The same three problems come up time and again when we talk to skip hire and waste operators. Drivers arriving at jobs where the customer isn’t ready. Containers sitting on sites past their agreed date. Admin teams fielding calls from customers asking where their driver is.
None of this is rare. For most operators they’re a daily reality, and across hundreds of jobs a year, the cost adds up quietly in fuel, driver time, and staff bandwidth that could be better spent elsewhere.
Some operators have worked out that all three come from the same gap, the customer not knowing what’s happening, and they’re closing it with Connect SMS in Waste Logics.
The Problem With Waiting
When a customer doesn’t know the driver is on the way, one of two things tends to happen. Either they’re not ready when the driver arrives, gate locked, no one home, access blocked and the driver has a wasted journey or ends up waiting on site. Or they pick up the phone to find out where he is, and someone in the office has to handle that call. Neither is a good use of anyone’s time.
At Sharp Skips, their admin team was fielding a steady stream of calls from customers asking when the driver would arrive or what progress he was making. These weren’t complaints. They were customers trying to manage their day without enough information to do it.
Sharp Skips switched on Driver On Way messages through Connect SMS. The message goes out automatically when the driver sets off. No additional step required from the driver or the office. The customer knows he’s on his way, knows roughly when to expect him, and can have everything ready.
James Carter at Tars has been using Driver On Way messages since March 2023. Since switching it on, Tars’ wasted journey rate has dropped by 88% comparing the same summer months before and after. Customers know the driver is coming so the access is sorted before he arrives and the driver gets on with the job.
Lee Tyrell, Sharp Skips |
What Happens When Customers Know You’re Coming
The operational metrics tell one story but the customer experience tells another.
James Carter at Tars has been using Driver On Way messages since March 2023. Since switching it on, Tars’ wasted journey rate has dropped by 88% comparing the same summer months before and after. Customers know the driver is coming so the access is sorted before he arrives and the driver gets on with the job.
James Carter, Tars |
Skipway tell a similar story. Their data shows a 27% reduction in average driver time on site during peak summer months, and systems Manager Matthew Heatrick has seen the same drop in phone traffic from customers chasing updates.
Matthew Heatrick, Systems Manager, Skipway |
What Customers Notice
The operational metrics tell one story but the customer experience tells another.
Cheadle Skips has been using Driver On Way messages since early 2023. For Harry Bradshaw, the clearest sign of the impact isn’t in a spreadsheet, it’s in their reviews.
Harry Bradshaw, Cheadle Skips |
Half of their customer reviews now mention communication specifically. Customers are noticing – and saying so. In a sector where reputation and repeat business matter, that’s worth paying attention to.
Getting Containers Back on Time
Driver On Way messages address what happens before and during a collection. Order Duration messages address a different problem – containers that stay on site longer than they should.
For operators running large fleets, containers sitting on customer sites past their agreed date means fleet capacity that could be out earning is sitting idle instead. The traditional fix is someone in the office making reminder calls. It works, but it takes time, and it doesn’t always happen consistently.
JM Kennie switched on Order Duration messages in March 2023. When a container has been on site beyond the agreed timeframe, the customer gets an automatic reminder with no manual chasing required.
Three years on, the results have held consistently. Before Order Duration messages, 54% of JM Kennie’s containers were being returned on time. After: 89%. That’s a 63% improvement in on-time returns, sustained across three consecutive years.
Mandy Kennie, JM Kennie |
What These Operators Have in Common
All of these operators are different sizes, in different locations, with different service mixes. What they have in common is that they’ve been using Connect SMS long enough, two years or more, for the results to be meaningful rather than a short-term effect.
None of them describe Connect SMS as a dramatic change to how they operate. It runs in the background. Messages go out automatically at the right points in the job journey. The difference shows up gradually in call volumes, driver efficiency, container returns, and customer feedback.
The problems it addresses, wasted journeys, inbound update calls and containers returned late, are so commonplace in the industry that many operators have stopped thinking of them as problems at all. They’re just the cost of doing business and they don’t have to be.
Connect SMS is built into the Waste Logics platform. If you’re an existing customer and want to explore whether it could make a difference for your operation, request a demo or speak to your account manager.
