A field technician is a skilled worker who travels to customer sites to install, inspect, maintain or repair equipment and systems. Field technicians work in HVAC, plumbing, electrical, appliance repair, security, fire protection and many other trades.
What separates the role from shop or plant work is the travel. A field technician's day is split between driving and working, and how that split falls is mostly decided by the schedule.
How the role is measured
Most companies track a handful of numbers per technician. The most basic is how much of a paid day is spent on the work itself:
Utilization = Hours on customer work ÷ Paid hours
Say a technician is paid for 40 hours in a week and spends 26 on site. Utilization is 26 ÷ 40, or 65%. The rest is driving, shop time, training and waiting.
Other common measures:
- Jobs per day, the number of visits completed.
- First-time fix rate, how often the job is finished on the first visit.
- Callback rate, how often work has to be redone.
- Revenue per technician, what each technician brings in.
Why it matters
Many of a technician's numbers are set before they start the truck. If the day was booked in an order that zig-zags across the territory, their utilization falls and their jobs per day drop, no matter how good they are. Judging technicians on numbers the schedule controls is unfair and drives good people out.
Separate what the technician controls (time on site, fix rate, callbacks, how they deal with customers) from what the office controls (route, job order, drive time, how much time was booked). CrewLink is built for the office side of that: it schedules crews around the drive, so drive time sits next to each job instead of being hidden in it. The managing field technicians guide covers the people side, and field technician retention covers keeping them.
A common mistake
Ranking technicians on revenue alone. The technician who gets the long-distance jobs, the hard diagnostics or the training ride-alongs will look worse on revenue while doing more useful work. Read revenue alongside the type of work each person was assigned.
Related terms
- Technician utilization rate is the core time measure.
- Technician productivity covers output per hour.
- Dispatcher is the role that assigns the technician's day.
Common questions
What skills does a field technician need?
Trade skills and licensing for the work, plus diagnosis, customer communication, time management and safe driving. Many companies also expect technicians to explain options and recommend work.
What is the difference between a field technician and a field service engineer?
The titles overlap. "Engineer" is more common for complex equipment such as medical, industrial or elevator systems, and may imply more formal training. Day-to-day work is similar.
How many jobs should a field technician do per day?
It depends on job length and drive time. Use the jobs per day page to work it out from your own numbers.