--- title: "Blog: maintenance, field service, support, sales | attendo" description: "Practical articles on maintenance, field service, support, customers, projects and processes: the math worked out, common mistakes and what to measure." url: "https://attendo.me/en/blog" lang: "en" --- # The trade, with the math worked out 34 articles on maintenance, field service, support, customers, projects and processes. With examples, common mistakes and what to measure. You can read them without knowing attendo: a short note on how we handle it comes at the end. [Subscribe via RSS](https://attendo.me/en/blog/rss.xml) ## Maintenance Preventive work, assets and KPIs that help you decide · 9 articles ### Corrective vs. preventive maintenance: which one really costs more Everyone says preventive maintenance is cheaper, but few companies prove it with their own numbers. That is why it is the first thing dropped when an emergency hits. Here is the math, including the uncomfortable part: when corrective is the right call. 5 min read ### How to build a preventive maintenance plan that actually gets done The hard part of preventive maintenance is not designing the plan. It is keeping it alive past the first few months. When a plan is abandoned, it is rarely for lack of will. It was usually sized wrong from day one. 5 min read ### How to calculate MTBF and MTTR without fooling yourself Both formulas fit on one line. The hard part is making the number mean something. Here are the formulas, a complete example and the three mistakes that turn these KPIs into decoration. 4 min read ### The five maintenance KPIs that actually matter There are lists of thirty maintenance KPIs out there, and almost nobody uses thirty. These are five that change decisions, each with its trap, plus the ones you can usually drop. 4 min read ### Asset inventory: where to start Every maintenance project starts with the inventory, and many get stuck there. Not because it is hard, but because it is tedious. And if it is done badly, everything that comes after inherits the problem. 3 min read ### Self-assessment: how digital is your maintenance operation? Fifteen questions and five minutes to see where your maintenance operation stands on work orders, preventive plans, KPIs and tools, and where to start. You do not need any software to answer them. 4 min read ### Assets on a map: from the customer’s GIS to maintaining every item Streetlights, street furniture, trees or a network of installations spread across a city. Your customer already has that inventory in a GIS. Re-entering it by hand throws away their work and loses where each item actually is. 5 min read ### Contractor safety documents: what to request, when they expire and who reviews them Asking a subcontractor for their documents once is easy. The hard part is knowing what has expired on the day they show up to work in your building or at your customer’s plant. Documents expire quietly, and nobody notices until someone asks for them. 5 min read ### Spain’s new elevator regulation: what changes and how to organize maintenance Spain’s new technical instruction asks elevators already in service to get closer to the safety of new ones. For owners, that means upgrades and paperwork. For maintenance companies, it means visits on schedule, defects with deadlines and proof of every visit. 5 min read ## Field service Work orders, routes, on-call and what an hour really costs · 8 articles ### How to go digital with work orders without your team pushing back The problem with paper work orders is not the paper. It is that they arrive late, incomplete and without evidence, and nothing gets billed until they do. Many projects to digitize them fail, almost always for the same five reasons. 4 min read ### The hidden cost of paper work orders Paper costs nothing. What costs money is everything that happens between the technician filling in the form and the cash landing in your account. Here is the math for an example company with 20 technicians, and how to do yours in an afternoon. 4 min read ### What a technician hour really costs Many service companies set their hourly rate by looking at the competition, and few have done the math. Those who do usually find the same thing: they charge less than it costs them. 3 min read ### How to design a checklist technicians actually fill in A checklist ticked without looking is worse than no checklist at all. It takes time, creates paperwork and gives confidence nobody has earned. And the culprit is almost never the technician: it is the design. 4 min read ### Does the customer’s signature on the technician’s phone hold up? It is one of the questions that comes up most when work orders go digital, and one of the worst answered. Some say “of course” without any nuance; others simply do not know. An honest answer has to separate three things. 4 min read ### How to plan your technicians’ routes Everyone wants the button that optimizes routes. Almost nobody has sorted out what that button needs first, and without it the button is of little use. 4 min read ### 24/7 on-call: how to run it without burning out your team On-call service is easy to sell and hard to run. It is usually built on a group chat and the goodwill of two people, and it lasts until those two people leave. 4 min read ### Working with subcontractors without losing control of the service The work you subcontract is still your service in the customer’s eyes. What gets lost is not the work itself. It is knowing whether the job was accepted, when it will happen and what was used. A few simple rules bring that back, without burying anyone in paperwork. 