As more and more tools designed to keep the mobile worker on the go flood the market, the home office mentality is becoming almost obsolete. Mobile devices keep techs in touch when they’re on the road, field service software alerts them of their next job and provide contextual information and repair advice, and various hardware accessories make checking in at the home office virtually unnecessary these days.

Take mobile payment solutions, for instance. Smartphone add-ons such as the ones put out by Square and Intuit have made accepting plastic as easy as punching in a few numbers and swiping your customer’s credit card, even for small businesses. And mobile printers (John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research for the Technology Services Industry Association, likes Zebra for its Bluetooth capabilities) make closing the deal that much easier.

“Mobile payment functionality provides field workers the opportunity to capture payment when upselling customers on additional services or products,” Dan Bodnar, director of mobile printers at Intermec Technologies, told Field Technologies Online. “Studies conducted by our customers’ field services/sales organizations show that order breakage rates for new services when payment is collected at the time of order capture is much less than if the customer has the option to provide payment at a later date. This ultimately leads to increases in revenue growth and efficiencies.”

Ragsdale agrees: “If you can capture a signature and maybe even print out a receipt while you’re onsite, you close the deal and it’s having a big impact on up-sell and cross-sell,” he told The SmartVan.

Another advantage to being able to accept payment on the spot, capture a signature and print out a paper receipt, or send a digital receipt directly to a customer’s email inbox, is a feeling of greater security. Field Technologies points out that by eliminating the exchange of financial information through the mail as well as the need to record credit card numbers for future processing, customers experience an added sense of security. All the more reason for field service manager to consider adding mobile payment solutions to their arsenal of 21st century tools.

More about mobile payment solutions on The SmartVan

ABOUT Sara Suddes

San Francisco-based contributor Sara Suddes writes frequently about small business, the economy and technology.