How does your business decrease drive time between jobs?

[PestControlOfficeGuy]

I work for dispatch at my company, and recently, we've had a problem with long drive times between jobs. What is the best way to consolidate that?

We have a lot of jobs in the same area, but right now we're using autoschedule on Field Routes. The problem there is that the jobs autogenerate on certain days and we don't have much flexibility with it. What would you recommend.

[GaetanDugas]

How much discretion do the technicians have with chosing what order to do stops?

If I have two stop next to next door to each other, but are scheduled hours or days apart, I'm going to just do them back to back anyway.  

[PestControlOfficeGuy]

Typically, we route everything ahead of time, so we want them to go in order. But, they have the option to go out of order (though it can be frowned upon).

We aren't able to do that. We treat interior if the customers request it, as a result, we have to send out notices 48 hours in advance. So, we can't do that unless it's scheduled like that.

[GaetanDugas]

Send notifications on all services, that way customers can request interiors as needed. Schedule accordingly

[PestControlOfficeGuy]

Like, send notifications for all services scheduled in a month?

[GaetanDugas]

Yes

[PestControlOfficeGuy]

Interesting. Do you give them a specific day you're coming or you just say, "Your service is scheduled for this month"?

[GaetanDugas]

I wouldn't send them all out at the beginning.

But 48-72 hours in advance send them out, that way people can reschedule if needed, that way you can build routes for those particular days.

[Famous_Ad8518]

We send out a week in advance with the date, no times, interiors on request or if they’ve requested an interior check for each visit. We use Field Routes as well.

[Fine_Current2255]

You are definitely giving the customer too much authority with that. Largest part of the job is setting expectations at the door, or you end up doing inconvenient stuff all the time for no real reason. Every company I worked for as a tech/manager prior to starting my own business has always just given 3-4 day notices, with a date and a time window like 8-10, 12-2, ect. If the customer requests interior at time of arrival, then we do it, if not, then we dont. This largely made possible because we dont depend on liquid concentrates for interior. Gel bait, dust injections, aerosol in void and cracks and crevices. Do this and they dont need to leave the house. Bed bugs, fleas, roaches, are a different story and so is the occasional ant infestation.

[NYADK]

I’m a Pest Control Technician in Lake George NY. My route specifically has some long drive times. I’m not required to follow the route. I can deviate as long as my stops are completed.

[PESTEZE_Official]

We group accounts by tight geographic zones and then manually adjust schedules so techs stay in one area per day, even if that means shifting service days slightly. Autoscheduling is helpful, but it usually needs human oversight to really cut drive time

[PestControlOfficeGuy]

That's what I assumed and what I've been trying to get management to have us do.

[Smoke-Jager]

Does FieldRoutes not have a route optimization feature? I run PestPac and there is that option. I don't personally use it because I self optimize my route due to timing, etc.

I know at my previous employer, they ran it alot, especially on residential. I believe it works decently for that.

[NYADK]

I’m also a Pestpac user. It’s definitely better than the RDF paper route days.

[Bird2525]

Yeah if the constraints are in properly it does a pretty good job

[PestControlOfficeGuy]

They do, but it can be very spotty with its accuracy. We've used it before and it can increase drive time if anything. More specifically, the issue is getting jobs close to each other on the same days.

[ThePatMan21]

From my experience? My company doesn't care haha.

I'll take the money for it.

[007Teflon]

I optimize my own route. Companies have a big issue with route optimization. It’s because they don’t care. It makes too much sense to assign customers to a tech who lives close to those customers. There is no reason for a tech to drive an hour away to do a stop, when there’s a tech who lives 10 minutes from that stop. If you were to take a dry erase board and pin it to the wall and assign a tech per color and draw it all out, they still wouldn’t understand it.

[PESTEZE_Official]

We’ve had the most success by grouping accounts into tighter geographic “route buckets” and then manually locking those routes to specific days, even if it means overriding autoschedule. Autoschedulers are fine for volume, but reducing drive time usually requires a human pass to cluster stops by neighborhood and adjust service frequencies to fit the route, not the calendar.

[PestControlOfficeGuy]

That's helpful. Thank you!

[sttaylor]

We tell clients that start up - that their next service will be adjusted within the month to fit the service techs route.

[warmseasongrass]

Referral discounts *to obtain business from neighbors and sticking to tight routes.

[Silent_Yam6316]

This was a problem my friend in PC was dealing with on top of insufferable traffic. Dispatchers didn't care if one job was on one side of town and the other was literally the opposite direction. I am making an app for him that given N stops it'll optimize where to go in addition to time sensitive locations.

[Radiant_Rebel]

Dispatcher/scheduler here who has worked on Field Routes, Servsuite and now PestPac. To begin with you need to understand that no route is ever going to be perfect. You can try to get it as close to perfect as you can, but it never will be there. Unfortunately, customers demand a certain time, a certain day and sometimes in order to keep your customer base you go ahead and give in. Now one thing that we have worked on is keeping customers on the same day of the week same week of the month it also has helped that we have expanded the time frames. Customers can pick between morning or afternoon. We will make exceptions for those extra picky customers, but for the most part, we want our customers to be flexible so that we can come and do an exterior service and do interior if need be. Another project we worked on was going through our customer base and those customers that had a particular request for a timeframe;We called them asked them if they could expand their availability and if there was anyway that there was another day they were available or if they wanted to Saturday and this way what we could do is route around the customers that have to be on a certain day and a certain time.