GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

The Arrived Text: Telling the Homeowner the Garage Door Tech Is in the Driveway

A garage door tech pulls into a driveway. The door is down. Nobody is around. The tech knocks, waits, calls the office, the office calls the customer, the customer is in the back yard and did not hear the van. Ten minutes gone. The arrived text is a small thing that stops that whole chain before it starts.

The Second Half of the Pair

The heads-up that goes out when the tech starts driving is covered in On-the-Way Texts: Letting Homeowners Know the Garage Door Tech Is Coming. The arrived text is what goes out when the tech gets there.

In GarageDoorBossPro, the tech app sends the arrived text automatically. The tech does not stop to write a message. When they arrive and get to work, the customer finds out the tech is on site, whether they are inside the house, out back, or across town at work.

Why Arrival Matters at a Garage Door Job

Garage door work happens at the one entrance the homeowner does not usually watch. People listen for the front doorbell, not for a van in the driveway. An arrived text solves several common problems:

• Getting the garage open. If the door works, the homeowner can open it. If it does not, they can open the house door into the garage so the tech can get in.
• Moving the car. If a car is parked in front of the problem bay, the customer knows to come out and move it now.
• Showing the problem. “It's the left door, and it only sticks when it's cold” is easier to explain in person, and the arrived text brings the customer out to say it.
• The keypad code. If nobody is home and the code in the notes does not work, the customer hears about the visit right away and can reply with the right one.

Customers Who Are Not Home

Many garage door visits happen while the homeowner is at work, especially tune-ups and simple sensor or keypad fixes. For those customers, the arrived text is reassurance. They know the tech they were told about is the one at their house. Combined with an access note on the job, like a keypad code or “side door will be open,” the visit can go ahead without a phone call.

Customers who choose the “when the tech arrives” alert in the customer app get exactly this. Those who only want the night-before reminder can skip it. The choice is theirs.

It also means the tech is not ringing doorbells at a house where nobody is home. The tech can read the access notes, use the code or side door as instructed, and get started, while the customer is reassured by text that the visit is underway.

Commercial Contacts

On commercial jobs, the arrived text matters even more, because someone usually has to let the tech in. A shift lead at a warehouse dock or a property manager at a building gets the text and knows to meet the tech. Two-way texting brings any reply to the office: “Use dock 3, the main entrance is closed today.”

The Office Knows Too

The customer is not the only one who needs to know the tech is on site. When the tech taps Start on the job in the tech app, the office sees it on the board. When they tap Complete, the office sees that too, along with any photos, notes and the door safety inspection results. Between the arrived text to the customer and Start and Complete on the board, nobody has to call anybody to find out how the day is going.

That matters most when a customer calls the office mid-visit with a question, or when the next customer on the route calls to ask how long the tech will be. The person answering can see right away which job the tech is on and answer accordingly, instead of putting the caller on hold to phone the van.

Crew GPS on the office map adds the live view: the office can see the van is at the address without asking. For more, see Crew GPS on the Office Map: Finding the Closest Garage Door Van.

Keeping the Texts Useful

Automatic texts only help if customers read them. A few habits keep them working:

• Let customers pick. The alert preferences in the customer app mean nobody gets texts they did not want.
• Keep phone numbers current. A wrong number means a silent arrival. Update it the moment a customer mentions a new one.
• Answer replies. If a customer replies to an arrived text, someone in the office should see it fast.

Night-before reminders are the third piece of the customer-notice set, and they come next in this series. For how all the texts fit with the dispatch board and routing, go back to the garage door scheduling software page.