It’s been a year since the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA), in conjunction with the National Industrial Transportation League, issued a revised “Voluntary Guide to Good Business Relations for Shippers, Receivers, Carriers, and Drivers.” The guide is a blueprint for practices by the parties involved in each freight shipment to achieve results that are satisfactory to all.
While the guide lists tasks for shippers and receivers, carriers, and drivers, one item directly addresses the relationship between the parties: Carriers and shippers/receivers should “strive to build an ethical and solid business relationship” with one another, the guide notes.
“Carrier-shipper relationships have long centered around timely, accurate, and detailed communication,” said TCA President Jim Ward. “As we’ve evolved from professional drivers looking for a pay phone to provide an update on their delivery or pick-up status, to electronic load tracking, issues are still best resolved through the appropriate personal interaction between the parties.”
Often, these efforts involve a system of customer support that provides an avenue for problem resolution. After all, the best efforts of drivers and carrier personnel may go for naught if problems aren’t communicated and resolved quickly.
Unfortunately, some businesses that may be excellent at providing safe and efficient service to their customers don’t rank as well when it comes to customer support. A recent report from DDC FPO Solutions, an international firm that claims to process more than 300,000 freight shipments daily, highlights some of the problems identified by its clients in a recent survey.
Survey results published in “Customer Service Trends in the Supply Chain” showed that 55% of survey respondents reported meeting customer expectations as the most common challenge. At the same time, more than a third say they don’t even track the quality of their customer service experience.
“They don’t have the technology,” explained Donna Kintop, senior vice president of client experience for DDC. “They don’t have the staff, and a lot of people commented that they just simply don’t know how to measure it.”
It should be mentioned that the term “customer service” generally encompasses more than the functions that fall under that term in most carrier operations. Billing, claims resolution, and some functions of safety might also fall into the category of providing service to customers.
Of the survey respondents, 40% were carriers and another 15% were third-party logistics suppliers. Freight brokers and forwarders made up another 10%. In an industry where some carriers are supported by revenues from a relatively small number of customers, keeping those customers satisfied should probably be high on the priority list.
Madison Conway, DDC’s global marketing director, spoke about the importance of customer satisfaction.
“If they’re not taking care of those customers, there’s so much competition out there that (customers) can just simply up and move to a new partner,” Conway said. “So, it was shocking to us that they don’t protect those relationships and then don’t really work hard to sustain them, in many cases.”
Almost every carrier has systems in place to measure on-time delivery percentages or numbers and amounts of freight claims. But perfect service is very difficult, due to the number of variables involved. Drivers make errors, run out of hours, or become ill. Trucks break down, and traffic and weather often don’t cooperate.
While carriers strive to keep those problems to a minimum, it’s what happens when issues do occur that often has more bearing on the customer relationship.
Freight management software makes it possible for shippers to tender loads and carriers to accept them without human interaction. Often, the first time customers need to speak to an actual person comes about as the result of a problem. How that problem is handled can determine whether that customer submits another load. Still, carriers tend to be focused on the operations side of the business. Problems are dealt with as they arise, but details about the frequency of issues, resolution time, or customer satisfaction are often scarce.
“In speaking with carriers for many years now, the view of customer service is a relatively old-fashioned one for many people,” Kintop said. “They view it more as a cost center than they do a revenue-generating channel.”
Such a view can stifle results.
“If they look at it from a cost perspective like, ‘we have to have customer service in case our customers have a question,’ they don’t get the same results and development in the culture of the department,” she continued. “The delivery of the service is vastly different.”
Kintop explained that carriers who understand that good customer service can help expand their revenue by helping retain good customers and by prompting more shipments from those customers.
TCA’s guide for good business practices does not use the exact phrase “customer service,” but it is definitely addressed. There are bullet points that deal with “consistent, complete, timely, and relevant communications,” as well as advice to “provide a mechanism for honest and candid feedback.” Problem resolution isn’t mentioned, except for “prompt and equitable freight claims resolution,” but this requirement is specifically limited by the caveat, “in the event of carrier controlled and/or caused cargo loss or damage.”
Good customer service requires timely communication and problem resolution no matter who caused the issue or loss. When a customer calls with an issue, the carrier has two problems to solve — the one that prompted the call, plus the customer’s relationship with the carrier. It’s entirely possible to solve the original problem but still leave the customer with a strong desire to take future business elsewhere.
Kintop knows these perils well, because DDC handles customer service issues for some of the largest carriers. They can take on segments of the process, like customer billing, to providing and supervising the entire customer service function.
“We can act either as a supplemental team or we can be their customer service or their data entry team, and we act as a part of their organization. So, we utilize all of their technology and work within their systems,” she said.
“Our perspective on working within this industry from a customer service perspective is that we want to ensure that every single interaction is the very best it can be,” she continued. “We understand that it could be either the customer’s very first interaction with the company, or we could be the only source of interaction with the company.”
Since the carrier is outsourcing a function that is often handled in-house, appropriate quality measurements are provided so the carrier can monitor their performance. Conway explained, “If they don’t have the staff to track the KPIs (key performance indicators), there also may be a misconception as far as which KPIs they should be tracking. There are obvious functional ones that show the operational performance or quality of the customer service department.”
Whether a carrier develops and manages an in-house customer service team or outsources it to a specialized firm, building and maintaining relationships with customers is critical to maintaining freight and revenue flows.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2023 edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.
Cliff Abbott is an experienced commercial vehicle driver and owner-operator who still holds a CDL in his home state of Alabama. In nearly 40 years in trucking, he’s been an instructor and trainer and has managed safety and recruiting operations for several carriers. Having never lost his love of the road, Cliff has written a book and hundreds of songs and has been writing for The Trucker for more than a decade.
