What is first-time fix rate (FTFR)?

First-time fix rate (FTFR) measures the share of service calls completed on the first dispatch. The technician arrives, diagnoses the issue, has the right parts and skills, and finishes the job before leaving. Anything requiring a return trip — wrong part, missing access, undiagnosed second issue, customer not home — fails the FTFR metric.

Why it matters so much:

Every truck roll has a fixed cost: drive time, fuel, technician labor, scheduling overhead. But only the productive visit produces revenue. A 60% FTFR business is paying for 40% of its trips twice — a margin destroyer that compounds at scale.

Typical industry ranges:

• Residential HVAC: 70-85%
• Plumbing (mixed emergency + scheduled): 60-75%
• Electrical: 75-90%
• Pool service (recurring): 90%+
• Pest control (recurring): 90%+
• Appliance repair: 50-70% (heavily parts-dependent)

The lower numbers correlate with parts-availability problems and undertrained dispatch. Higher numbers correlate with strong pre-visit triage and well-stocked trucks.

The levers that move FTFR:

1. Pre-visit triage: asking the right diagnostic questions on the inbound call. "Tell me what's happening" plus model number plus age of equipment plus 5 minutes of basic questions saves 30 minutes on-site. 2. Parts inventory on the truck: the right common-failure parts available. Capacitors, contactors, common refrigerant types, common pipe sizes. 3. Technician skill matching: sending the right tech for the job. Heat-pump diagnostic on a heat-pump-certified tech, not a generalist. 4. Dispatch-level skill warnings: flagging when a job is being assigned to a tech without matching skills.

The hidden cost of low FTFR:

A return visit costs the same as the original visit but generates zero new revenue. If a 5-truck shop runs at 65% FTFR doing 800 jobs a year, that's 280 return trips × ~$150 cost per truck roll = $42,000 in unbilled costs. Lifting FTFR to 80% recovers $19,500 of that.

How FSM software helps:

Tracking FTFR requires linking second visits back to their original call — which is where most paper-based shops lose the data. Modern FSM platforms surface FTFR by tech, by trade, by job type, with the most common reasons for callbacks (wrong part, wrong skill, customer absent, undiagnosed second issue). The reporting alone often lifts FTFR 5-10 points by making the gaps visible.