Rescheduling rate is the percentage of booked field service jobs that are moved to a different date or time after the booking was confirmed, whether the customer or the company initiated the change.
How rescheduling rate is measured
Rescheduling rate = Jobs moved after booking ÷ Total jobs booked × 100
Company-caused rate = Jobs the company moved ÷ Total jobs booked × 100
Say you book 600 jobs in a month and 72 get moved. That is 12%. Now split them: 30 moves were customers changing plans, and 42 were yours: a day that ran long, a technician out sick, a part not in. The company-caused rate is 42 ÷ 600 = 7%. That 7% is the part you can directly fix.
Count each job once even if it moves twice, and track how many moves were made on the day of the appointment. Same-day moves hurt the customer most.
Why it matters
Every move costs something. The customer rearranged their day, and now has to do it again. Your office spends time on phone calls. The slot left behind may be hard to fill, especially if the jobs nearby were planned around it.
Company-caused moves usually trace back to a few causes:
- Overbooking. The day had more work than hours once drive was counted, so the last job gets pushed.
- Job duration estimates. Jobs routinely run longer than booked.
- Emergencies. An urgent call bumps planned work with no capacity held for it.
- Staffing. Absences with no slack in the schedule.
The first is the most preventable. If a day is booked without the drives between jobs, it was going to overflow before anyone left the shop. Travel-feasible scheduling checks the drive when each job is booked. CrewLink does this before a slot is offered, computing travel from where the truck will actually be. See dispatch software.
Compare rescheduling rate with schedule adherence and no-show rate to see where the plan and the day are drifting apart.
A common mistake
Reporting one blended number. A 12% rescheduling rate that is mostly customers changing plans is a different problem from one that is mostly days overflowing. Without the split, you cannot tell which to work on.
Related terms
- No-show rate counts visits where the customer was not there.
- Schedule adherence measures how closely the day followed the plan.
- Job duration estimate errors are a common cause of company-caused moves.
Common questions
What counts as a reschedule?
Any change to the date or time window after the customer confirmed the booking. Changing the technician but not the time is usually not counted.
How do you lower the company-caused rescheduling rate?
Count drive time when booking, use realistic job durations and hold a little capacity for emergencies.
Should customer-requested reschedules be tracked?
Yes, separately. A rising customer rate can point to long lead times or windows that are hard to plan around.