Freight shipping platform
A freight shipping and logistics platform with automated freight quotes, load board integrations, AI-Assisted Process Automation, and more.
This case study brief is a summary of one aspect of the platform, which focuses on the process of getting shipments into the system and handling phone calls and messages.
About the client
FreightSideKick is a national provider of transportation and logistics services with customers across the country. They offer freight services through a network of trucking companies and assist shippers with finding spot-market capacity for LTL and truckload freight. With such a large customer and carrier base, the company faced challenges in managing inquiries and support requests efficiently.
The challenge
Companies like FreightSideKick receive thousands of calls every day from carriers, coordinating empty trucks with freight that is on the ground and ready to ship. When truckers call in, they need all kinds of information about the shipment in question, like product information, dimensions and weight, equipment that is required to carry the load, and so on. The dispatch team was struggling to handle the high volume of calls, leading to long wait times, frustrated truckers, and lost opportunities. The dispatch team required a solution to streamline inquiries, allowing them to manage more requests without juggling phone lines.
The solution
The ideal solution required an IVR system and a chat interface where agents could handle multiple bookings. The goal was to automatically provide callers with information about the shipment without having to wait for an available agent, and then facilitate a "hand-off", switching the caller to SMS, where they complete their booking via text. The end product makes it so the booking agent is rarely brought into a conversation until the booking is nearly complete.
Below is a demo of the initial MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which has been refined much further since:
UPDATE
2023-03-05
There have been many updates to this system since this case study brief was written, including AI-Assisted automation of checking emails and automatically
importing shipments into the system.
Results
Deployment of the IVR and chat system transformed a high-stress environment of juggling phones and missing opportunities, into a calm and peaceful environment where every driver and dispatcher is tended to promptly and team members can handle multiple bookings simultaneously.
300% +
Increase in postings
90%
Reduction of inbound call handling