It was an agricultural-machinery parts company near Lorca. Two vans delivered around the region's villages: today Totana, tomorrow Alhama, the next day the valley. Ginés and a young lad drove them. In the office was Puri, who took orders by phone and the complaints too.
The scene repeated three or four times a day. The phone rang.
—I've been waiting for the part all morning. Is it coming or not?
—Let me check and I'll tell you.
Puri hung up and called Ginés. Ginés didn't pick up, because he was driving, which is exactly what he'd been told a thousand times to do. Puri waited ten minutes and called again. Sometimes Ginés stopped and told her where he was. Sometimes not, and Puri called the client to say it was “nearly there”, without knowing if it was true.
What not knowing cost
It looks trivial, one extra call. But count them. Three or four clients a day asking, two calls each to locate the driver, plus the times Puri was left guessing and looked bad to the client. Half of Puri's morning, some days, spent finding out where a van of her own was.
And there was a cost the clock didn't show. The client who called three times about a part and left with the sense that this company didn't have a clue. Not because the delivery was bad —it arrived—, but because nobody could say when. The uncertainty annoyed more than the wait.
The driver wasn't the problem
The easy thing would have been to blame Ginés for not answering. But Ginés was doing the right thing: driving. The problem wasn't the driver. It was that the only way to know where a van was, was to ask the person driving it, exactly when that person couldn't answer.
The information existed —the van was in some specific place, with specific orders inside— but it lived in Ginés's head and on a delivery note on the seat. Not anywhere Puri could look without interrupting anyone.
Putting the route on a screen
What we set up was nothing fancy, on purpose. Each morning, the day's orders load into a route and each van carries a phone with the app open. Puri sees on a screen, without calling anyone, where each van is and what delivery it has left. When a client asks, she looks and answers: “On the way, third stop, about half an hour.” And when a delivery is marked done, the client gets a notice automatically.
No need to buy new vans or expensive boxes. The phone Ginés already had in his pocket did the job. The difference wasn't the technology: it was that the route, which used to live in the driver's head, moved to a screen anyone in the office could look at.
What changed in the office
Within a few weeks, Puri realised she hardly ever called Ginés anymore. And that client calls asking about orders had dropped, because many got the notice before they had time to worry.
—I used to spend my morning chasing vans —she said—. Now I see them.
She said it offhand, gathering some papers. But it was exactly that. Chasing something that moves is exhausting. Seeing it costs nothing. And for Ginés, who no longer had to choose between driving safely and answering the office, that was the part he liked best of all.
What you can't see, you chase by phone
In many delivery companies, knowing where a van is takes a chain of calls: the client asks, the office calls the driver, the driver can't pick up because he's driving. The information exists, but it lives in the head of whoever's at the wheel, exactly when they can't share it.
The fix isn't more expensive technology: it's getting the route out of the driver's head and onto a screen the office can look at without interrupting anyone. With that, client calls drop (they get the notice themselves) and the driver drives in peace. Seeing something costs far less than chasing it.
How many calls a day do you make just to know where an order is?
If locating a van or an order in your company means asking someone who's busy, that information can go on a screen. Tell me how you deliver and we'll look at it.
Let's talk about your deliveries