Delivery Notifications, Tracking and Ratings
When you deliver an order with your own vans, your customer can follow it from the moment it's booked to the moment it's on their doorstep. They get an email at each step, a tracking page that shows when the van will arrive, and a chance to rate the delivery once it's done.
Everything a customer sees carries your business name and logo, in their own language. Iraca isn't mentioned, and replies to any of these emails go to your business email.
The emails your customers get
Iraca sends these emails for a local delivery:
| When it goes | Retail | Wholesale | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery booked | When the order is confirmed with its day or window, and again if you move it to another day | On | Not sent |
| Day-before reminder | The afternoon before the delivery, around 4pm your time | On | Off, can be turned on |
| Out for delivery | When you dispatch the route, with an arrival estimate and a tracking link | On | Off, can be turned on |
| Running late | Once, if the driver's estimate moves past the end of the customer's window | On | Off, can be turned on |
| Delivered | When the driver completes the stop, with the delivery photo and a request to rate it | On | Not sent |
| Couldn't deliver | When the driver marks the stop as not delivered, with the reason and a note that you'll be in touch | On | On |
A wholesale email goes to the contact on the order, which is usually whoever receives the goods.
To turn an email on or off, go to Settings → Local delivery and use the Customer notifications card. Each email has a switch for retail and one for wholesale customers. A dash means that email isn't offered to that kind of customer.
Each email is written in the customer's document language. See Document Language to set it.
When one customer wants fewer emails
Each customer can choose for themselves. Every delivery email ends with a Change or stop these delivery emails link, which opens a page (no sign-in) with three choices:
- All delivery emails: everything your switches allow. This is where everyone starts.
- Only if there's a problem: just Running late and Couldn't deliver.
- No delivery emails.
You can make the same choice for them: edit the contact and use Delivery emails in the Receiving section. Whoever changed it last wins, and you'll see the customer's own choice there.
A customer's choice can only narrow your switches, never add an email you've turned off. It only affects delivery emails: order confirmations and invoices still go.
An email that can't go never holds anything up
If the mail server is down, or a customer has no email address, the delivery goes ahead exactly as normal. The order's activity trail shows each email that was sent.
Text messages
The same updates can go out as text messages, but only to customers who agreed to them.
Turn them on. Under Settings → Local delivery → Text messages, switch on each update you want texted, separately for retail and wholesale customers. Everything is off until you turn it on. Texts go out in the customer's language and carry a link to their tracking page, and each one ends with how to stop.
A customer has to agree first. Nobody is texted until it's recorded that they said yes. That can happen three ways:
- At checkout in your customer portal. When they choose local delivery, a box reads Text me delivery updates. It only appears for customers with a phone number on their account.
- At your WooCommerce checkout, through the Iraca Connector plugin's text message tick box. The order brings their answer with it.
- By your team. Open the customer's contact and, under Text messages, click Record consent. Only do this when the customer has told you they want texts, for example over the phone. Remove consent takes it back.
Consent is for the phone number that was on file. If you change the number, texts stop until consent is recorded again.
STOP ends it. A customer can reply STOP to any text and it ends immediately, for every business that texts that number, since the messages come from one shared Iraca sender. Replying START restarts texts they had agreed to, and HELP sends back instructions. A customer who replied STOP can't be signed up again by your team; they have to opt in themselves, at a checkout or by replying START. Their contact shows Replied STOP.
Turning off emails for a customer doesn't stop their texts, and the other way round: each is its own choice.
What it costs. The first 500 texts a month are included in the Local Delivery add-on. Each text after that is $0.03, added up at the start of the next month: it goes on your next subscription invoice, or, if you have no paid subscription, on a separate invoice charged to your card on file. A text that couldn't be sent isn't counted, and a failed text never holds up a dispatch or a delivery.
