Many small business managers still use pen and paper to plan their routines for field employees. Are you one of them?
If so, maybe you’re just used to the way that you’ve always done things, so you haven’t explored your other options. Or maybe you’re afraid that teaching your team how to use new technology like an app for route planning will be a frustrating process that’s ultimately more trouble than it’s worth.
Whatever the reason, if you’re still planning your routes manually, you’re making a mistake.
Save Time With A Daily Routine Planner
Route planning is complicated. There’s more to it than just figuring out the best directions to give your field employees. You also need to account for traffic, construction, customer availability, and many other factors.
That can take a long time to do by yourself. Depending on the number of customers you need to visit, it can take hours.
But there’s no reason to plan routes by yourself. You can use a daily routine planner instead. With route optimization software, you can plan routes in less than a minute, no matter how many stops you need to make. You just need to plug in the addresses you want to visit, set the constraints (number of drivers, availability window for each customer, etc.), and then you’re good to go. The software does all the hard work for you.
That’s what makes a daily planner such an excellent time-management tool. It will help you with balancing your work. You’ll have more time for all of your other daily activities.
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Increase Productivity
Again, route planning is complicated. When you try to do it by hand, it’s easy to make a mistake. All it takes is one mistake to completely mess up a route, which would delay your field employees and upset many of your customers.
A schedule planner will provide you with more accurate and efficient routes. It gives your field employees what they need to consistently show up to each of their stops on time. Your customers will love you for that!
Keep An Eye On Your Field Employees
Courier services, food delivery companies, and all other small businesses that depend on field employees face the same challenge: they don’t really know what their field employees are doing on the job.
They could be working hard and staying on schedule, or they could be slacking off and falling behind. If you call out a field employee for arriving late to a stop and they tell you it’s because they were stuck in traffic, is that really true? You’re in an office when they’re on the road, so how are you supposed to know?
GPS routing is how. With GPS routing, you can track the location and speed of your field employees in real-time. That way, you can always confirm that they’re doing what you want them to do.
Keep Your Customers In The Loop
Another benefit to GPS tracking is that certain route optimization tools allow you to share tracking data through a customer portal.
Customers don’t like being in the dark. As they wait for you to arrive, they want as many updates as possible. If there’s going to be a delay, they want to know about it immediately.
The best route planning tools will generate a unique tracking link for every route you create, which you can send to your customers via email or SMS. Then, your customers can simply enter that tracking link into your customer portal to see the real-time location of your field employee displayed on a map. They’ll know exactly how long they need to wait for you to arrive.
Being able to provide this information is a great way to improve customer satisfaction. It will also help you grow your business, as it increases the odds that your customers will recommend you to their family, friends, and other people they know.
Free Trial And 24/7 Support
Not all route optimization platforms are equal. Some have confusing interfaces, while others are very easy to use.
It’s difficult to determine how intuitive software is until you actually try it out, though. That’s why you shouldn’t bother with any software that doesn’t offer a free trial. This is a huge red flag – if a company isn’t willing to offer a free trial, that means they’re not confident in the quality of their product. Make sure you can try before you buy.
You’ll want to make sure that the daily routine planner you invest in has 24/7 support as well. If there’s ever an issue with the software, you need to be able to contact the company and get the problem fixed as soon as possible. Every hour without a daily routine planner is an hour when your small business isn’t as productive and profitable as it could be.
So, do you have any questions about this article? Please let us know in the comments section below.
Finally, answering these three questions correctly will confirm that you understand how a daily routine planner improves efficiency:
- How does a daily routine planner help you save time?
- How does route optimization software improve field employee productivity?
- What are the benefits of a free trial and 24/7 support?
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