4 Ways GPS Fleet Tracking Improves Customer Service
By SkyBitz • Published March 2, 2017 • 5 minute read
If your industry involves providing a service such as installation, maintenance, or repair, it’s important to remember that customers take time out of their day to wait for your drivers to arrive. Your ability to provide great customer service naturally correlates with customer satisfaction and the success of your business, making it more important than ever that your drivers can get to your customers on time and work efficiently.
Implementing GPS fleet tracking can make a fleet manager’s life a lot easier by collecting accurate data that helps you make better decisions. A complete fleet management solution also comes equipped with features like scheduling and dispatching.
4 Quick Ways to Improve GPS Fleet Vehicle Tracking Customer Service
1. Dispatch the closest vehicles to customers on the fly so you can serve them more quickly
When a driver is needed at a customer location, the dispatch process should be as simple as possible. GPS fleet tracking technology can be integrated with automated dispatching so drivers can be assigned to jobs instantly whenever you need them. Not only can you easily dispatch drivers, but you can search for the closest driver to the customer’s location.
That way, you won’t end up with a driver rushing from the other side of town and still not arriving on time. A vehicle location tracking solution also makes it easy to verify that a driver arrived at a customer’s location as expected, eliminating the possibility of breakdowns in communication.
2. Improve scheduling by managing the workloads of drivers, and complete more jobs in a day
Dispatching the closest driver is one way to ensure fleet efficiency, but you also need to make sure work is evenly distributed amongst drivers. Otherwise, one driver can easily end up handling more jobs than the rest.
A major benefit of fleet management solutions is that they allow you to keep track of drivers’ schedules so you can be sure your fleet drivers aren’t overworked and too tired to provide the best customer service. Tracking the average appointment duration makes it easy to plan accordingly.
At the same time, you can serve more customers with the employees and vehicles you have through optimization of your fleet’s scheduling. In addition to helping you do more business, efficient scheduling allows you to give customers more options of available time slots so they can choose the soonest and most convenient times.
3. Create more efficient routes so drivers arrive on time.
Once a driver is dispatched to a job, you need to make sure they’re able to get there as quickly as possible. Quick arrival doesn’t mean drivers should speed or engage in any other risky behaviors, which you can also use fleet tracking to monitor and prevent.
You need drivers to get to a location on time and safely. Efficient routing combined with automated dispatch goes a long way toward making this happen.
After all, what’s the use of sending the closest driver if they will then take an indirect route or end up stuck in traffic? GPS fleet tracking solutions can take all these factors into account—time of day, speed limits, accidents, roadwork—and find the best way for the driver to get to their location.
Customer satisfaction increases when drivers are consistently on time to jobs.
4. Improve dispatch-to-driver communications about job status.
An automated fleet tracking solution may be able to do a lot for you, but there may also be times when dispatchers need to communicate directly with your drivers. This may involve updating drivers with details regarding why they’re being dispatched and additional information about a job.
A driver who is tied up with a customer can easily let you know so you can dispatch another driver.
Communications between dispatchers and drivers need to be as smooth as possible so no information is lost in the shuffle. If an unreliable system fails and drivers can’t be contacted, the service that a customer receives could easily be impacted negatively, so two-way messaging is an extremely beneficial feature.
Increase customer satisfaction and profitability through fleet tracking
Manually keeping track of so many different variables can easily overwhelm even the most capable fleet manager. Luckily, modern technology can handle all of your worries for you. With GPS fleet tracking, the four factors mentioned in this article combine forces to improve your response times.
In turn, you can deliver the best service to customer possible, leading to an increase in customer satisfaction—and ultimately, increased profitability.
