So basically I got into this thing with our dispatch team because I feel like we're sending customers way too much info that they don't actually read or care about, right? Like we send these long automated updates with technician name, estimated arrival, job status, parts ordered, blah blah blah. And I was talking to this homeowner last week who was like "I just want to know when you're showing up" which made me think... what if we're overcomplicating this?
So I guess my question is like, from the field side but also dispatch/ops side — what do your customers actually open? What do they respond to? Because I feel like we're writing novels when maybe a text with "on our way, 20 min out" is all anyone wants. But then I'm not the one who gets the angry calls if we don't tell them enough, so... idk. Curious how other teams balance this.
We've been testing a middle ground that seems to be working well for our team. The key insight from our customer surveys was that **uncertainty** drives anxiety, not lack of information. So we focus on setting clear expectations upfront rather than frequent updates.
Our current approach:
- **At booking**: clear window (not "8am-5pm" — we learned that's useless), what the tech will need access to, how long the job typically takes
- **Night before**: only if window is >4 hours, we narrow it
- **Day of**: single "on the way" with realistic ETA
- **After**: summary and invoice
The team also started adding a personal note in the "on the way" text — just something like "Hi, it's Marcus from [Company], heading your way now" — and our customers specifically mention it in reviews. Small thing, big impact.
Has anyone tried letting customers choose their preferred communication style during booking? We're considering adding that as a preference field.
Paula, I love seeing this conversation unfold — it's such a great example of how customer communication preferences can vary so widely across different teams and customer bases!
We want to make sure you're all set up for success here, so I wanted to flag a couple of resources that might help as you're thinking about notification strategy:
- Our tips for rolling out to larger field teams include a section on customer communication preferences
- The customer notification settings in FieldPulse let you customize which events trigger messages — worth a review if you haven't looked recently
If anyone wants to share what they've landed on as a final setup, we would absolutely love to hear it. These real-world insights help us think about how we can make the platform more flexible for different communication styles. Feel free to drop your approaches here or reach out directly if you want to dig into configuration options!
Paula, I love seeing this conversation unfold — it's such a great example of how customer communication preferences can vary so widely across different teams and customer bases!
We want to make sure you're all set up for success here, so I wanted to flag a couple of resources that might help as you're thinking about notification strategy:
- Our tips for rolling out to larger field teams include a section on customer communication preferences
- The customer notification settings in FieldPulse let you customize which events trigger messages — worth a review if you haven't looked recently
If anyone wants to share what they've landed on as a final setup, we would absolutely love to hear it. These real-world insights help us think about how we can make the platform more flexible for different communication styles. Feel free to drop your approaches here or reach out directly if you want to dig into configuration options!
