Increasing customer on time appointments by 19.3%
Luke Wenzel
Helping service pros and homeowners keep in touch, and avoid missed appointments.
Let's pretend...
You sit in the back office of A1 Plumbing. Today has been a nightmare. You swear every single person just called to complain. It doesn't help that your plumbers were 2 hours behind schedule for most of the day.
You tried to let customers know things are running late but, there's so many jobs, people just slip though the cracks. Plus you have your sanity to worry about.
You clock out and head home. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Company
Dispatch is a field service software for service pros.
(Plumbers, HVAC installers, builders, handymen, etc. )
My Role
Founding designer.
I owned everything from the upfront research to the final pixels.
Platforms
Desktop / mobile web
Mobile native
Problems
Appointments often run late
Field work that takes longer than the scheduled appointment window is often unavoidable. Sometimes it's a difficult client, traffic, or just a bigger job than estimated.
Scattered communications
For the back office staff, notifying customers that the team will be late requires a lot of effort and coordination. This is because their customer communications are scattered across multiple surfaces. (email, phone, sms)
Goals
Help service pros earn repeat business. Running late is often unavoidable, so good communication helps to set expectations with the customer; and goes a long way toward earning repeat business.
Design Iterations
Dispatch Design System
Being the only designer, I had to build the Dispatch Design System from the ground up. All the new messaging components were custom designed by me. I leveraged established design systems for inspiration often.
Design system components. Buttons, fonts. text bubbles, etc.
Final designs
To combat the scattered communications issue. I introduced global chat to our desktop app. Most businesses, like A1 Plumbing, had a dedicated dispatcher that handled tasks like scheduling, customer service, billing, etc. So, it made sense to start providing value on desktop.
The feedback we got was positive overall but, dispatchers struggled to remember which conversation matched up which job.
Global chat
To help provide that context, I designed a dedicated inbox page with a ‘job’ panel.
At this stage, we also introduced the ability for dispatchers to initiate conversations with customers.
Dedicated inbox page
Lastly, we introduced messaging to our mobile app. For sole-proprietors, without a dedicated dispatcher, the mobile app gave them the flexibility to update customers on the go. It also helped the larger business keep contractors in the field up to date.
Mobile messaging
Results
The feature set was first released in beta to three hundred customers for testing and then rolled out to our full network. By the third day of the public release, the platform was handling over 20,000 messages a day.
Increase in on-time appointments
19.3% reduction in customer “no shows”
Customer “no shows” cost businesses an average of $50 per instance.
(Not even counting the lost profit from the job itself)
Happier customers
8% Increase in average customer star rating.
While I wasn’t able to measure any increased rate of repeat customers. I was able to measure messaging’s effect on start rating as an analogous metric.
Feedback
“‘I found it the other day and I love it.”
— Kennard Weaver, Hometown Rooter Plumbing
“This is amazing. I have already used it, and loved it!”
— Erika Smoke, A Water Solution, Inc
“Mobile messaging has been FANTASTIC! The ability to communicate with the customer while on the road has made the experience as a whole, much better.…”
— Stephen Jaeger , Jaeger Electric Inc
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Posted May 6, 2024
Founding designer at a Series A. Built our Design system from scratch, shipped countless features including this messaging platform.
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