- Vehicle routing and scheduling: improve customer service - right time, vehicle, goods, skills
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Routing & Scheduling for Better Customer Service

Image of truck to illustrate routing and scheduling TRUCKSTOPS: Arrive when your customers want you to & use the right vehicle for the job
In an increasingly competitive market, exceeding customer expectations is vital in order to retain and grow business. TruckStops vehicle routing and scheduling will enable you to efficiently allocate workload to resources, ensuring that if your customer has special requirements they are met. TruckStops uses special codes to match call requirements to facilities ensuring you are able to handle a wide range of needs. For example you can specify the correct vehicle and time.

The Correct Vehicle

Tail-lift to assist with unloading

Specify a tail-lift when customer premises make this essential to enable the driver to handle heavy loads such as drinks, white goods or roll cages.

Vehicle size / capacity

In TruckStops, longer, wider or specially designed vehicles can be specified for outsize or fragile goods. For example scaffolding poles or glass panels.

Needs skilled driver or two man crew

Typically this constraint will be used in TruckStops when delivering washing machines that need to be installed or large items like a wide screen TV for a pub.

Rear Opening.

Some distribution centre bays are designed only to receive goods from vehicles that back up to the loading bay.

Specific temperature compartments

Either separate transport for ambient, chilled and frozen or multi-compartment vehicles. Often used for food and drink distribution.

Help customers achieve premium rates for goods.

Allocate organic collections before reusing for non-organic products.

Smaller vehicles

Specify smaller vehicles for customer sites with restricted access.

The Right Time

Correct time of day

Whether you are legally restricted to making deliveries in residential areas within specific time windows or you just wish to advise customers of a morning or an afternoon delivery, or guaranteeing a specific hour slot, TruckStops can run a range of scenarios to enable you to meet your needs and establish the level of service which is economically viable for you to offer.
image of customer site before loading vehicles

Deliver correct day of the week

Customer service is improved if you can specify the day of the week that you will call for collection or delivery. TruckStops can fix a specific customer to a specific day of the week and can be used in conjunction with mixed frequencies. For example, in the water cooler market large organisations may have deliveries every Thursday and some other customers every third Wednesday.

image of vehcile for routing and scheduling

Time Windows

Be more precise about the time window in which you will arrive As your confidence grows with TruckStops you will feel more comfortable offering more specific times and TruckStops will help you keep those promises.

Other Improvements

Servicing contract renewals

Of course you ideally provided a perfect service to all your clients, but if unforeseen circumstances make it difficult to meet demand, you could ask TruckStops to prioritise customers who are about to be asked to invest in a renewal fee for services to ensure they are happy.

Customer Profiling

Understand the profitability of contracts and assess whether a range of service levels might be applied at different prices or to different market sectors. Learn more about profiling>>>

image of traffic

Encourage new business in areas which are easiest to serve efficiently

Use the GeoConcept mapping analysis system (supplied with some versions of TruckStops) to determine which prospects are closest to existing routes and prioritise sales and marketing effort accordingly.
image of lloyd fraser vehicle