Customer Service: The Secret Weapon of Fleet Management Software

When shopping for a new fleet management system (FMS) – or looking to upgrade to a new one from your existing platform – fleet managers have many key points to consider. In comparing one provider to another, you’re tasked with looking at things like driver-focused features, analytics tools, ease of reporting, compliance features, billing models, and more.

One important element to prioritize on your list, however, is the type of ongoing customer support the company provides. Why is it imperative to take a hard look at how they will be helping your fleet in the months and years to come? 

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Why Does Customer Support Matter for Fleets?

Poor customer support can actually result in a long list of negative impacts, ranging from the annoying to the financially damaging. For example, a provider lacking in quality customer support can cause your fleet to experience:

1. Increased Downtime: Waiting around for a call back can keep your trucks out of service longer, costing you lost revenue with every hour that passes. When so much of your operations depend on accurate telematics data to stay in compliance and on schedule, unexpected downtime while waiting for customer support can create a harmful chain reaction. Missed delivery windows create unhappy customers, disrupt Hours of Service (HOS) usage for your drivers, and damage fleet reputation, all resulting from a lack of responsive customer support when you need it most.
2. Employee Frustration: The learning curve of a new fleet management system is to be expected; without a good customer support system, however, the frustrations can be magnified, especially for daily users like drivers and back office staff. When drivers and staff feel their feedback isn’t being heard or they’re not getting what they need in terms of training, it can snowball into job dissatisfaction and even employee turnover. Recent studies show that losing an experienced driver can cost a fleet up to $20,000. Keeping your teams happy creates a positive corporate culture and helps drive down expensive attrition rates.
3. Safety Points and Noncompliance: Your fleet management tools are key to keeping your operations safe and compliant. One of the main benefits of an FMS is the collection of tools that help you meet regulations, correct dangerous situations, and improve your safety stats. If you aren’t fully utilizing these tools — with the help of an engaged and available customer support team — you may be leaving some of these features and benefits on the table; benefits that can improve safety ratings, company reputation, and overall driver experience. Rather than improving your company rating, a lack of support from your provider can leave you open to ongoing or worsening compliance and safety situations.
4. Missed Updates: If your fleet management provider doesn’t carry the onus of ensuring your tools stay updated and current, you could soon find yourself with outdated or buggy systems. Additionally, your provider should consider how and when any software updates should take place; otherwise, you could be sidelined waiting for systems to update at the most inconvenient times. In trucking, this can mean significant disruptions and even loss of income for the fleet and for drivers.
5. Poor Training: Your telematics partner is the expert in the solution you’ve purchased; they should ensure your teams are fully trained and ready to utilize all the most important features to optimize operations. Without this support, you can miss out on significant features and best practices that deliver the full value of the tools. A lack of training support can also leave your employees frustrated and confused, even causing them to create their own workarounds that waste time and lead to a loss of data integrity. 

How to Find a FMS Provider with Excellent Customer Support

When talking to your potential fleet management software provider, it’s important to come with a list of questions covering what they do and do not provide, as well as to inquire about their overall approach to customer care and success. You might want to ask them questions such as:

• What is your average call answer time? Is support available 24/7?
• Do you have any online resources to help customers proactively troubleshoot as needed?
• How can your customer support team be contacted (email, phone, chat, etc.)?
• What steps do you take to support customer success? Do you assign a single support person to each fleet, or do customers talk to a different person each time they call?
• How are software updates conducted to ensure business is not disrupted?
• What amount of training do you provide, and with what regularity is it conducted?
• How do you support drivers (training, feedback, response times, etc.)?
• How do you support the back office (administrative tasks like scheduling and executing executive-level business reviews (BRs))?
• How do you ensure your product is staying up-to-date with industry trends and upcoming regulations?

By starting these conversations with a potential fleet management software provider, you can ensure your expectations are correctly set, with no negative surprises down the road. Customer support is an unsung hero of an FMS provider; it can make or break your experience with the tools in the most imperative moments of operations. 

Platform Science Customer Support

Platform Science Technical Support is dedicated to providing high quality and efficient day-to-day support to our partners, focusing on maximizing first-contact resolution and providing effective, timely solutions through highly trained technical staff. With support available 24/7 through multiple channels, it takes just 120 seconds on average for callers to be connected with our Customer Support staff. From there, we can typically resolve issues remotely in less than 10 minutes, saving fleets time and money by fixing problems without taking drivers off the road.

Learn more about Platform Science customer support and how we meet all of the must-have requirements for a fleet management platform.

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