Custom Alerts: How Quickly Can You Turn a Problem into an Opportunity?

When it comes to delivery and service calls, some mishaps are beyond your control, giving you no option but to respond (not react, never that). To help ensure you do the former and not the latter, it's a good idea to play a little game I like to call "If this, then that." This game isn't so fun, but it is useful for setting up Custom Alerts on your technology side, which I'll get to in a quick minute.

Let's say you're a wholesale fish seller. If the Sous-chef receiving your ice-encased fish says he ordered the Snapper instead of the Halibut, then the driver is to document it like this, or if it's a major mistake call person X. Say you're a warehouse manager for a furniture store, then play out what should happen if your driver damages a customer's driveway —or causes any property damage for that matter.

Priming employees with protocols for negative situations in the field will serve you mightily in the long run. Mistakes happen, but if you're prepared, they can be turned into a display of your customer service prowess. Show them proof why your company is carrying five stars on Google Reviews. It all starts by forming preemptive solutions by imagining everything that could go wrong. Yes, I'm asking you to daydream about your nightmares. Don't worry; the scary part will be over soon as I share how to set up a happy ending for just about any scenario.

Knowing there's a problem quickly is half the battle.

Excellent customer service comes from the mindset of being a problem-solving machine. That means you don't pretend like challenges won't arise. Instead, you create protocols and workflows designed to fix them when they do. One thing I love about our software is the ease in which you can set up Custom Alerts for anything or anyone in the organization.

By customizing alert triggers, you can keep your office and sales staff informed of any new issues, sometimes even as they unfold. Let's say your driver is unable to complete a job because the truck is missing an item. As soon as they log that detail into the mobile app, on-site you can have it set up to send an alert email to the office or the salesperson who's responsible for the order. Then, they can then call the customer directly to assure them a solution is already being worked out. In fact, you just found the item in your warehouse! Say you're sorry and tell them it will be on the truck for delivery the following day. Accidents happen, but your customer service excellence never stops serving.

Turn a delivery hiccup into a showcase for your company's elevated awareness of operational happenings.

You can customize email alerts for an array of different actions all connected to the mobile app in the field. Setting up these triggers in DispatchTrack is simple, mostly just cut and paste. The real work on your end comes down to deciding what constitutes an alert and who should know about it based on what happened. You connect your plan to your field software and voilà; your problems become like water droplets on a Teflon pan.

I've been with DispatchTrack from the beginning. Through that time, we've worked with thousands of companies across industries, molding the product through trial, error, and unceasing iterations. Because of our agile team and short production pipeline, we've been able to steer product functionality toward solving more challenges for everyone. Custom Alerts is an excellent example of the kind of effort we put into the details that drive our mission and your growth.

Thanks for reading, I hope you can incorporate some of these ideas into your workflow in the future.