Field Service Management Books Every Business Owner Should Read

Excellent customer service is not something that just happens. It requires preparation, execution, and dedication from the entire team and not just the company’s owners and executives. Failure to strive for it may be costly to your field service business.

According to customer service research conducted by Insider Intelligence eMarketer Conversion Research, nearly 50% of the respondents have had poor customer experience, a reason to stop doing business with a company.  54% of millennials say that bad customer service is the reason they stop doing business with a company.

Whether you have decades of experience and expertise in serving homeowners and running your own field service business or are new to the trades, you never stop learning and improving.

Being a successful field service professional or business owner in 2022 entails remaining alert, educated, and always prepared to hone your skills and foresee emerging shifts in your journey.

A fantastic way to stay updated on the latest trends and techniques is to keep important books handy for any downtime you may have.

We’ve listed a few stellar field service management books below that will enhance your daily performance and broaden your perspective on new approaches!

Let’s get started!

Top 13 Field Service Management Books to Read

1. The Service Culture Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your Employees Obsessed with Customer Service

By Jeff Toister

There’s a ton of information available that discusses the significance of providing excellent customer service and enhancing interactions between your company and homeowners. However, we recommend you to read Jeff Toister’s The Service Culture Handbook.

The author claims that cultivating a corporate culture that places a priority on exceeding homeowner expectations is the first step to delivering exceptional customer service. 

If you believe your home service business could benefit from a new strategic approach for attracting clients, fostering loyalty, and empowering word-of-mouth, The Service Culture Handbook is worth adding to your reading list.

2. The Reputation Economy: How to Optimize Your Digital Footprint in a World Where Your Reputation Is Your Most Valuable Asset

By: Michael Fertik and David C. Thompson

As you must know, the majority of potential clients research your company online before approaching you or calling your office. 

The Reputation Economy book goes into great detail to describe how the internet has altered commerce for small businesses and how field service business owners can craft and control a strong online reputation to generate new business revenues.

3. HVAC Equations, Data, and Rules of Thumb

By Arthur A. Bell and W. Larsen Angel

If you own an HVAC company, you probably already own a copy of HVAC Equations, Data, and Rules of Thumb. This HVAC book, which has more than 600 pages, is still the HVAC professionals’ and designers’ go-to resource for everything HVAC-related. 

Even if you have an older edition of this indispensable reference, it’s probably time to upgrade to the third edition, which was published in 2015.

4. 42 Rules for Superior Field Service: The Keys to Profitable Field Service and Customer Loyalty

By: Rosemary Coates and Jim Reily

42 Rules for Superior Field Service, published in 2013, has already become a mandatory read for service professionals in the field service industry and home service industry.

This is an excellent reference to start with your exploration and research of field service industry how-to books. The authors, Coates and Reily, have over 50 years of combined experience and expertise in field service and global manufacturing. 

They did an excellent job of providing several essential rules (42 to be exact) to benchmark and help develop field service businesses successfully. 

They put all their focus on their book about leveraging the opportunities presented by the field service industry to transform your clients into endorsers of your services and generate substantial business revenue.

You will learn the following in this book:

• How to conduct customer surveys and optimize field service operations
• The financial consequences of delivering poor customer service
• How to establish a successful field service organization and develop intelligent business strategies

5. Transforming Field and Service Operations: Methodologies for Successful Technology-Driven Business Transformation

Edited by: Gilbert Owusu, Paul O’Brien, John McCall, and Neil F. Doherty

Businesses have evolved significantly over the years, with new technologies driving much of that change. Edited by Gilbert Owusu, Paul O’Brien, John McCall, and Neil F. Doherty, Transforming Field and Service Operations is a comprehensive guidebook. 

This book discusses how to successfully transform field and service operations through the use of automated technologies. It is intended for field service managers and service technicians who want to learn how to leverage the benefits of advanced technological solutions, particularly in this industry.

6. The Intentional Field Service Engineer

By: Bruce A. Breeden

Bruce A. Breeden has nearly four decades of experience and expertise in the home service sector, and he wrote The Intentional Field Service Engineer for aspiring professionals looking to work as service technicians.

This book may also be handy to business owners during the hiring process to assess and narrow down the qualities and capabilities that candidates should have in order to best serve homeowners.

7. Selling to Homeowners The Sandler Way: A Proven Process for Selling Products and Services to Consumers in Their Home

By: Kim Booker and Chip Doyle

Not all field service technicians find it comfortable working as a salesperson. There are, however, guidelines and strategies that anyone can learn to improve their pitch and interact and connect with customers.