6 min read ## Support and customer service SLAs, channels, surveys and AI in customer service · 5 articles ### How to measure your support SLA and prove you meet it Signing an SLA is easy. Proving you meet it is another matter, and that is where renewals are lost. If you provide the data yourself in a spreadsheet, the customer has every right not to believe it. 4 min read ### When the shared inbox stops working A shared inbox is the spreadsheet of customer support: it works fine until it stops working. And by the time you notice, you have already lost things. 3 min read ### WhatsApp for customer service: how to get it right In Europe, Latin America and many other markets, customers already message companies on WhatsApp, whether the company decided to or not. The question is not whether to use it, but whether it is set up to work or still lives on someone’s phone. 4 min read ### AI in customer service: what works and what doesn’t We keep hearing that AI will transform customer service. Some things it has already changed, and others still do not work well. It is worth telling them apart before you spend money. 4 min read ### Satisfaction surveys customers actually answer: CSAT, NPS and CES Many surveys fail before they are sent: they ask too much, arrive too late or use the wrong channel. And when someone answers with a 3, nothing happens. Here is how to design them so they get answered and get used. 4 min read ## Customers and sales Profitability, renewals and sales forecasting · 3 articles ### How to calculate the profitability of a service customer Almost every company knows how much it bills each customer. Far fewer know how much it costs to serve them. And the business lives in the gap between those two numbers. 3 min read ### How not to lose a contract renewal Losing a customer on price hurts. Losing one because you forgot has no excuse. The contract renews itself year after year, until one day the customer gives two months’ notice and there is nothing left to discuss. 4 min read ### How to build a sales forecast you can defend Everyone has a pipeline. Few have a forecast they trust. The difference is not the tool: it is how the stages are defined. 3 min read ## Projects Deadlines, hours and the real cost of each project · 2 articles ### Project baseline: spot the drift while you can still fix it Almost every project drifts. The problem is finding out at the wrap-up meeting, when there is nothing left to fix. A baseline lets you see it in week two, not in the final week. 4 min read ### How to track time on projects without your team hating it Asking a team to log their hours usually sounds like surveillance. And when it happens on Friday, from memory, the data is useless. It can be done in a way that costs little and pays off, including for the people logging. 4 min read ## Processes and compliance Automation, approvals and controls with evidence · 4 articles ### Which processes to automate first, and which to leave alone Automating the wrong process costs you twice: the time to build it and the time to undo it. Three simple questions separate what is worth automating now from what is better left alone. 4 min read ### Approvals without email: an approval process that does not stall Approving by email works until someone asks who approved what, and when. Then the search through other people’s inboxes begins. A well-built approval process answers that question in seconds. 4 min read ### Periodic controls: how to prove they were done Doing a control and being able to prove it are two different jobs. The second one usually surfaces on audit day, when someone spends a week hunting for emails, screenshots and signatures. 4 min read ### ISO standards in industry: what they really ask for and how to stay on top of them An ISO certificate is not earned on audit day. It is earned with what the company records every week. Management system standards ask for less paperwork than people think, and more consistency. Here is what they ask for, what they share and how to organize it. 5 min read ## Choosing and rolling out software What to ask, how to write an RFP and how to switch without stopping · 3 articles ### 40 questions to ask before you buy a CMMS Take this list to every demo. It works with any maintenance software vendor: buyers who ask good questions end up with the right software. And it is better to find out before you sign than three months later. 4 min read ### How to write an RFP for maintenance software A badly written RFP goes wrong in one of two ways. Either it leans toward one vendor and invites a protest, or it is so generic that the cheapest, weakest bid wins. This guide is about avoiding both. 4 min read ### How to go from three systems to one without stopping operations The idea is appealing and the fear is reasonable: replacing the systems your company runs on sounds like weeks of chaos. It can be done without anyone noticing, but not all at once. 4 min read ## Monthly newsletter One email a month with attendo news and what is new on the website, such as comparisons, calculators and glossary terms. ## Want to talk about your case? If something you read here is happening to you today, tell us. We will show you attendo with your own data and, if it is not a fit, we will say so. - With your operation, not a generic demo - A real person from our team replies - No cold calls afterwards Would you rather talk first? - Phone [+34 910 053 530](tel:+34910053530) - Email [sales@attendo.me](mailto:sales@attendo.me) - Monday to Thursday 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM and Friday 9:30 AM to 2:30 PM (Spain time)