For telecommunications organizations, efficient field service operations are crucial to maintain service quality and enhance customer satisfaction. But field operations are often challenged by inefficient scheduling, long travel times, and missed opportunities to serve more customers. Mapbox offers navigation solutions that help field service teams get more done for every mile they spend on the road.

Inefficient field service teams are costly

Mapbox has worked with many large organizations with sophisticated field service operations. It’s estimated that inefficient field team assignments that slow outage recovery time or customer service requests can potentially cost millions monthly in customer churn. Additionally, One customer saw their techs drive up to 330,000 unnecessary extra miles per month (costing $1M in wasted fuel). 

Telco companies face these challenges in managing field service operations, which often involve a high volume of service, maintenance and installation needs  spread across large areas. Field service techs, whether in-house or contractors, often have varying capabilities and schedules. When field service techs are deployed to urban environments, they have to navigate traffic congestion, road closures, and restricted zones. Network operations staff try to optimize route planning and dispatch, but they are limited by the tools at their disposal. Traditional manual scheduling and routing methods often result in inaccurate ETAs, missed service windows, and inefficient use of tech time and vehicle fuel.

Mapbox navigation solutions make it easier to route field teams efficiently

Mapbox provides Navigation APIs that help telcos enhance the scheduling and routing of field engineers and repair teams.

The Mapbox Matrix API calculates highly accurate, traffic-aware travel times between multiple locations in a single API request. Dispatch centers can use the Matrix API to inform job assignments based on proximity and expected travel time, accounting for current or expected traffic conditions.

The Mapbox Isochrone API computes areas that are reachable within a specified amount of time from a location. Telcos can use this to dynamically stage jobs based on driving distances for service hubs, and visualize these and all assigned routes on internal dashboards.

The Mapbox Directions API provides technicians with turn-by-turn route directions to their next service location, with routes adapting to changing conditions such as congestion, incidents, or road closures. API calls can be adjusted to account for different vehicle types, such as vans or electric vehicles, and restrictions such as avoiding routes that pass through tolls or low-emission zones. For companies that use their own mobile application for field teams, the Mapbox Navigation SDKs package the Mapbox Directions API with Mapbox Maps to make it easier to develop a customized in-app navigation experience.

Kraken Technologies drives +167% increase in jobs completed per engineer

Kraken Technologies has partnered with Mapbox to improve its Kraken Field product. The Mapbox Matrix API, Directions API, Isochrone API, and Geocoding help ensure field engineers stay on time and spend more hours with customers, not on the road. With smarter routing and scheduling, some users have seen the average number of jobs completed per engineer increase from 3 to 8 per day. 

Kraken is used by Octopus Energy, one of the world’s fastest-growing energy providers, to manage field operations for more than 3,500 field service engineers. With Mapbox-powered routing on Kraken, Octopus Energy has:

• Reduced driving time by 300 hours per day
• Cut 4 million miles driven annually
• Completed an additional 150,000 service appointments annually
• Avoided 600 tons of annual CO2 emissions

“With Mapbox, we’re able to schedule and route engineers more effectively. This has allowed us to reduce wasted time on the road, increase service capacity, and lower costs and emissions.”  — Guy Walker, VP of Product, Kraken

Improve telco field service operations today

With Mapbox, telco organizations can streamline service team scheduling and routing, reduce travel time, and ultimately improve customer satisfaction.

Reach out to a Mapbox expert to see how Mapbox can help you reduce costs, improve service, and make field operations more efficient.