TreeBossPro Blog — Tree Service Software

On-the-Way and Arrival Alerts for Tree Service Customers

Homeowners don't usually worry about whether your crew can take down a tree. They assume you can. What they worry about is everything around it: when will they get here, do I need to be home, should I move the car, what about the dog?

On-the-way and arrival alerts answer those questions before anybody has to pick up the phone.

The Problem With All-Day Windows

In What a Crew App Should Do for Climbers and Groundies, the crew app was described as the tool that removes calls from the crew's day. Customer alerts remove calls from the office's day. Without them, tree work runs on vague windows: we'll be there Thursday. Then the customer stays home all morning, calls twice to ask, and leaves for lunch right before you pull up.

For tree work, the stakes are higher than for most trades. A car parked in the drop zone, a locked side gate or a dog in the back yard can stall a crew of four with a chipper running. Every minute of that is expensive.

Reminders Before the Visit

The first layer is automated: a reminder by text or email ahead of the scheduled day. It tells the customer which day the crew is coming and what to do before you arrive — move vehicles out of the driveway, keep pets inside, unlock the gate.

Automated reminders go out from TreeBossPro without anyone in the office remembering to send them. They also give the customer a chance to tell you if something has changed before the crew is on the road.

Write the reminder the way a good foreman would talk. Short, friendly and specific: the day, what you're doing and the two or three things that help most. For removals, that usually means vehicles out of the drop zone and pets inside. For pruning, it might be access to the back yard. For PHC visits, it might be keeping kids and pets off the treated area for a while, depending on the product — something your chemical instruction emails can cover after the treatment.

If weather moves the job, the same system tells the customer about the new date. Nothing frustrates a homeowner more than staying home for a crew that was rained out and nobody called.

One Tap When the Crew Heads Over

The second layer is the on-the-way alert. When the crew finishes the previous job and heads to the next, the foreman taps once in the crew app and the customer gets a text that the crew is on the way.

That single message does a lot. It tells the customer to move the car, put the dog in and open the gate. It turns a vague day into a concrete heads-up. And it costs the crew a single tap, from the same screen they already use to see the job.

Arrival and Completion

When the crew pulls up, another one-tap alert tells the customer they've arrived. That matters for customers who aren't home — they know work has started — and for property managers who need to know when crews are on site.

When the crew taps complete, the customer gets a completed message. If they were at work all day, they come home knowing the job is done, often with after photos waiting on the property record.

Let Customers Choose Their Alerts

Not every customer wants every message. Some want everything. Some only want the on-the-way text. A property manager might want arrival and completion but not reminders. The TreeBossPro customer app lets clients choose their alerts, so they get what they find useful and nothing they find annoying.

Customers who want more can also watch the live crew map on service day in the customer app, and see when the crew is getting close.

Two-Way Texting When Plans Change

Sometimes the customer replies: the gate code changed, the car won't move until noon, could you also look at the maple out front? Two-way texting keeps those replies in one thread with the customer's record, visible to the office, instead of on a foreman's personal phone.

That's often where extra work comes from. A customer who gets a friendly on-the-way text is more likely to mention the other tree. These alerts are a small part of software built to run the whole tree company, but customers remember them. The next article covers the other thing customers remember: before and after photos.