FleetWorks

WE NEED HELP!! We've been growing super fast at FleetWorks and have onboarding a lot of new customers in the last month. We're pumped about our roadmap to build the best AI carrier sales agent in the world and are looking for an awesome engineer to work directly with me and Quang Tran. So much to build! Drop me a DM if you or someone you know is interested. If we hire someone you refer to us, I'll venmo you $5k.

I’ve been on my honeymoon the last two weeks, so I’m a bit late to the C.H. Robinson AI party. Here are my thoughts. So Robinson announced they’ve developed an AI tool to respond to email spot quotes without human intervention. Its handling 2,000 emails per day right now. This tool has potential to improve internal efficiencies and the customer experience with faster response times to quotes. One of the first responses I saw to this announcement emphasized how this was another step away from “relationships” and that customers don’t want to be emailing back and forth with a bot. Ultimately, this would be a big loser move on CH’s part and cost them customers. I disagree, wholeheartedly. It’s not that simple. The tech shouldn’t be the reason this is a winner or loser for them; how they use the tech will determine that. For one, the notion that a customer will only be happy if their rep is the one manually sending in the quote is foolish. Imagine you’re a C.H. Rep meeting with a Transportation Manager out on the golf course. They have an urgent spot quote. They send it out. While you get ready to shank your tee shot, “you”, or the AI tool responding on your behalf, sends back a quote in 2 minutes. By the time you take your penalty drop, they’ve awarded you the load. If the following is true, then this process can be a home run: -the rate is competitive enough to be tendered -they can stand behind the rate -they can execute the load to the customer’s expectations The big question is how Robinson will behave with the tool. Customers don’t care who sends in the quote; they care what the quote represents. If Robinson can execute the orders they quote with this tool, then it’s a winner for them. That is what matters. This advancement is an extension of dynamic/instant API pricing that has become more popular in recent years, led by the “digital” players. The reality behind that movement though is it has been slow to make meaningful positive impact for customers. Many brokers using this type of tool historically quote higher (than they would manually) to mitigate risk. Over time, I expect that to change but our industry is slow to fall in love with these types of changes. Within a year or two, I imagine every broker will be able to leverage a tool like this, as other vendors will offer it. Robinson has several advantages, as they clearly have the resources to build it themselves and iterate to improve it, and they have more data than any competitor. The data is most important for driving rate accuracy, which is one part of determining if they keep their customers happy. The other piece is execution, and for that, they will have to continue to count on people to get the job done.

Just in time for TIA, we relaunched our site! https://www.fleetworks.ai/

I dawned on me that I posted about AI talking to carriers on April Fools ?? I swear this isn't a joke We’ve seen up to 20% of inbound calls are on covered loads. What if FleetWorks could take those on and only loop in your team if the carrier wants another loads? https://lnkd.in/eztC8nNH