Selling to Homeowners The Sandler Way is one of the best sales books in the industry. It is approachable and concentrates on selling scenarios that involve pitching to clients in their own residences. 

Selling to Homeowners The Sandler Way should be a mandatory read for all technicians who want to update their customer service strategy and sharpen their sales skills.

8. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

By: Eliyahu M. Goldratt

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, written in the style of a thriller novel, is highly recommended for managers across various industries striving to scale their organizations.

The plot of this book follows a factory manager as he encounters multiple significant and risky inefficiencies, providing insight into how to address organizational issues and discover more reliable, cost-effective ways to get tasks completed.

According to an Amazon review, this book features a powerful message for all management teams in the industry and explains the ideas that underpin Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (TOC).

9. Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary​

By: Steve Curtin

Only 8% of customers believe that the service they receive from businesses is actually truly exceptional, according to a Watson Wyatt Worldwide study of nearly 200 different organizations that was published in the Harvard Business Review.

Delight Your Customers delves deeper into the reasons why companies fail to understand what their customers truly want. It also highlights three truths that will help you provide exceptional customer service.

Every employee’s role in the field service industry should be reflected in exceptional customer service. Excellent customer service is always given voluntarily and typically costs no more to provide than subpar service, so customers are never required to demand it.

Steve Curtin states that when there is so much bad customer service out there in the industry, great customer service truly stands out in the face of it. 

According to him, exceptional customer service is never the result of a happy accident that an organization stumbles into but is always the outcome of intentional and effective planning. And Delight Your Customers certainly assists you in doing so.

10. Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service

By: Theodore B. Kinni

Disney is known for being one of the most customer-focused companies on the planet, going above and beyond to delight customers. They accomplish this by incorporating elements such as sentimentality as well as having excellent customer service representatives.

Be Our Guest assists field service leaders in seeing new ways to provide better service for their clients that aren’t unlikely because everyone else doesn’t possess it in their arsenal.

Are you interested in learning how other field service work environments can adopt Disney’s customer service model?

If so, Be Our Guest will educate you on how to provide the highest quality of customer service while always giving more than expected, making all customer experiences memorable.

11. The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook for Becoming the “Nordstrom” of Your Industry

By: Robert Spector & Patrick D. McCarthy

When people think of superior customer service, Nordstrom is almost always the first name that comes to mind. 

The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence allows you to tap into the principles that have made Nordstrom a leader in the retail industry and beyond.

The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence is written by the company’s top-performing salesperson of all time, Patrick McCarthy, and Nordstrom’s customer service consultant, Robert Spector. 

It is a great handbook on not only delivering outstanding customer service but also how to recruit, train, motivate, and reward your staff for building a family of happy and satisfied customers.

12. The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service 

By: Lee Cockerell

The Customer Rules contain easy-to-read chapters and a wealth of pearls of wisdom. It has been proven to be an indispensable book for large companies like Ford Motors as well as family enterprises like your mom-and-pop shop or brand-new start-up.

Lee Cockerell has a long and successful career in hospitality, having held executive positions at Hilton Hotels, Walt Disney World, and Marriott. 

In this book, he explains how to best structure your company’s policies and procedures, as well as how to establish your front-line staff, who interact with customers on a daily basis.

13. Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

By: Jay Baer

Hug Your Haters offers specific advice on how to deal with complainers, which Jay categorizes as:

• Offstage haters: individuals who complain via traditional channels such as phone or email.
• Onstage haters: individuals who complain on online review sites, social media channels, etc.

In his book, Baer emphasizes that each category of haters has different motives, so, you should approach them in a unique way. 

Hug Your Haters is brilliant because it includes real case studies from businesses that will encourage your team to address clients with greater agility and even compassion.

Final Words

We hope that we’ve helped you understand and gain a perspective on how reliable books can be. You must never forget that books are one of the greatest weapons in your arsenal in times of need.

The field service management books in this blog can help you not only stay updated on the latest industry trends and needs but also provide exceptional customer service and grow your company.

However, you must understand that sticking to manual processes can slow down your business growth and might even leave space for human error.

In this digital era, you must also upgrade your field service management to a digital system by subscribing to field service management software, such as FieldCamp.

It will automate 95% of your everyday business processes with features, such as:

• Scheduling jobs for your service techs
• Dispatching technicians to job locations
• Creating, sending and tracking invoices
• Keeping track of payments
• Generating analytical business reports

Are you ready to take your field service and home service business to another level?

Go to FieldCamp and check out how its capabilities can transform your business!