Let’s face it, route planning is time-consuming, and finding the best possible route for each driver is indeed hard. On the one hand, the planned routes should ensure minimal transportation costs. On the other hand, your customers should be satisfied with quick and timely deliveries and so you need to address urgent requirements and ensure almost zero waiting time.
But, how can you find the best directions with multiple stops which are cost-efficient and time-saving, while enhancing the customer experience? We discuss four strategies below.
Four Tips to Find the Best Driving Directions with Multiple Stops
#1 Geographically partition high concentration customer zones (Geospatial Clustering of Destinations)
When your customers are grouped closer together, your drivers can make more destinations in the same amount of time which will definitely increase your revenue. So, separate your field service reps or delivery drivers into different regions with each rep’s set of destinations being relatively close together.
#2 Prioritize Urgent Orders
A customer might suddenly ask for urgent delivery or a set of customers might have provided you with specific time windows for package delivery. If you don’t meet these requirements, you will be toast.
Yet, if you place such urgent customer locations at the top of the list and use them as the point of origin for your routes, you can optimize your routes to save fuel and deal with the urgent requests.
So, ensure that you have a system in place that will ensure the priority orders do not get lost in the shuffle while allowing you to customize routes to hit the most important destinations.
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#3 Collect Data to Find What Could Go or Will Go Wrong
Which areas are taking up most of your drivers’ time and why? Which routes are increasing fuel costs and why? Finding the answers to these questions and keeping track of slowdowns and difficulties will help you find the best directions with multiple stops.
#4 Utilize a Cloud Based Route Planner with Multiple Stop Driving Directions
Planning routes manually with a pen and paper is enough to drive anyone mad, as the endless combination of routes, traffic hurdles, timely delivery targets, and drivers’ familiarity with the city areas can be chaotic.
For example, not all drivers are familiar with all the freeways or localities in the same way; not all routes have the same traffic conditions; and some days are not free of chaotic issues like weather hassles, absent drivers, vehicle breakdowns or irritated customers.
Popular technology solutions, such as Google Maps, may help to some extent. They are, after all, perfect for planning routes for a single driver or a couple of destinations.
However, they are not intended to be used for planning the accurate map with multiple destinations for a big set of drivers.
Luckily, a route planner app can be helpful since you will only need to feed in the customers’ addresses to get well-optimized routes in 30 seconds.
A route planner also factors in traffic, road restrictions, order priority, weather conditions, real-time situations, travel time, weight, load, and many other critical constraints to ensure you never need to worry about the planning and accuracy of any routes.
You can even re-optimize routes whenever there are some unanticipated changes. Long story short, a route optimizer can easily help your drivers show up on time, regardless of whether you’re in the best or worst states to drive in the US.
But that’s not all a delivery route planner has to offer. It comes with many other features, such as reporting and analytics, GPS tracking, geofencing, and territory optimizer, which further contribute to finding the fastest route with multiple stops. Read about the nine benefits of dynamic routing technology to learn more.
How to Find the Right Route Planner for Your Business?
There are plenty of route planners available for multi-stop routing. Some are free and others are paid. Some are cloud-based and help you get driving directions from one place to another with multiple stops on Android or iPhone while others require installation.
Below are some tips that will help you find the right one that offers accurate driving directions with multiple stops:
- Ensure it is easy to use so that you and your drivers don’t struggle to understand it and can use it to get directions with multiple stops.
- It must come with a trial period so that you can try it before purchasing it fully.
- The best route planners offer multiple communication options to contact their customer support. A big plus would be if the customer service team is staffed with native English speakers so that you don’t waste time explaining the issue before you can even get it resolved.
- It should offer easy to access and understandable tutorials so that you don’t need to rely on the support team every time.
- It mustn’t come with a long-term contract, but should rather offer a pay-as-you-go model.
- Make sure it is cloud-based so that you can plan and access routes anytime and from anywhere. The best route planners help you get driving directions with multiple stops on your iPhone, iPad, or Android.
- The software should be scalable so that you don’t need to switch to another one when your business grows.
- It must provide foolproof security and privacy features, such as access restriction.
- Check the route planning software provider’s history to ensure that you don’t invest in a fly-by-night company.
- Scour the web for customer reviews; any review less than 4 stars on the App Store or Google Play is a red flag.
So, what strategies do you follow to find the best directions with multiple stops? Do you’ve any questions? Please feel free to leave your comments below.
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