Unshackle your team from endless scheduling calls and empower your customers to select their desired delivery window from your defined schedule.
See below for how to:- Create your Delivery Zones
- Set your Delivery Slots/Windows
- Set your Delivery Slot Limit
- Adding Jobs to Radaro for Self-Scheduling by Customers
- Editing Delivery Zones or Slots
- Adding New Postcodes
- Viewing Customer Comments
- FAQ
Getting Started
There are 3 steps to starting with Dynamic Self Scheduling (DSS).
Step 1 - Create your Delivery Zones
A Delivery Zone is an area defined by a set of postcodes. The zone can be configured with postcode ranges or singular postcodes.
For example – Melbourne CBD delivery zone could be comprised of postcodes 3000-3011, 3050-3052 and 3121.
Step 2 - Set your Delivery Slots/Delivery Windows
Your delivery slots/windows are the hours clients can book their delivery for.
For example, you may have AM and PM delivery slots, so your delivery slots would be 8am-12pm and 1pm-5pm.
Step 3 - Set your Delivery Slot Limit
The slot limit relates to the number of deliveries you can make within the set delivery slot/window. The limit will be based on the number of Drivers available to service that slot and the anticipated duration of deliveries.
Recommendations
To ensure you have capacity within your driver network, we recommend starting with allowing clients to choose a delivery day only. From there empowered with your delivery data and client feedback, you can choose to add AM or PM options, before considering further window options.
Your Radaro Customer Success Manager will work with you to configure your Delivery Zones and Slot configuration.
Adding Jobs to Radaro for Self-Scheduling by Customers
For the standard Radaro service, there are 3 mandatory fields.
- Delivery Name
- Delivery Address
- Delivery Deadline
When DSS is active, there are 4 mandatory fields:
- Delivery Name
- Delivery Address
- Customer Mobile Number
- Delivery Post Code or Delivery Zone
Jobs can be added in three ways -
- Manually via the Management portal
- Via Bulk Upload csv file to the Management portal
- Via API
1) Adding Jobs manually via the Management portal
The Add Jobs screen will show certain new features when DSS is activated.
You will see the option to Schedule job or Create job as shown above.
To enable a customer to choose their delivery time, use Schedule job.
Add the client details as normal, including the post code or delivery zone field, along with any job labels or skill sets as required. Save by clicking the Add job button once complete.
The job will be create the job in a 'pending' status and immediately trigger an SMS (and email if address provided) to the client allowing them to self schedule.
2) Adding jobs via a Bulk Upload csv file
Your Radaro Customer Success Manager can you provide you a template file or arrange for a Data Transformation service to be provided to convert your existing data files to the required format.
The key change when uploading jobs in bulk is the need for:
a) Delivery postcode column
b) Delivery zone column
c) Status column
Either the Delivery postcode or the Delivery zone column must be completed, and the Status column must show 'pending'.
3) API
The API details for creating Jobs within Radaro can be found here.
Editing Delivery Zones or Slots
You can access and edit the Delivery Zones and Slots via the green graph button next to your portal name.
Initially you will see the summary screen showing your zones.
Click on a Zone to see the details:
- Associated postcodes
- Delivery windows
- Slots available
To edit a Zone, select the Zone and then click the Settings cog icon.
You can edit either the post codes associated with the zone or the delivery slots.
Editing the Delivery Zone Postcodes
Click on the existing post code range you wish to edit.
The post code range will appear, edit as necessary and then click the green tick to save the change.
To add a new post code to an existing zone, click the + icon
You will be able to add a single post code to the range or tick the postcode range box, to add a new range of postcodes.
Once you’ve saved the changes, you will see the new summary for the zone.
Editing the Slots and Intervals
If you wish to make a permanent change to your slots and intervals, contact your Radaro Customer Success Manager. Here you can only make changes that will affect a single day within a 2 week period.
To edit the slots and intervals, for a specific day (staff leave or change to service hours for a special reason) select the zone, Settings cog and then change from postcode range to Slots & Intervals.
Editable Features
Availability – turn off to prevent clients being able to select that specific day.
Slots – to increase or decrease the number of delivery slots available for a day, select slots then edit accordingly and press the green tick to save the changes.
Intervals -
- Click the + symbol to add a new delivery window
- Click the time period to edit the start and end times of the window
- Click the slot number to adjust the available slots up or down
- Click the delete bin to remove the delivery slot/window entirely
Viewing Customer Comments
When customers are selecting their desired delivery window, there is an option to add a comment.
You can capture these comments in several ways –
1) From the Management Portal
Click into the specific job – under Details you will be able to see the customer comment.
2) From the Jobs Report csv export – pending comment
Within the Radaro management portals reporting section, the export has been updated to include a new pending_comment column (column AA)
3) From API –
A pending_comments field has been added to the API, so will now appear in all endpoints and webhooks.
FAQ
Question - If a delivery date has already been confirmed with the client, can I still load a job with this set time?
Answer - Yes
- Manual Job Creation - use the Create Job option. When using the Create Job option, you will not be using the DSS functionality.
- Bulk Upload file – leave the Status field blank and add a Job Deadline. This will create the job within Radaro with either an unassigned or assigned status if you allocated a Driver in the upload file.
Question - How can I tell if a customer has selected their delivery date?
Answer - The job status will change from Pending (teal green) to an Unassigned (bright green) status once the client has selected their preferred delivery day.
Question - What if a client does not respond the SMS/email to set their delivery day?
Answer - Within the Radaro Management portal, you will be able to see jobs in a “pending” status by the teal green status and the note saying the Deadline hasn’t been set (shown below).
You can also filter the Jobs tab to view only Pending jobs.
You can manually resend customer messages to prompt a response.
Simply click on the job, followed by the Notify Customer button – this will resend the SMS &/or email.
Or, you can arrange for an automated secondary SMS/email to be sent to clients who have not confirmed their delivery day to occur after a set time period. Speak with your Radaro Customer Success Manager to implement this automated message.
Question - What if a client contacts us rather than using the SMS to self serve?
Answer - Simply edit the customer job within the Radaro Management portal to set the delivery day and window as per the customers request. Within the Management Portal, you will be able to see which days have delivery windows have available time.
Once you save the changes, click CONFIRM JOB to change the status from pending to unassigned.
Question - What if I need to schedule deliveries outside of my standard delivery zones?
Answer - Contact your Customer Success Manager to learn about configuring 'Exception' zones to accommodate delivery exceptions.
Question - Why can we only schedule jobs 2 weeks in advance?
Answer - There are often changes to schedules so by allowing customers a two week window protects you from the potential of breaking customer commitments.