PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Weekly Service Scheduling

Arrival Texts on Porta Potty Service: Letting the Site Know the Truck Is Here

The Text That Ends the Argument

Service Reminder Texts for Porta Potty Customers: Night Before and On the Way covered the full set of reminders a customer can choose. Of all of them, the arrival text does the most work. It tells the site contact, in real time, that your truck is on site. It is a time-stamped record in their own phone. And it is the first thing they will look at before calling to ask whether you came.

This article covers how arrival texts work, who should get them, and how they fit into a service day.

How Arrival Texts Work

In PortaPottyBossPro, the driver app sends automatic on-the-way and arrived texts to the customer. The driver does not have to type anything or remember to send it. The driver works the stop from the phone, and the customer hears about it. Customers who chose the "when the tech arrives" alert in the customer app get the arrival text on every visit.

Because the text goes out from the driver's own stop, it lines up with the actual visit, not with a guess about when the truck might come.

Who Should Get It

The arrival text belongs with whoever is standing near the units or responsible for them:

• The superintendent or foreman on a construction site.
• The event coordinator on event days.
• The property manager for an apartment complex or commercial site.
• The homeowner on a residential job.
• The farm manager on an agricultural site.

Add each one as a site contact on the right site. A contractor with several projects can have a different contact on each site, so each superintendent only hears about their own units.

Why It Cuts Calls

A superintendent who walks past a full unit on Thursday afternoon will often assume it was never serviced. If there is a text from Tuesday at 8:40 saying the driver arrived, they scroll up, see it, and realize the unit was serviced and then used hard. The call never happens, or it turns into a conversation about more service instead of a complaint.

Arrival Texts and Photos Together

The arrival text proves the truck was there. The photos taken in the driver app show what the driver did. Together, they answer almost every service question. When a customer does call, the office can open the job and see that the stop was completed and the photos were taken. Service Photos as Proof: Showing the Porta Potty Was Pumped and Clean covers photos as proof.

Arrival Texts and Access

Arrival texts also help with access. If the gate is closed and the site contact gets a text that the driver has arrived, they may walk over and open it. On sites where the driver needs someone to open a gate or move a vehicle, the on-the-way text gives them a head start. Pair it with clear access notes on the job. Service Notes and Site Access: Gate Codes, Lock Boxes and Where the Units Sit covers those.

The Live Map on Service Day

Some customers want more than a text. In the customer app, they can see today's route on a live map, such as stop 12 of 20 with the crew 5 stops away. For an event organizer waiting on a morning pump-out before gates open, that view is worth a lot. It shows where the truck is without anyone picking up a phone.

Keeping Texts Useful

Every text counts toward your monthly text allowance: 500 segments on Start, 1,000 on Pro and 2,000 on Crew, counting texts sent and received. A weekly service site with arrival texts on uses a few texts a month, which is a small cost for a call that never comes. Let customers choose the alerts they actually want, so the texts that go out are ones they read.

When the Driver Skips

If the driver cannot service the site and taps Skip, the office should let the customer know. A short text from the office, through two-way texting, saying the gate was locked and the driver will return tomorrow, turns a missed visit into a scheduled one. The site stays due on the Waiting List until it is completed.

Start With Arrival Texts

If you only turn on one alert, make it the arrival text. To see how arrival texts fit into the service day from the Waiting List to the driver's phone, visit PortaPottyBossPro portable toilet service scheduling software.