PlumbingBossPro Blog — Dispatch & Scheduling

Route Position in the Customer App: Showing Plumbing Customers Where They Are in Line

A customer waiting on a plumber has one question, asked in many ways: “How long?” Texts answer it at key moments. The customer app answers it any time the customer wants to look, by showing where they are in today's route.

Beyond the Text Messages

The automatic alerts in On-the-Way and Arrived Texts: Plumbing Dispatch the Customer Can See cover the night before, the moment they are next and the moment the tech arrives. The route position fills in the hours in between.

What the Customer Sees

In the PlumbingBossPro customer app, a customer scheduled for today can see the route on a live map with their place in line, such as: “You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away.”

That one line does a lot. A customer who sees they are five stops away knows they can run to the store. A customer who sees one stop away knows to put the dog in and open the garage. Neither one needs to call the office.

Why It Matters More in Plumbing

Plumbing customers often have more riding on the wait than other home service customers:

• No hot water means no showers until the tech arrives.
• A shut-off main because of a leak means no water at all in the house.
• A backed-up drain means they cannot use a bathroom or the kitchen sink.
• Work-from-home customers need to plan calls around the plumber needing access.

For those customers, seeing the van get closer is real relief, not just a nice touch.

Route Order Drives the Position

The position the customer sees comes from the route order on the dispatch board, the same order the tech sees on their phone. That makes accurate route order matter for more than drive time. If the office auto-routes a van, adjusts it by hand, and the tech works it in that order, the “stop 12 of 20” line is honest.

When dispatch adds an emergency and moves it up, everyone behind it moves back a spot. That is fine, and it is honest. Customers can see the change instead of being surprised by it. If a big change pushes someone well past their window, a personal text from the office is still the right move.

Privacy for Other Customers

Showing a customer the route does not mean showing them other customers' homes. The point is the customer's own place in line and how far away the crew is, not a list of the neighbors' addresses or what is wrong with their plumbing.

Crew GPS for the Office

The office has its own view. Crew GPS shows where each van is on the office map, which helps dispatch decide who takes an emergency and spot a van that is running behind. The customer view is about one customer's wait. The office view is about every van at once. Read more in Crew GPS on the Office Map: Finding the Closest Plumbing Van.

Everything Else in the Customer App

The route map is one part of the customer app. The same app lets customers:

• Request service.
• Sign up for services and pricing, such as a yearly water heater flush plan.
• Choose their alerts: night before, when they're next, when the tech arrives.
• Update their card on file.
• See invoices and pay online.
• Rate the visit and refer friends.

A customer who opens the app to watch the van come is one tap away from signing up for a yearly flush or paying the last invoice.

Getting Customers to Use It

The app only helps if customers know it exists. A few ways shops introduce it:

• Mention it when booking: “You can watch where you are in line on the app.”
• Include it in the welcome message to new customers.
• Have techs mention it at the end of a visit when the invoice comes up.

Customers who used it once during a no-hot-water wait tend to remember it.

Property managers and landlords like it too. When a tenant calls them asking when the plumber is coming, they can check the app instead of calling your office, and the call chain gets one link shorter. It is worth telling your property manager accounts that the app is there.

Answer “How Long?” Before It Is Asked

Showing route position is dispatch working in the open. It gives customers a sense of control during an uncomfortable wait and gives your office fewer calls to field. To see how the customer app connects to the board, route order and crew GPS, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing dispatch software page.