Customer | Motive |
Product | Array |
Vertical | B2B software & services |
Country | USA |
users spend 30 mins a day messaging
decreased between drivers and back office
savings from streamlined communication
KeepTruckin creates modern technology that improves the safety, efficiency, and profitability of businesses that keep our economy moving. The company’s integrated fleet management platform spans ELD compliance, video-based driver safety, GPS tracking, fuel optimization, vehicle maintenance, and more. By bringing everything into one place, KeepTruckin provides businesses with a holistic view of their fleet operations to help maximize productivity, reduce costs, and better serve customers.
Reliable and efficient communication is key to helping drivers and fleet managers
stay connected on the road. However, with roughly 1 million drivers and over 70,000 customers, this is no easy task. To facilitate communication between drivers and back offices, KeepTruckin offers real-time in-app chat capabilities as a core feature of their software. Despite being a software company themselves, they knew that chat wasn’t a core competency of the KeepTruckin engineering team. So they knew they needed to partner with a best-in-class API provider instead of trying to build it in-house and risking unpredictable expenses and limited features.
KeepTruckin found themselves in a tough situation: their current messaging API provider unfortunately could no longer support them. With such a massive customer base, they needed a seamless, customizable, and robust chat API solution to replace their existing one. They needed to get it done efficiently — and without service interruption.
Today, KeepTruckin’s messaging allows truckers and back offices to build and maintain trust across fleets through individual and group conversations and share images, documents, locations, and more.
Effective communication between dispatchers and drivers is crucial. Dispatchers tell drivers where to go, help them solve issues, alert them to changing road conditions, tell them when police are on the road, and recognize them for their safe driving. Strong communication fosters trust and helps ensure better outcomes for KeepTruckin’s customers.
Traditionally, this communication happened via SMS texts and phone calls placed to drivers’ individual cell phones. To do this, fleet back offices had to keep track of all the drivers’ mobile phone numbers, which was no easy task. Maintaining a list of current mobile phone numbers was a huge burden, and often proved inefficient and ineffective.
Besides keeping track of contact information, one of the primary challenges of running a fleet is establishing trust between the drivers and the back office.
KeepTruckin believes that these trust issues stem from a lack of effective communication due to gaps in information, which can degrade trust and cause operational issues to creep up.
KeepTruckin differentiates themselves in a crowded market by trying to solve the problem on both sides. They aim to bridge the communication gap between drivers and back offices by providing fleets with the necessary tools to foster trust and establish strong relationships across teams.
A crucial component to solving this problem with communication is real-time chat. With this type of instantaneous communication, KeepTruckin helps build trust between truckers and dispatchers while providing a means to increase efficiency overall.
KeepTruckin has had messaging integrated into its platform for a long time. The company had previously built its own messaging feature on top of a different API provider, but due to factors out of its control, KeepTruckin was now searching for a new solution.
After searching for a month and a half and sorting through ten different API providers with a final deep technical bakeoff between 2 finalists, KeepTruckin decided to partner with Sendbird for its messaging API needs.
They chose Sendbird for several reasons. For one, we could deliver on all their must- have features, from an advanced messaging experience, to support for old versions of mobile platforms, and seamless data migration from one service provider to another.
Other factors included:
Besides checking the box on the technical side, the KeepTruckin team was very cognizant of the pain and disruption caused when a software partner goes out of business or no longer has the resources to invest in the product at the speed the customer expects. Financial stability of the new chat API provider was essential to ensuring the team wasn’t dealing with another costly migration in a few years.
After our last chat API vendor couldn’t support us anymore, financial viability was as important to us as product features" says Senior Product Manager, Jason Pesek. "In Sendbird, we picked a partner who we can invest in for the long term.
With KeepTruckin’s new messaging, the gaps in traditional communication are no longer apparent.
Drivers can quickly let back-office staff know that they’ve arrived at the destination and about upgrades when they’re on the move. Plus, because everything is captured in the chat thread, there are clear time stamps to track the journey and delivery and read receipts to confirm the communication between dispatcher and driver — helping to establish trust and keep everyone on track.
One-to-one communication
Group messaging
Integration with existing platform
Plus, fundamental features like
KeepTruckin came to Sendbird because they needed a new chat API. But the team didn’t just want an identical experience as before. They wanted to improve it. Because, what’s the point of moving forward if you aren’t evolving?
KeepTruckin is constantly focused on creating a best-in-class experience for all users. Integrating with Sendbird’s chat API needed to help serve this purpose.
The results so far are promising
KeepTruckin continues to bridge the gap between driver and dispatcher and provide a comprehensive fleet management solution to fleets across the country. It’s clear that their path forward depends on a functioning chat that helps build up cross-fleet relationships instead of breaking them down.