TowingBossPro Blog — Tow Dispatch

Giving Honest ETAs: How Tow Dispatchers Set Expectations on the Phone

"How long?" is the second question every tow customer asks, right after "can you come?" The answer the dispatcher gives sets the whole tone of the call. Too optimistic, and the customer calls back angry. Too vague, and the customer calls someone else. Honest and specific, and the customer relaxes.

Honest ETAs are a skill. They come from reading the board well and being willing to say a number you might not like.

Why Optimistic ETAs Backfire

The transport guide in Dealer and Body Shop Transports: Planning Non-Emergency Tows Around Emergency Calls talked about telling accounts the truth when plans change. Retail customers need the same honesty. Dispatchers often shave time off an ETA because they are afraid the customer will hang up and call another company. Sometimes that happens. But a customer promised thirty minutes who waits ninety will call back three times, tie up the line and probably leave a bad review.

A customer told seventy-five minutes who gets a truck in sixty-five is happy. Same truck, same drive, different promise.

Read the Board Before You Answer

An honest ETA starts with knowing what each truck is doing. Look at the dispatch board. Where is each truck in its list of calls? Where is each one dropping off next? A truck finishing a drop-off three miles away is a very different answer from one that has two more calls ahead of it across town.

The Waiting List map helps too. If there are calls ahead of this one in the same area, the new call is not going to the front of the line unless it is a safety priority.

Check what kind of calls are ahead, too. Two lockouts ahead in the same area will clear faster than one Accident & Recovery call, even though the count says otherwise. The category on each call tells you which kind of wait the customer is really looking at.

Quote a Window, Not a Minute

Give a range: "between forty-five minutes and an hour and fifteen." Ranges are honest about uncertainty and give the customer something to plan around. A single number feels like a promise, and promises in towing get broken by traffic, by recoveries that run long and by the call that jumped the line.

If a call is a safety priority, say so: "Since you are on the shoulder, I am moving you up." That tells the customer you are taking them seriously.

Quote the window in the text, too, not just on the phone. A customer who has the window written down does not have to remember what the dispatcher said in the middle of a stressful call, and they are less likely to call back to double-check.

Update Before They Ask

The best ETA is the one you update. If a truck gets held up, text the customer before they call you. Two-way texting takes fifteen seconds and saves the callback. A late truck with an update feels very different from a late truck with silence.

Once the driver is heading there, the one-tap on-the-way text and the live map of the driver in the customer app take over. The customer can watch the truck approach, which makes the original ETA matter far less.

When a call jumps the line, other ETAs change. Look at which customers were bumped and send them a quick text with the new window. The customers who never knew they were bumped are the ones who call back angry.

When You Cannot Make It

Sometimes the honest answer is that you cannot get there for hours, or at all. Say so. A customer told "we are three hours out tonight" can decide to wait or call someone else. A customer told "about an hour" who waits three will never call you again.

On storm days and holidays, decide on a standard window to quote and make sure everyone answering the phone uses it.

It also helps to explain why. "We have two trucks on accident scenes right now" gives the customer a reason to believe the number, and most people respect a company that tells them what is going on.

Make Honesty the House Style

Honest ETAs are a company habit, not a personality trait. Write down how your company quotes wait times, train every dispatcher on it, and back them up when a customer chooses another company because you were honest. Over time, the reputation is worth more than the calls you lose. The next guide looks at the one-truck operator who is dispatcher and driver at the same time.

For the board, map and texting tools behind honest ETAs, visit the TowingBossPro tow dispatch software page.