About Slots Availability

In today's fast-paced delivery and logistics environment, efficiency and customer satisfaction are critical. Customers are increasingly looking for maximum choice and flexibility in defining their delivery experience. Bringg's Slots Availability offers just that. 

It is designed to optimize the customer experience by intelligently offering them the most efficient and desirable delivery slots in real time, maximizing utilization and reducing overbooking while improving overall satisfaction and loyalty.

How it Works

Slots Availability uses advanced algorithms, an API-based solution, and an easy-to-use customer experience calendar view, to optimize route planning and slot allocation, taking into account various factors such as available resources, and specific delivery requirements.  This ensures more accurate and dynamic offering of delivery slots, which adjusts in real time based on changing conditions. 

Slots Availability allows customers to reserve delivery slots early in their shopping journey, including options for evening or weekend deliveries, shorter time slots, and eco-friendly delivery choices.  

The overall process it follows includes:

Availability Check

The tool reviews your delivery operation data, including driver schedules, route efficiency, and current delivery demand.

Customer Interaction

Customers see and choose from the optimized slots when placing orders, ensuring a better match between delivery expectations and capabilities.

Dynamic Adjustment

Based on this review, it makes changes on an ongoing basis to the availability and timing of slots to match your delivery capability.

Key Features

The main improvements of Slots Availability give you greater accuracy and specificity in evaluating availability. 

The feature considers variables like:

• Order weight
• Handling units
• Estimated time on site (ETOS)
• Driver skills
• Drive time
• Service area limitations

It then offers a slot only if there is capacity according to all of those factors. Then, after new orders are placed, Bringg re-calculates the slot availability to ensure that future customers are seeing the most up-to-date slot availability with maximized efficiency.

Slots Availability  includes major scheduling improvements like: 

Recurring Delivery Slots

Now you can give customers peace of mind by allowing them to keep the same delivery slot from day to day, week to week, and so on. 

Do they need groceries delivered every Tuesday morning at 9:30AM?  Slots Availability makes that possible thanks to recurring delivery slots.

You give them the consistency they need, and they give you the loyalty you deserve.

Green Delivery

Your customers want good service that aligns with their environmental values and reduces their ecological footprint. Slots Availability supports sustainability by offering green delivery options through optimized scheduling. When a driver is already making another delivery in the same area as an incoming order, that slot will display to the new customer as green.

Capacity Utilization Ratio

How can you prioritize which slots customers see when? Bringg updates you via API to let you know the percentage remaining of each slot.  You can then decide how to display slots on your ecommerce site depending on their available capacity. For example, you can offer emptier slots at a discount. 

You Also Gain

• Better delivery slot management and utilization, including the ability to create and update them in bulk, apply effective dates to different schedules, and check their capacity utilization in real time for updates.  
• The ability to apply blackout periods flexibly, whether for part of a day, several days at a time, or for specific order types, service plans, or service areas.  You can also create blackouts that recur annually, or choose to apply them to as many teams as you wish.

For example, set a company default if all your teams go on vacation during the holiday season at the same time and a blackout for a specific team if their fulfillment center will be closed for renovations.

What You Can Offer Customers

• The ability to choose slots immediately prior to order creation, ensuring better cart conversion, or post-purchase via SMS or email, ensuring smooth customer experience.
• Different delivery slots depending on the order's destination or service plan.
• Delivery slots up to 30 days ahead from the date of purchase.
• Slots as short as 30 minutes.
• The ability to update their cart continuously until the deadline you define for them.

Before You Begin

• Confirm you have a user of type Admin.
• Contact your Bringg representative to discuss pricing and activate the Slots Availability accelerator.  
• Set up delivery blocks. Learn more.
• Set up the weekly cadence of deliveries in the Bringg Platform or using the Create Delivery Slot API. 
• Add blackout periods in the Bringg Platform or using the Create Blackout APIs.
• Set up Bringg's quotes service.  Learn more.
• Set up service plans. Learn more.
• Set up service areas. Learn more.
• Set up Route Optimization. Learn more.
• Set up your customer experience page.

Workflow

Step 1: Get the delivery slots that are available for a particular purchase by sending the Get Quotes API.

You send the order's details, such as delivery address and service plan, in the call and Bringg responds with the available delivery slots for the customer's delivery. In the response, Bringg can notify you whether the carrier can complete a green delivery.

Step 2: Reserve the delivery slot while your customer is shopping by creating an order in Bringg with the Create Order API. Bringg ensures your customers can keep their slots even while adding to the order by using the

total_weight

 or

total_handling_units

fields to reserve a certain amount of capacity on the truck up until the deadline you define.  After that deadline, it optimizes the route based on the actual weight or handling units used.

reserved_until

Step 3: After checkout, include inventory items and final details for the order using the Update Order API.

Step 4: Create a recurring delivery slot with the Create Recurring Order API. For example, a customer can sign up to receive a grocery delivery every week at 6:00PM.

FAQs

• If I change my delivery blocks, will it recalculate Availability?
  • Yes, if you make changes to blocks, the system will reevaluate resource availability.
• Once an order is booked, is it pre-assigned to a driver?
  • No, we reshuffle in order to ensure orders are always assigned based on optimum efficiency.
• What if I want to book more than 30 days ahead?
  • We can arrange this for you.  Contact your Bringg representative to find out how.
• What if I have different teams that service different locations on different days?
  • Bringg easily handles these kinds of variations using service areas and teams.