Automation That Keeps The Human Involved

In today's freight industry, the discussion around automation often centers on replacing manual tasks and minimizing human intervention. Appointment scheduling is such a critical, and complex, part of freight management that it has mostly been left as a manual task.

When we look closely at how businesses communicate with their customers, particularly concerning specific locations or requests, we find that companies who are "automating" appointment scheduling are usually automating initial requests on less than 30% of their appointments.

While portals exist and are used by some, they represent a minority of communication channels, with less than 30% of locations reportedly using them for interactions. Phone calls, often thought of as the traditional direct interaction method, account for even less, under 10%.

And as long as requests are happening via email, interaction is still very much occurring. Even as automation is adopted to handle aspects of these communications, the human element isn't entirely lost. Your company's brand and name are still associated with each request that comes in.

Furthermore, the ability to see and respond to emails and questions is part of this ongoing interaction, even if parts of the process become automated.

We have reached a point with the availability of AI and ML inside of workflows, that even email interactions can be largely automated. The key is to ensure that the communication layer retains elements that connect the service back to the provider.

Despite technological advancements, direct customer-facing communication methods like email continue to play a significant role in logistics coordination, and so we are focused on creating appointment scheduling automation and execution technology that keeps a human in the loop, automates the bulk of the work, protects a TMS based workflow (even for emails!), and maintains the link between service and brand.