Choosing arrival windows your routes can keep
Arrival windows are a promise to the customer and a constraint on the route, and the width you choose shows up in stops per day.
Priya Raman//4 min read/Operations
A one hour window forces the route into an order set by promises. A four hour window lets the route follow geography, which is the only ordering that lowers cost.
Companies that widen windows and add a 30 minute heads up text usually gain more than a stop per technician per day while on time rates go up. The text does the reassurance work the narrow window was doing.
Keep a small number of fixed appointment slots for customers who need them, price them accordingly, and cluster them on one day.
The window is a routing decision
A one hour window forces the route into an order set by promises. A four hour window lets the route follow geography, which is the only ordering that lowers cost. The customer experience the narrow window is meant to protect can be delivered instead by a text message that costs nothing and arrives when it matters.
| Window | Stops per day | On time rate | Customer calls asking where the tech is |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | 9 to 10 | 78% | High |
| 2 hour | 11 | 86% | Moderate |
| 4 hour with heads up text | 13 to 14 | 94% | Low |
| Full day with heads up text | 15 and up | 96% | Low |
Companies that widen windows and add a thirty minute heads up text usually gain more than a stop per technician per day while on time rates go up. The text does the reassurance work the narrow window was doing, and it does it with real information.
Write the messages once
Three messages cover the whole experience. A confirmation the evening before with the window, a heads up when the technician is thirty minutes out, and a summary after the visit with what was found and what to expect. Set them up once in the field software and the office stops fielding location questions.
- Evening before, the date and the window in plain numbers.
- Thirty minutes out, the technician's first name and the arrival estimate.
- After the visit, the work completed and the next scheduled date.
- One reply path that reaches a person, since some customers will answer the text.
Customers ask for a narrow window because they want certainty, and a message on the morning of the visit gives them more of it than a promise made three weeks ago.
Keep a small set of fixed appointments
Some customers genuinely need a specific hour, a landlord meeting a tenant, a business with a service door open at ten. Keep those, cluster them on one day, and price them for the routing cost they carry. A modest fixed appointment fee both funds the disruption and keeps the volume where it belongs.
Move the book gradually
Change the window on new customers first, then move existing accounts as they renew. Six months in, most of the book is on the wider window, nobody received a letter about it, and the route has absorbed the gain quietly. Measure stops per day and on time rate through the transition so the improvement is visible to the team doing the work.
