People are using deliveries or at-home services more and more often. In fact, 86% of consumers use off-premise services at least once a month. But businesses that rely on fast deliveries or field agents face a recurring problem: logistics. Scheduling and communicating with employees or contractors in the field can be difficult at best. It’s no wonder businesses are turning to new technologies—like business texting—to help.
Managing field communications through a business-grade texting platform empowers dispatch and operations teams to save time, improve team efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction.
Read on to learn the top 3 ways you can use dispatch business texting to improve your business operations.
Streamline Day-to-Day Internal Communications with Business Texting
Even without in-field roadblocks—which we’ll address next—daily dispatch communications are complex. Operations teams have to efficiently convey key details, schedules, and other information to field agents so they can ensure products and services are delivered on time. But communicating these details to each field technician or delivery person separately can consume a lot of time—especially through channels like email and phone calls.
With a business text messaging platform, dispatch teams can quickly send teams texts containing scheduling, holiday, or other key information. Operations teams can schedule or immediately send these personalized messages en masse with a single click, ensuring that each in-field staff member receives important communications without spending time sending each message individually. 
This can come in handy with staffing in particular. For example, if a food delivery company knows they expect a high demand in deliveries one evening due to a surge in orders, operations managers can quickly send a mass text to couriers asking whether anyone can work last minute. If a delivery or transportation business is notified about construction on a particular street, managers can tell drivers to avoid that location.
Using business text messaging to send these communications is a lot quicker than calling each courier to confirm availability separately—which is particularly important when it comes to timely messages.
Example SMS:
Operations team: Hi {{contractor name}}, this is Emily with Flamin’ Hot Pizza. We’re expecting a surge in orders this evening. Do you think you’ll be available to work at 5pm?
Use Business Texting to Master In-Field Challenges
Historically, dispatch teams have faced a specific problem: in-field roadblocks. In-field staff often face on-the-spot issues like improper keycodes, incorrect addresses, clients forgetting about planned home visits, and other unexpected issues.
When faced with these problems, field agents usually call into their operations teams, who then try to solve the problems themselves or call the client. Unfortunately, clients rarely pick up their phones if they don’t recognize the number. Even if they do answer, relaying information via phone from field agent to operations team to client to field agent is time-consuming for operations managers, who can only communicate with one in-field employee at a time. If the information is not shared, field agents either have to wait for the client come back to their property, losing time, or move to the next job, dislodging the master schedule and requiring operations teams to reschedule the client visit.
While calls are time-consuming—and emails far too slow to work in time-dependent situations—modern operations teams use business texting to get fast results.
When field agents experience a problem, they can quickly text in to their operations team to see if they have the solution. With SMS, operations team members can handle multiple field requests simultaneously. If their operations team doesn’t have the answer, they can text the relevant client to see whether they have the solution. Since 90% of texts are read within 3 seconds of receipt, it’s almost a guarantee that a client will be able to read and respond to a text quickly enough to prevent any scheduling problems—increasing overall client satisfaction, too.
Example conversation:
Field agent: Hi team, I’m at Charlene Maxwell’s house on Williams St. and Main. Her garden keycode (8543) isn’t working. Can you ask her whether that is the correct one? -Brian
Operations team member: Sure. Give me 5 minutes.
Operations team member: Hi, Brian, Charlene says it’s actually 8542. Let me know if that works.
Field agent: I’m in. Thanks!
Simplify Dispatch Operations with Business Texting Platform Integrations
Most companies today use cloud-based business apps to run their business operations. These apps are user-friendly and effective—but often, businesses use so many that switching back and forth between messages becomes a time-consuming task.
With the help of business SMS integrations, operations teams can streamline their apps. For example, if an operations team uses Zendesk to manage customer service or field tech emails, they can integrate it with their business SMS platform. A comprehensive Zendesk integration will empower a team to read and reply to texts from within the Zendesk interface, streamlining agents’ workflows and allows them to see a client’s entire messaging history from one centralized location. Similarly, an integration with Zapier can help businesses integrate with home visit or delivery scheduling software and CRM systems.
Business texting platforms can also integrate with company websites. Simple website widgets make it easy for field techs or customers to text operations teams from select web pages, like delivery tracking pages.
Advanced business texting platforms offer integrations with these and other popular business apps, helping dispatch and operations teams streamline everything from the scheduling process to billing.
Ready to improve your business operations? Try business text messaging for dispatch and operations today.
