Text drivers to track & trace shipments
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How to track and trace shipments with automated text messages
The track and trace process can be challenging when relying on drivers to manually report updates. Asking drivers to conform to complicated forms and update processes often becomes inefficient and lacks consistency — but by sending text messages to request updates, carriers can easily meet drivers where they're at automatically.
Parabola enables you to text drivers for real-time shipment updates by integrating with SMS services and automating the data collection process. Pull shipment data from your TMS or any other system and automatically trigger messages to drivers based on data points like missed milestones or potential delays and conditional logic. Take it a step further by reading their responses and using AI to structure replies into structured data.
Video overview
Why Parabola
The value Parabola has added to internal reporting and preparing workflows at Flexport is huge. We've seen such a dramatic reduction in our cost to serve since implementing, and Parabola has been a key partner in our quest to reduce cost to serve and performance transparency.
Driver-based shipment tracking and tracing involves using direct communication — such as SMS or app-based messages — to collect real-time updates from drivers about shipment locations, ETAs, and delays. This improves visibility and helps operators address exceptions quickly.
- Import shipment and driver data, including contact information, using steps like Pull from Snowflake or Pull from API to access TMS data.
- Filter for shipments requiring updates using the Filter rows step, such as those nearing delivery deadlines or flagged for exceptions. Consider also using the Add if/else column step to add more nuanced, conditional logic.
- If you need to combine your shipment details with a table containing driver details, use a Combine tables step to join on a unique identifier like driver or truck ID.
- Use the Send to Twilio or Send to API step to automate SMS notifications to drivers, requesting information like shipment updates or ETAs.
- Take it a step further by ingesting and structuring responses from carriers using steps like Pull from Twilio and Extract with AI.
- There are many different services beyond Twilio that allow you to automatically send text messages via API.
- Standardize driver and shipment data formats to ensure SMS messages include accurate and clear information.
- Use conditional logic like Add if/else column to prioritize updates for high-value or time-sensitive shipments.
- You can also use AI steps in Parabola like Prompt with AI to generate custom messages for drivers using context from the dataset.
- Schedule automated updates at consistent intervals to maintain proactive communication with drivers.
- To start building your own track and trace Flow, use the Template above and check out Parabola University.
