CRM for Field Service Businesses: What You Actually Need (And What You Don't)

If you run a field service business — plumbing, electrical, HVAC, pest control, fire protection, security, cleaning, anything where your team goes to the customer — you’ve probably tried a generic CRM and found it useless.

That’s because most CRMs are built for salespeople sitting at desks. Your team is in trucks, on rooftops, in ceiling cavities, and under buildings. The problems you need solved are fundamentally different.

Let’s talk about what a CRM for field service actually needs to do — and why most tools on the market miss the mark.

The Non-Negotiables

Mobile-First (Not Mobile-Friendly — Mobile-First)

There’s a massive difference between a desktop CRM that has a mobile app and a tool that was designed for mobile from the ground up.

Your technicians interact with your CRM from a phone. That’s not a secondary use case — it’s the primary one. Everything needs to be designed for a 6-inch screen, one-handed use, and dodgy mobile data in a commercial building basement.

What mobile-first actually means:

• Large tap targets — no squinting at tiny buttons while wearing work gloves
• Offline capability — the app works without reception and syncs when it reconnects
• Minimal typing — dropdowns, toggles, and pre-filled fields instead of free-text entry
• Fast load times — under 3 seconds on 4G, or your techs will close the app and never reopen it
• Camera integration — tap to take a photo, it attaches to the job automatically

Complete Job History Per Customer

When your tech arrives at a site, they need to know what happened there before. Not just “we did a job in March” — the actual details:

• What equipment is installed (make, model, serial number, install date)
• What work was done previously and when
• What parts were used
• Any recurring issues or notes from previous techs
• Photos from previous visits
• Whether the customer has a service agreement

This is where generic CRMs completely fall apart. They track deals and contacts. They don’t track assets installed at a location, maintenance history for specific equipment, or which tech did the last service call and what they found.

A proper field service CRM treats the site and its equipment as first-class objects, not just the customer and the deal.

Equipment and Asset Tracking

For many field service businesses, the work isn’t about the customer — it’s about the equipment. You’re maintaining chillers, servicing alarm systems, inspecting fire panels, or repairing generators.

Your CRM needs to track:

• Asset register per site — what’s installed, where, and when
• Maintenance schedules — what’s due for service and when
• Warranty information — so you know if a repair is covered
• Fault history — patterns that help diagnose recurring problems
• Parts used — for both inventory management and future reference

Generic CRMs have none of this. They’ll let you attach a note to a contact record. That’s not the same thing.

Scheduling and Dispatch Integration

Your CRM data and your scheduling system need to be the same thing — or at least talk to each other seamlessly. When a customer calls about a broken air conditioner, the person answering the phone needs to see:

1. Who the customer is and their service history (CRM data)
2. Which techs are available and nearby (scheduling data)
3. What equipment is at that site and its maintenance history (asset data)

If these live in three different systems, your admin staff is switching between tabs, copying information, and wasting time. Worse, the tech arrives on site without the context they need.

Photo and Document Attachments

Your techs take photos. Lots of photos. Before and after shots, damaged equipment, compliance evidence, meter readings, serial number plates, installation progress. These photos are valuable — for warranty claims, for customer disputes, for compliance audits, for training new staff.

In most generic CRMs, there’s no natural place for job photos. Your techs either email them to the office (where they sit in inboxes), save them to a shared drive (where nobody can find them), or keep them on their personal phones (where they’re lost forever when the tech leaves).

A field service CRM makes photo capture part of the job workflow. Tap a button, take a photo, it’s attached to the job, the site, and the equipment record. No extra steps.

Automated Follow-Ups and Reminders

Field service businesses live and die on recurring work. Service agreements, annual maintenance, warranty follow-ups, “it’s been 12 months since your last inspection” reminders. This revenue is predictable, profitable, and almost entirely dependent on someone remembering to make contact at the right time.

Manual follow-ups don’t scale. Once you have 200+ customers with different service frequencies, different equipment, and different agreement terms, things start falling through the cracks. A customer whose annual fire inspection was due in June doesn’t get contacted until October. That’s not just lost revenue — it’s a liability risk.

Your CRM should automate this:

• Service reminders triggered by date or equipment runtime hours
• Automated emails or SMS when maintenance is due
• Internal alerts when a high-value customer hasn’t been contacted in X days
• Follow-up sequences after completed work (satisfaction check, review request, referral prompt)

What Generic CRMs Get Wrong

The core problem with using Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive for field service is that these tools think in terms of deals. Your business thinks in terms of jobs, sites, equipment, and schedules.

A deal has a value and a close date. A field service job has a location, a time window, a required skill set, specific equipment to work on, parts to bring, safety requirements, and a customer who needs to be home. These are fundamentally different data models.

You can force-fit field service into a generic CRM by adding custom fields, custom objects, and custom workflows. But you’re fighting the tool’s architecture the entire time. It’s like renovating a house to look like a boat — technically possible, but you’d be better off just getting a boat.

The Realistic Options

Dedicated field service platforms like Jobber, ServiceM8, ServiceTitan, or Fergus are built for this world. They understand jobs, scheduling, and field teams. If your business fits neatly into one of these tools, they’re a strong choice. The limitation comes when your specific workflow, industry requirements, or integration needs go beyond what these platforms support.

Custom-built field service CRM is the path when your workflow is genuinely different from the standard template. Maybe you need to track specific compliance data, integrate with industry-specific equipment monitoring systems, or handle a job structure that doesn’t fit any off-the-shelf tool. The upfront investment is higher, but you get a tool that fits exactly how your business operates — with zero per-user licensing dragging on your margins as you grow.

Start With the Workflow, Not the Tool

Before you evaluate any CRM or field service platform, document your actual workflow. Not the ideal version — the real one. How does a job actually flow from first contact to final invoice? Where does information get entered, by whom, and on what device?

Then look for a tool that matches that workflow with minimal compromise. For some businesses, that’s a $49/month Jobber account. For others, it’s a purpose-built system that mirrors their exact process.

The worst thing you can do is buy a generic CRM and hope your team adapts. They won’t. Field service teams need tools built for the field — fast, mobile, practical, and connected to everything else in the business. Anything less is just an expensive contact list that nobody updates.