You have to work with a lot of moving parts as a dispatch team. You’re managing internal and frontline operations as well as customer satisfaction. As you may have already discovered, dispatch text messaging is a great tool for real-time communications in these fast-moving situations.
But there’s a good chance you’re still manually completing workflows that you could easily automate. Business SMS platforms offer a lot of critical automation and integration tools that can help your team streamline simple, repetitive tasks. This way, you can focus on reacting to real-time situations, instead of managing day-to-day tasks.
So how can you automate these tasks with dispatch text messaging? Let’s dive in.
Want to learn more about using automations to streamline your workflows? Read our ebook Automated Text Messaging: The Complete Guide
Get the guideDelivery Updates
There’s a good chance you have a point of sale (PoS) or eCommerce platform that emails customers when their orders have advanced a step in the delivery process. You may have noticed that these emails are sometimes lost in junk folders or otherwise missed by customers. With dispatch text messaging, you can send these notifications to customers through SMS automatically.
To set up a delivery update automation, you simply have to:
- Integrate your text dispatch platform with your PoS or eCommerce system using a pre-created integration or APIs
- Choose a trigger in your text dispatch platform (e.g., “Order Status” change within your PoS system)
- Select a consequent action in your text dispatch platform (e.g., send welcome template)
This automation should immediately text customers when their order has changed status. For example, your text dispatch platform will text them with a quick confirmation text right after your PoS system logs an order.
Automating your delivery updates ensures customers will know the exact status of their orders without any extra work from your team. Plus, texting has a 98% open rate, which almost ensures that your customers will read it.
Shift Organization
Managing delivery workers’ shifts can be a challenge. You can use dispatch text messaging to quickly coordinate last-minute shift changes and unexpected challenges, but workers can forget their shifts easily, especially if they’re constantly in flux. With a text dispatch platform, your team can automate shift reminders so delivery workers never forget a shift—even if it was only confirmed the day before.
To set up a shift organization automation, you have to:
- Create a basic shift reminder template (or templates) with space for custom fields
- Choose a list of recipients
- Schedule your message for a certain time (e.g., 12 hours before the shift begins)
- Return to the text dispatch platform to make any adjustments before the message sends
Your message will send right when you scheduled it. You may want to schedule multiple reminders spaced out before the shifts. Workers can reply privately, and individual responses will arrive right in your shared inbox. You can even schedule an SMS drip campaign that texts workers every day with reminders. (Read more on automating drip campaigns in the next section.)
Scheduling messages is a simple way to ensure all of your delivery workers show up on time for their shifts. This can be especially helpful when your team is juggling shift changes regularly.
Training and Retraining Management
Training and retraining are key for successful dispatch teams—especially if your product is particularly fragile or requires special handling. While in-person training and retraining is critical, so are follow-up materials. With a text dispatch platform, you can send regular training tips and content without manually sending each text. SMS drip campaigns are just as easy to set up (and more likely to be read) as email drip campaigns for training.
To set up an SMS drip campaign, your team can:
- Choose a list of recipients
- Select a schedule to send the texts on
- Create multiple templated training messages
Your scheduled training texts will send on the schedule of your choice. As with individually scheduled messages, team members can reply privately with training questions or queries. You can remove or add team members to the SMS drip campaign at any time.
Automating training and retraining content is a great way to ensure you’re running a top-notch team that provides the best customer experience possible.
Want a step-by-step look at building text automations to expedite every area of your business? Read our ebook Automated Text Messaging: The Complete Guide.
