Quick Wins for Clothes Aid with Vehicle Tracking Technology

I recently sat down with Paul Oakley of Clothes Aid, the social business that collects clothes door-to-door across the country to raise money for a range of UK charities. We talked about the quick wins Paul has had with Navman Wireless vehicle tracking technology. 

Paul, Operations Manager at Clothes Aid,  is using Navman's Teletrac Navman DIRECTOR vehicle tracking platform and the new MNAV 800 two way messaging terminal, and in the first few months of use communications, efficiency and the ability to respond to customer calls has significantly improved. Paul has also reduced fuel costs and recovered a stolen vehicle thanks to the vehicle tracking system he now has in place. In this blog, Paul talks about how the new MNAV 800 two way messaging terminal is helping him stay in touch with his drivers.

Part 1. Clothes Aid and the MNAV 800.

With 40 vans and drivers to co-ordinate,  Paul needed the next generation of connectivity.  On average, every week, 45,000 households donate clothes to Clothes Aid and 47,000 bags are diverted from landfill. The drivers are out in community day-in-day-out, making the collections and representing the Clothes Aid brand.  The vans carry the Clothes Aid logo and the drivers wear the Clothes Aid uniform. It's a business that is about getting the little things right. Picking up bags on the right day, in the right place, and on time. Making every route as efficient and productive as  possible. Keeping every customer happy. With vans and drivers spread out over hundreds of miles of city streets , the key to getting the "little things" right turned out to be one very big thing – enabling advanced two-way communications between the Clothes Aid helpline and mobile assets across Clothes Aid's operating area. Before using the new MNAV 800 two way messaging terminal, the Clothes Aid helpline office  were unable to stay in touch with their drivers.

"They had mobiles, but they couldn't use them while they were driving, so communciation between them and the helpline staff was difficult," Paul said. But when it came time to change their old ways of working, Clothes Aid recognised that new technologies could help their business in more ways than one. "Now we have messages going back and forth all day between our drivers, managers and the helpline call centre," Paul said. " And that's been a massive win for us. I don't have to provide mobile phones for the drivers because we can communicate directly with the in-cab terminal, and that has also been a cost saving for us."

On the street, in real time, the MNAV 800 is making vital little differences to how Clothes Aid work. For example, if a  driver misses a bag on the street because it was tucked behind a bush or a wall, a customer can ring the helpline and Clothes Aid can send a message straight to the driver and they can pick up the bag.  "The message will come up on his screen, and all he needs to do is click accept to be automatically routed straight back to that house to collect that bag.  We've turned round some of these missed bags in 20 minutes because of that," Paul said. Before we had the MNAV 800,  the bag could sit on the street for day's until we collected it.  So technology has improved our collection process and also improved customer service."

But do the drivers like it as well?  "Absolutely.  They like it," Paul said. "They're able to stay in direct contact with me or their manager and chat about what's going on.  We had a situation recently where we noticed some bogus operators and we've recovered several vehicle reg's, they've been logged through our database and looked like they were up to no good.  Prior to that, we didn't have that information.  But with the drivers feeding information through, we can spot who's up to no good and who's up to legitimate stuff so there's been some big wins for us. If the van stops suddenly somewhere it's not expected to, we can instantly message the driver 'are you okay' if we get no response, we can send someone to help that person.  They could have broken down, they could have had an accident, but we know where that person is and we can get assistance to him very, very quickly, which is another win for me.  As lone workers, which is effectively what they are, you do need to have a way of communicating and the Navman technology has provided that. "

To learn more about how the M-Nav 800 can help your business call 0845 521 1133 or click here