Task Assignment – Yesterday – Today – Tomorrow

The Transformation of Task Distribution

By Dr.-Ing. Walter Tritt · From the Practice of Service Organization

How are tasks distributed among employees? This question sounds simple, but the answer has fundamentally changed over the decades. From centralized allocation via pre-clarification through to self-organization.

Three Interests in Conflict

In service, fundamentally different spheres of interest come into conflict:

Customers expect fast, efficient, and inexpensive resolution of faults.
The company needs satisfied customers and profit.
Employees have different interests depending on the situation: working with the latest technologies, being home on certain evenings, working with preferred customers or in specific regions, handling complex cases, or preferring predictable activities.

Even a very good dispatcher will not always be able to reconcile the different interests equally well. In the long run, however, efficient work is only achieved when there is broad alignment of the different spheres of interest.

Work is most effective when there is alignment of interests. This is the key point: when the interests of all parties involved align, maximum efficiency arises.

The Three Phases of Task Assignment

Yesterday
Classical

Conventional Disposition

A dispatcher takes the fault report, handles the order preparation, and assigns a technician. The technician has no choice — the job is assigned.

Problem: The dispatcher is the bottleneck. The technician's interests don't matter.

Today
Pre-clarification

Disposition with Pre-clarification

Many deployments are avoided or shortened through remote diagnosis — this significantly reduces costs. A call center fully clarifies the fault on the first call. Only orders that genuinely require an on-site visit are dispatched to technicians.

Better, but still: The technician gets the job assigned.

Tomorrow
Exchange

Exchange-Based Disposition (Self-organization)

With disposition via a Service Exchange, a service technician assigns work themselves. They flexibly weigh their own interests against those of their partners.

The faster a job is completed and the more satisfied the customer is, the higher the technician's point balance rises.

How the Exchange Works

The company safeguards its interests by evaluating orders according to various criteria: urgency, competitive situation, importance of the customer, and more.

Customers exert influence by directly influencing the resulting value level of the order completed by the technician through their satisfaction. In this way, customer interests are more strongly enforced within the company through the technician as well.

Self-Regulating Mechanisms

Technicians determine their own know-how: If too many master the same technique, order values drop. Balance emerges automatically.
Regional balance: If order values rise in a neighboring region due to a bottleneck, technicians automatically assign themselves there.
Unpleasant deployments become attractive: They can be correspondingly well compensated.
Complete controlling is automatically provided by the system.

Thousands of technicians can be managed through exchange-based disposition.

The Outlook

In the future, a variety of different, competing steering mechanisms for exchange-based disposition will exist. In particular, after proper introduction and sensitive application, service will become faster, dynamically steerable, and more efficient.

This self-organization is available today as software:

Try GoodPoints →

Original title: "Disposition von Servicetechnikern - gestern, heute, morgen" by Dr.-Ing. Walter Tritt. Further publications at www.scwt.de.