Service Request: Allow Residential Customers to Self-Serve
Private haulers and municipalities face an endless torrent of inquiries—mostly phone-based—because when people want to request service in waste management, there’s a lack of easy-to-use online or mobile-based tools.
This results in a lot of back-and-forth communication to ensure that the information collected aligns with available resources to deliver the desired service. Phone calls and emails create work for customer service representatives who can only respond during business hours and must often do manual data entry. Making it possible to sign up for service is one thing, but what happens next?
What happens when your new customer wants to add a cart for optional recycling? Or their family is expanding and they need a bigger cart? A repair for a broken cart? Over the lifetime of your average customer, most of the interactions are likely to happen after they’ve signed up with you, putting the onus of answering all these requests on your customer service team.
And for municipalities that are faced with implementing new rules, striving to reach state goals, or struggling to reach the needs of a rapidly growing population, how do we scale in a way that is sustainable and yet allows us to keep within the limits of budget?
In the worst case, people simply give up and either choose to do business with someone else, or even make poor choices about waste disposal.
Now with Routeware’s Waste Management Service Request capabilities, municipalities and haulers can more efficiently and effectively serve residential customers wherever (mobile or web) and whenever is most convenient for them.
Key Benefits of Waste Management Request Pickup Capabilities:
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How does this solution benefit our customers? | Reduce call volume and length for service-related requests. | Display only what’s right. | Automatic constraints. | Provide accurate container information to your customers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Why is this important? | People are able to self-serve when they want to with a tailored and concise flow that asks for the required details to start or end services, and manage their containers. | Pricing can be accurately set up for different zones and different containers making the tool dynamic for several price zones. | Our tool can prevent people from requesting start dates too soon or too far out, where appropriate. | Containers can have serial numbers that will help people track down their right containers or know when to alert you when containers don’t match up. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
When calls are required, they are shorter, thanks to a standardized form to collect required information. | Services and containers offered can similarly be configured according to location. | Validate what is being requested through photo upload capability. | Requests will include the size of containers needing to be added/removed as well as details on anything’s that broken and in need of repair. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Get all the information you need on one request. | Stay competitive by offering your customers best-in-class search tools and delight people with the level of services you offer. | Limit number of requests by date to prevent over-promising and under-delivering. | Integrate new sign-ups into existing routes or maintain flexibility to assign as needed. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hear what our customers have to say:
Jim Reingruber, Assistant Director of Solid Waste Management for the City of Durham, NC, says:
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“Number one [thing that’s nice about the Service Request tool] is that residents schedule their own collections online. They pick the day and time it’s going to be picked up…If they schedule a Friday pickup on Tuesday, and by Wednesday their item is already gone, they still get a reminder Thursday night asking if we should still pick it up or if they want to cancel. They realize we didn’t pick it up, they cancel, and it saves us a trip. It also leaves open a slot for someone else to get a pickup scheduled.” |
Key Features of Waste Management Request Service Capabilities:
Tailored to your options for services and containers, and configurable according to your capacity to deliver.
Receive requests anytime. People can submit requests around the clock, they don’t need to wait for office hours to call and request service.
Tailored to your program. You can configure what services are provided for the end user to select from. Set which dates are valid for a person to book to start or end service, as well as how far in advance they need to request.
Manage container requests with ease. Reduce phone calls and emails by providing people with access to request container changes and report missing or broken containers.
Communicate with your customers about container requests. Provide customers updates with where their request is: pending, scheduled, completed. Ensure that containers are emptied and placed correctly for trucks to service them.
Dispatch reports. The dispatch report allows you to collect all incoming requests. Services requests provide you with contact information, service type, and preferred start date. Container requests provide you with contact information, container types & sizes, and preferred delivery/pick-up date.
Real-time data. People know they can access their appointment information, anytime they need to.
Waste Management Service Request enables residential customers to sign up for collection service, manage their service-related containers, request bulk waste pickup and end their service.
People can select between services and when they’d like it to start. They are able to add, exchange, remove, or report broken/missing containers that are related to the services provided. Meanwhile, on the back end, daily dispatch reports are available to track all incoming requests.
Service Request can also be integrated into your ticketing system so that all requests generate tickets in your existing system.
Interested in discussing how Service Request or any of our other waste management software will benefit you and your community today? Get Started.
P.S. Have you tried out Routeware City yet? It’s an interactive experience, allowing you to see how our tools can help engage your community, reduce contamination, and help your residents self-serve.
Test it out today!
