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Jason_WWC's avatar
Jason_WWC
Contributor 2
8 months ago

Creating route efficiency for scheduling

Hello all,

I'm looking for tips on how to adjust our schedule to create the most efficient route for our technicians. As it stands, we have an online booking system that allows customers to book appointments for the following windows: morning (8:00AM-12:30PM) or afternoon (12:30PM-5:00PM). We do allow for multiple bookings in the same window and this is where the route efficiency can get messed up. In the past, we would adjust the appointment start time to create the efficient route. Now we have email automations setup and we do not want to confuse the customer by sending them an email with an arrival window different from what they originally booked. Is there a way to rearrange the appointments for route efficiency without changing the appointment start time?

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4 Replies

  • judithvirag's avatar
    judithvirag
    Builder 1
    8 months ago

    Try to use internal routing rules

    Continue to offer just “Morning (8–12:30)” and “Afternoon (12:30–5)” to customers, but internally:

    • Map all appointments by geographic location.
    • Sort them by drive time or distance within the window.
    • Assign optimal visit order to your technicians without changing the overall time window for the customer.

    The customer still gets the promised window — you’re just choosing the most efficient order of visits within that block.

    Narrower arrival times

    While the client sees a broad window (e.g., 8–12:30), internally you could use narrower 1–1.5 hour slots for technician planning:

    Example:
    Job A: 8:00–9:30
    Job B: 9:45–11:15
    Job C: 11:30–12:30

    This gives you a route plan while staying fully within what the customer expects.

    • Jason_WWC's avatar
      Jason_WWC
      Contributor 2
      5 months ago

      Thank you for the response! If I'm understanding this correctly, you're suggesting I set a more narrow arrival window in Jobber. This makes total sense. The problem is that we have automations set to notify the customer 24 hours before their appointment. These notifications include the appointment arrival window. So if I adjust the arrival window to be the more narrow arrival time, the customer will receive this information. While a more narrow arrival window is probably preferred by most, we're trying to avoid this as the larger arrival window allows some flexibility should any setback arise throughout the day. 

      I wonder if it's possible to add a sorting function to the list view in the app. This way I could add a number to the title of the request or job and our technicians could sort A-Z to see the workflow for the day. I would imagine we're part of the minority in terms of demand for a filter but figure it's worth an ask. 

      I'm open to suggestions if you have them.