Notify Next Customer – Customer Alerting and Notifications

The Notify Next Customer Add-On allows you to automate the process of notifying your customers with E-Mail and SMS Notifications that they are next to be visited by your delivery driver or field employee. Thus, when your driver is finished servicing a particular route stop and marks it as Departed, the system will automatically notify the customer at the next route stop with the predefined notification(s) that can contain order delivery time and date, order status, time and distance to the next stop, order tracking URL, and other relevant details regarding the stages of your order fulfillment process.

In addition to the custom text in your notification messages, you can also insert multiple informative placeholders that retrieve data from particular Route4Me fixed attributes (i.e., order numbers, customers’ names, estimated arrival times, etc.) and automatically insert this data into your notifications as text. Moreover, to fully accommodate the particular needs of your last mile delivery, field service, field sales, middle mile, or logistics business or unique business model, the Route4Me dynamic routing software also enables you to customize the design of your Notify Next Customer E-Mail Notifications using custom SendGrid templates that can include your company’s logo(s), contact details, unique color schemes, and more.

To set up your Notify Next Customer Notifications, first, go to Notification Settings from the navigation menu.

After that, go to the Notifications tab from the menu on the left and then enable the Notify Next Customer Notifications by checking the Next Stop box.

Next, enable the preferred notification types (E-Mail and SMS Messaging) by clicking on the corresponding icons. Then, use the Earliest Notification (Local Time) and the Latest Notification (Local Time) fields to define the preferred custom time window for each notification type.

After that, in the E-mail tab, you can define the text/message for the E-Mail Notifications that will be sent to the customers associated with the corresponding next route stops. Use the From field to add the sender of the E-Mail Notifications and the Subject field to add the subject of the E-Mail Notifications.

To use placeholders for retrieving one or multiple particular Route4Me fixed attributes (i.e., order numbers, customers’ names, estimated arrival times, etc.), and insert them into your notifications, input the corresponding placeholders (in curly braces) into the Message field together with the custom message text. Here’s the list of all available placeholders and learn how to use them. For more convenience, when you input placeholders into your notification messages, the correct placeholders are highlighted in green color, and the incorrect ones are highlighted in red color.

To fully accommodate the particular needs of your logistics-intense business or unique business model, Route4Me enables you to customize your Notify Next Customer E-Mail Notifications using custom SendGrid templates. To use a custom SendGrid template for your E-Mail Notifications, first, make sure that SendGrid is selected as your Service Provider and that the corresponding Service Providers Configurations are adjusted accordingly in the Advanced settings. Next, insert the preferred template ID from your SendGrid account into the Template ID field.

Using SendGrid templates allows you to create fully custom designs for your E-Mail Notifications that can include your company’s logo(s), contact details, unique color schemes, and more.

When the Template ID field is empty, you can use the Default Template for sending default E-Mail Notifications, where you can adjust the following settings:

• Greeting: The greeting phrase that is inserted at the beginning of the E-Mail Notifications (the First Name ({{first_name}}) placeholder is optional);
• Status Message: The status of the order that is displayed in the subject of the E-Mail Notifications;
• Link to Tracking Page Message: Link to the Order Tracking Portal with the automatically inserted Order Number of the associated customer;
• Order Info: The information about the customer’s order (the Order Number ({{order_no}}) placeholder is optional).

In the SMS tab, you can set up the text/message for the SMS Notifications that will be sent to all customers associated with the corresponding next stops.

SMS Notifications are sent out to customers as regular text messages, where you can define the contents of the text message and the sender. In addition to the custom text in your SMS notifications, you can also insert informative placeholders that retrieve data from particular Route4Me fixed attributes (i.e., order numbers, customers’ names, estimated arrival times, etc.) and automatically insert this data into your messages.

How Are the Notify Next Customer Notifications Triggered?

The Notify Next Customer Notification(s) are sent to a customer once the stop before this customer on the given route is marked by your team member as Departed.

NOTE: Make sure that the given route was “Approved to Execute” before sending the Notify Next Customer notifications.

For example, once the first stop on a particular route is marked as Departed, the customer who is associated with the second stop on the given route will receive the corresponding predefined E-Mail and SMS Notifications.

All notification types are sent to the customers/prospects whose contact information is defined in the Customer section of the corresponding route stops. The Customer section of each route stop can be accessed and modified using the Route Editor in real-time.