How do you handle technician scheduling during peak seasons?

Mike, we've been through this exact scenario. Here's what actually moved the needle for us:

Contractors are worth it — but only if you have a 2-week onboarding checklist. We learned the hard way that throwing them at jobs day one creates more callbacks. Now we pair every contractor with a senior tech for 10 jobs minimum.

Priority framework that actually works:

• P1: No heat/AC + vulnerable customer (elderly, infant, medical equipment)
• P2: No heat/AC, standard conditions
• P3: Maintenance, upgrades, non-critical

Dispatch has authority to bump P3s by 48 hours without manager approval. This alone reduced our daily chaos by 40%.

Re: bulk assignment — yes, we're using it. Critical tip: sort by zip code first, then skill match. The default sort wastes 20 minutes of drive time per day per tech.

P1/P2/P3 — simple. I like it. Who makes the call on "vulnerable"? Dispatch or do customers self-declare?

Dispatch makes the call based on notes in the account. We added a custom field for "Priority Flag" — values are Medical Need, Elderly Household, Infant Present, Standard.

CSR asks during booking. Dispatch can override if the situation's obvious (90 degree day, customer clearly distressed, etc).

The key is don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Better to err toward over-prioritizing in June/July than have someone in hospice without AC.

Contractors... been there. Half of them can't find their own truck without GPS.

My approach: overtime with your A-team beats contractors every time. Yes it's expensive. So is reworking a botched install.

We run 4 ten-hour shifts instead of 5 eights during peak. Techs love the long weekends. Dispatch hates the scheduling complexity. Customers don't care as long as someone shows up.

Break-even for us was around 15% overtime hours. Above that, hire another body.

^ this. In my experience contractors are fine for labor, terrible for anything customer-facing. Had one walk into a house with boots covered in mud from the last job. Customer called me directly screaming.

Four tens is the way. Your best techs will stay, your mediocre ones will quit. That's not a bug.

Thanks so much for this thread everyone! Really appreciate all the perspectives!

We're actually looking at the 4x10 schedule too — did you all offer the same hourly rate or did you have to adjust? And how did you handle the dispatch coverage? Our dispatchers are already stretched thin and I'm worried about burnout there too. Also curious if anyone's tried staggered shifts for the 4x10s (some Mon-Thu, some Tue-Fri) to cover more days? We've got customers who want weekend service and right now we're just saying no but that's obviously lost revenue...

Sorry for all the questions! Just trying to think through everything before we propose this!

Pro tip from the field: if you're running overtime, feed your techs.

Seriously. We started providing dinner for anyone working past 6pm. Cost us maybe $15/head. Callback rate dropped because techs weren't rushing to get home. Morale improved. Small thing, big impact.

Re: bulk assignment — feature works well but watch out for the timezone bug documented here. If your techs cross zones, appointments can shift by an hour in the dispatch view. Sync issue, not display issue. Workaround is setting everything to company time in Settings > Regional.

omg yes the dinner thing, my old company did this and basically we would stay until 9pm sometimes because the food was good and we didn't want to lose the habit lol

but also yeah the timezone bug is real, happened to me last week where I showed up an hour early to a job and the customer was like why are you here, awkward, had to sit in the truck for 45 minutes

Another way to think about the contractor question: we use them exclusively for preventive maintenance and simple swaps (capacitors, contactors, basic thermostats). Anything diagnostic or involving refrigerant stays with our permanent team.

This protects customer relationships while still expanding capacity. The contractors know their lane, we pay a flat rate per job type, and there's no confusion about expectations.

From a broader operational perspective, peak season is when your processes get stress-tested. If you discover gaps now, document them. September is the time to fix systems, not just recover.

Quick hit on prioritization — we use FieldPulse's SLA rules with custom tags:

• Outage + vulnerable = 4 hour response
• Outage only = 24 hour
• All else = 72 hour

System auto-flags. Dispatch sorts by due time, not arrival time.

Prevents the "everything's urgent" trap.