To establish a good reputation for your brand, you need to do your job well and go the extra mile for your customers.
That’s just about impossible when you manually plan routes for your field employees.
Creating routes with pen and paper will result in inaccurate routes, as there are just too many factors to consider manually. Traffic, weather, construction – all of these things affect your routes. If you make a miscalculation, your field employees won’t be able to show up to every stop on time.
When you’re late once, the customer will probably understand. But when you’re late twice, they’ll start to get upset.
Unhappy customers might share their frustrations with others. Worse yet, they might leave you a negative review online, where anyone can see it! That would drive potential customers away to your competitors.
Fortunately, an automated route planner will help you maintain a good reputation and expand your business.
Get To Your Customers On Time All The Time
A route planner gives you the ability to create optimized routes in 30 seconds or less. With optimized routes, your field employees won’t need to cover as much distance to visit all their stops, which makes them more efficient. They’ll have everything they need to arrive on time.
Proving to your customers that you’re trustworthy will convince them to keep using your service, and it makes it more likely that they will recommend your service to their friends, family, and other people they know.
Protect Your Employees
Of course, it’s one thing for your employees to get to your customers on time; it’s another thing for them to get there safely. Route optimization software allows your employees to do both.
Field employees are under a lot of pressure to show up on time. They’re also on the road, so they’re not being watched. If they start to fall behind schedule, they might feel tempted to break the speed limit in order to catch up.
Want To See For Yourself How Route4Me Can Boost Your Profits?
Speeding is illegal and dangerous. As bad as it is to show up late, it’s preferable to your employees putting their safety at risk.
A route planner can really help you out here. Its GPS tracking feature shows you your employee’s driving speed in real-time. That way, if you see an employee speeding, you can contact them and tell them to cut it out right away.
Moreover, since your field employees know they’re being “watched”, they’ll be on their best behavior and stop themselves from speeding in the first place.
In addition to showing you how fast they’re going, GPS tracking shows you the locations of your employees as well. That gives you the information you need to make sure your field employees are sticking to their routes and staying on schedule instead of slacking off or taking unsanctioned breaks.
Give Your Customers More Information
Customers want to be in the loop. If there’s going to be a delay, they want to be informed about it as soon as possible.
The best route planners, such as Route4Me, allow you to do that for your customers. Route4Me has an online portal that customers can use to check on the real-time status of your employees’ arrival time.
We also have a customer alerting and notification feature that automatically sends the customer a notification when your driver is about to arrive. They’ll appreciate the notice.
What have you been doing to improve your business’s reputation? Do you have any questions about this article? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
Finally, answering the following questions correctly will confirm that you understand how a route planner helps you manage your business’s reputation:
- How can a route planner ensure your employees make it to all their stops on time?
- How can you guarantee that your employees are on their best behavior while on the road?
- What’s the benefit of a customer alerting and notification feature?