done by technicians who travel from home to home on two-wheelers, carry parts and tools in a bag, and are seen by a supervisor rarely. Each visit is a promise to a family that water at the kitchen tap will taste right and be safe to drink. Calls rise in summer and after heavy rain, many contracts renew in the same months, and a technician who leaves often takes customers' phone numbers with him. The owner needs to know who is where, who is trained, and who is trusted in a stranger's kitchen. See also HR for facility management.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
Calls are spread across a city or district. Nobody knows who started late, who skipped a stop or who is waiting at a spare parts shop.
One technician is overloaded in a dense colony while another drives long distances for few jobs. Travel time becomes the real cost of the visit.
A new technician is sent out after a few days of watching. A wrong part fitted or a leak left behind reaches the customer before it reaches you.
Pay linked to number of visits pushes speed. Pay linked to renewals can push selling parts that were not needed. Neither measures a repeat call that never came.
Fuel and parking are claimed from memory, and the supervisor either trusts everything or queries everything. Both annoy good technicians.
When one leaves, a few homes call him directly. Trust is held by individuals and the business has no record of the customer relationship.
Summer demand and renewal season arrive together, and leave requests, sickness and drop-outs arrive with them.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Onboarding and Probation; Performance Management; Employee Administration. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a water purifier service providers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A week of bench practice, fitting on test units and shadow visits, then a short check before any solo call.
What this coversHideA week of bench practice, fitting on test units and shadow visits, then a short check before any solo call. The employee onboarding process sets the order and the sign-off.
Start, each job location and end of day recorded against the technician and the call.
What this coversHideStart, each job location and end of day recorded against the technician and the call. Supervisors see the day as it happens, and the attendance and leave process covers weekly offs and leave.
Group pin codes so travel is balanced and a technician knows his own territory, with a named backup for leave days.
What this coversHideGroup pin codes so travel is balanced and a technician knows his own territory, with a named backup for leave days.
A mix of completed visits, no repeat call within a set period, customer rating and renewals.
What this coversHideA mix of completed visits, no repeat call within a set period, customer rating and renewals. The performance and incentive design work balances them.
A fixed rate for local travel and a short form for exceptions, so claims are settled in a routine and not by argument.
What this coversHideA fixed rate for local travel and a short form for exceptions, so claims are settled in a routine and not by argument.
Which models, membranes and fault types each person has been checked on, so complex jobs go to the right hand.
What this coversHideWhich models, membranes and fault types each person has been checked on, so complex jobs go to the right hand. The learning and development process builds the record.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A fortnight that moves a new technician from the bench to a first solo call with a check, not a guess.
Phone-based day records, area cover for leave and weekly offs that do not leave a colony unserved.
Visit, repeat-call, rating and renewal measures combined into pay that technicians believe is fair.
A skills record for each model and fault type, so training is planned and complex calls go to the right technician.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in facility management, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Housekeeping, technician and security staff at client sites leave for reasons head office rarely hears. How to ask, what to look for and how to act on it.
7 min readRead article
Hour by hour, then week by week, for a recruit's first month at a module, inverter, pack or junction box line: safety and handling first, a practice bench, a buddy, a sign-off and a day-30 review.
7 min readRead article
Measures that show how reactor, console, lab and gantry staff are really doing, the ones that mislead or bury near misses, and a monthly sheet an in-charge can run in twenty minutes.
7 min readRead article
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
There is no fixed number that suits every business. Train until the person has fitted and serviced test units correctly and passed a short check with a senior technician. Then send him out on simple jobs first.
Per-visit pay is common, but on its own it rewards rushing. Add a measure for repeat calls and customer rating so quality counts, and review the mix each season.
Make the company number the easy route, record every visit in your own system of customers, and tell staff clearly what is expected. Fair pay and prompt travel settlement reduce the pull to go private.
A supervisor or customer care lead, not the technician alone. Hear the customer, hear the technician, check the visit record and the parts used, then give a clear written outcome to both.
Plan it before the peak. Agree leave windows early, name backup technicians for each area and train a few office staff or newer technicians for simple filter changes.
We would ask how many repeat calls you had last month, how a new technician is prepared and how areas are shared out. A good first step is a fortnight onboarding plan plus a visit and repeat-call measure for incentives. We write the scope down for you to accept or change.
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