SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Routes & Scheduling

On-the-Way and Arrived Texts on a Solar Cleaning Route

A solar cleaning crew depends on things the customer controls. The side gate has to be open. The dog has to be inside. The hose has to be off the spigot, and the car may need to move so the ladder can go up by the garage. None of that happens if the customer does not know the crew is coming. Automatic texts along the route are the simplest fix there is.

Routes Change, Texts Keep Up

When gaps are filled and stops are added during the day, as covered in Filling Gaps in the Solar Cleaning Schedule: Pulling Due Jobs Into Open Slots, the route the crew actually works is not exactly the one planned the night before. That is why customer texts in SolarCleaningBossPro follow what the tech does on the phone, not a time slot guessed in advance.

What Gets Sent and When

Customers choose their own alerts. There are three:

• Night before. A reminder the evening before their cleaning.
• When they're next. A heads-up when the crew is heading to them next.
• Tech arrived. A text when the tech arrives at their address.

On the day itself, on-the-way and arrived texts go out automatically as the tech works through the route in the tech app. Nobody in the office has to remember to send them, and the tech does not have to stop and type anything on a ladder.

Why the Tech's Taps Matter

The texts are only as good as the route order and the tech's taps. If the tech works the list top to bottom and taps Start and Complete as they go, each customer gets their heads-up at the right moment. If the tech jumps around the list without the office knowing, a customer may get a “you're next” alert for a crew that is actually going somewhere else first.

So the habit to teach is simple: work the route in order, and if you need to change the order, tell the office so it can be updated. More on how crews work the day in The Route on the Tech Phone: How Solar Cleaning Crews Work the Day in Order.

What Customers Do With the Heads-Up

The practical value of these texts in solar cleaning is easy to see:

• The gate gets opened, or the code gets texted back if it changed.
• The dog comes inside before the tech opens the gate.
• The hose comes off the spigot, or someone mentions the spigot on the north wall is broken.
• A car gets moved off the driveway where the ladder goes.
• The customer who wants to say something about the bird nests under the panels comes out to meet the crew.

Every one of those saves minutes, and some save a whole return trip.

Multiply that across a route of ten or twelve homes and the difference is easy to feel. A crew that spends five minutes at every gate waiting for someone to answer the door loses most of an hour by the end of the day. A crew whose customers knew they were coming walks straight to the spigot and gets the ladder up.

Replies Go to the Office

Customers will reply to these texts. “Gate is open.” “New code is 4471.” “Can you skip the garage array this time?” Replies come back to the office through two-way texting, so someone can read them and pass anything important to the crew. If the access notes need updating, like a new gate code, the office changes it on the address and every future visit shows the right one.

Keep Texts Short

Plans include a monthly text allowance, counted in segments sent and received: 500 on Start, 1,000 on Pro and 2,000 on Crew. Automatic alerts and replies both count. Short, plain messages use fewer segments than long ones with special characters, so keep the office's own texts tidy too. Texting is available for customers in the US and Canada.

Customers can also choose email for their reminders and alerts, which helps those who prefer it and keeps texts for the ones who want them.

Fewer “When Are You Coming?” Calls

The biggest change most owners notice after turning on automatic texts is a quieter office phone. Customers who know the crew is a stop away do not call to ask. Customers who can see their stop number on the live route map in the customer app call even less. For more on the routing tools, visit the SolarCleaningBossPro solar cleaning route software page.