4 Benefits of Effective Pest Control Route Optimization

What does your route optimization process look like today? Are you printing off route sheets for each of your techs every day? Do you have a larger-than-life whiteboard in your office that you need a compass, a sextant, and the Rosetta Stone to make sense of?

Needless to say, if this sounds anything like your process, you already know that there is room for improvement here.

Pencil and paper (whether literal or proverbial) is not the most effective method of planning your routes. These antiquated processes leave far too much room for human error and, ultimately, computers are smarter than humans (it’s hard to accept, I know).

Luckily for you, there are many pest control softwares on the market that will dramatically simplify, streamline, and accelerate your route planning process. Not all software solutions are created equal, however, so be sure that whatever you choose allows you to:

• Re-optimize your route on the fly
• Pick a specific starting location
• Move appointments in bulk from one tech to another
• Optimize your route using the Manhattan method, as opposed to as the crow flies

So what are some of the benefits of using software to optimize your routes?

Improved Efficiency

There are a couple of different ways a software solution will improve your tech efficiency. First, data accuracy can be a huge issue when planning routes by hand.

There are several steps, all of which leave room for human error, between planning a route and the tech driving to their first job.

If you use a software solution, you will find incorrect addresses ahead of time, saving techs a costly drive to the wrong location.

The second way these solutions improve route efficiency is simple… It makes the route more efficient.

While your staff can pin the day’s jobs on a map and eyeball the most efficient route, a software can calculate hundreds of route variations to come out with truly the most efficient path through the list.

Again, computers are smarter than humans. It isn’t mean; it’s true.

Increased Customer Satisfaction

Are you surprised to see customer satisfaction on the list of benefits? The thing is, if your techs are given the most efficient route possible, they are far more likely to show up in the original arrival window.

Not only that, you can also start to tighten up your arrival windows so customers have a better idea of when you will show up. Let’s face it, there are few things as frustrating for customers as being told that a technician will arrive “sometime between 12:00 and 5:00.”

We can do better.

Reduced Mileage

This is pretty obvious, but a direct byproduct of driving the most optimized route possible is that your techs are driving the shortest route possible. This provides an immediate cost savings to your company in the form of lower gas costs and less wear and tear on your vehicles.

Improved Tech Safety

Techs have a vested interest in being as efficient as possible. Most techs are compensated for how many jobs they are completing, so naturally they want to complete more jobs every day.

If there is an issue with their route, techs will be motivated to keep driving while they try to figure out the issue, hunt down the right address, or contact the office to figure out what went wrong. This provides a very real risk to your employees and everyone they pass on the road.

With the right software solution, your techs can feel confident knowing that the turn-by-turn directions they are receiving will take them to the right location as efficiently as possible.

Enhanced Productivity

By providing the tools to more effectively optimize their routes, your techs are going to be completing more jobs per day than ever before. On average, our customers’ techs are able to complete 2 additional jobs every day after coming on with Briostack.

In addition to tech productivity, route optimization software provides a huge improvement to office productivity. Again, think about how much time your office staff spends creating and optimizing routes.

If you continue down to the path of manual route creation, as your company grows you will have to keep a very costly ratio of office staff to techs just to keep up with these processes. Briostack enables our customers to free up hours every day for their office staff, just from improving these processes alone.

Next Steps

It’s time to move on from manual processes. Planning routes by hand is inefficient, costly, and let’s face it… it is mind numbingly boring work. Check out how Briostack can take your route creation to the next level by clicking here.