Delivery texts and your plan. Standard includes 500 delivery texts a month; Free includes none. Past what your plan includes, a text is sent only when there's a card on file in Billing to charge it to. Without one, the text is held back, the customer still gets the delivery email, and the dispatch board and Settings → Delivery show a notice once a day: "Delivery texts are paused". On Free, that means adding a card before your first delivery text goes out. The same happens if your last usage invoice couldn't be charged, until you update the card. Deliveries themselves are never blocked.
The tracking page
Every email about a delivery that's on a route links to that delivery's tracking page. Customers don't need to sign in. The page shows:
Before the van leaves: the day and window, and an estimated arrival time with a margin of about 20 minutes.
Once it's on the road: "Out for delivery", when the van should arrive, how many stops are still ahead of theirs, and the driver's first name.
When it's delivered: the time, the photo the driver took, and the rating form.
If it couldn't be delivered: the reason, and that you'll be in touch about another delivery.
When the van is heading to them: a map with the van's latest position, when the driver uses the phone app.
The page never shows the driver's full name or phone number, other customers, or other stops. It updates itself every minute while the van is out, and every 15 seconds while the map is showing.
When the map appears
The map is shown only while the van is heading to that customer's stop: the route is under way, their delivery is still to do, and no other delivery is ahead of it. A customer whose stop is third sees no map until the first two are done. It disappears as soon as their delivery is delivered or fails. It never shows where the van has been, where it's going after that, or anyone else's address, and it carries no pin for the customer's own address.
The map also needs a recent position. If the phone hasn't reported for ten minutes, the map is hidden rather than showing an old dot.
Each delivery attempt has its own link. If a delivery fails and goes out again on another day, the customer gets a new link for the new attempt.
How arrival times are worked out
When you plan a route on the dispatch board, each stop gets a planned arrival time. From then on, Iraca keeps each customer's estimate up to date as the driver works through the route:
- When the driver taps Start route, every estimate moves by how early or late they left.
- When the driver completes a stop, every stop after it moves by how far ahead or behind the plan they are. Running 25 minutes late at stop 3 moves everyone after it back 25 minutes.
- An estimate never moves earlier than the start of a customer's window.
- Between stops, when the driver uses the phone app, Iraca also re-estimates the stops still to come from where the van is right now: the road time to the next stop, the planned time at each door, and the road time on to the next. To avoid wasting effort, this happens at most every two minutes, and only once the van has moved a couple of hundred metres. A completed stop always triggers a fresh calculation.
If a customer's estimate passes the end of their window, they get the Running late email. They get it once, even if the estimate keeps changing.
On the dispatch board, a stop whose estimate has moved shows Now expected with the new time.
Only the driver app moves estimates
Estimates move when drivers use the driver app. If the office records deliveries from the dispatch board after the fact, estimates stay as planned and no running-late emails go out. Otherwise, recording a morning's deliveries in the evening would tell every customer they were hours late.
Ratings
The delivered email and the tracking page both ask the customer to rate the delivery from 1 to 5 stars and leave a comment if they like. Each delivery can be rated once.
You can see ratings in three places:
- On the dispatch board, under each delivered stop.
- On the Drivers screen (Settings → Local delivery → Drivers), as each driver's average rating.
- On the Delivery ratings report. Open Dispatch and click Ratings. It shows the average rating, and breaks it down by driver, by delivery zone and by week, with every comment. Choose dates to look at a different period, or click 2 stars or less to see only the low ones.
Low ratings
A rating of 2 stars or less shows up in Needs your attention on your dashboard, so you can follow up with the customer while it's fresh. It stays there until someone opens the ratings report and clicks Mark as seen on it.
Asking for public reviews
If you'd like customers to review you publicly, for example on Google, add your review link under Settings → Local delivery → Customer notifications → Public review link.
After a customer rates a delivery, the tracking page offers them your review link. It's offered to every customer who rates, whatever rating they gave. Iraca never shows it only to happy customers. Asking only satisfied customers for public reviews is against Google's review policy and the FTC's rules on consumer reviews, so it isn't an option.