Several years ago, a study found that 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family.
Why?
Because we feel like a review comes from someone who’s been there and is willing to be honest with us. It feels like getting an inside look that’s far more real than the marketing available from the company.
Reviews are powerful tools in transportation as well, increasing transparency and letting drivers know what to expect when they are delivering to specific facilities. What you might not realize is that it’s easy to incorporate reviews into your technology — without having to build a database from scratch.
Drivers Trust Drivers About Facilities
Drivers have been known to spin a tall tale or two, but they generally trust each other when it comes to experiences with facilities. As one driver put it, “Drivers don’t lie to you about problems or if it’s a great arrangement.”
There are a lot of things that can happen at a facility that affect a driver’s ability to efficiently deliver a load and get back on the road. For example, reviews can tell drivers that a facility has a high detention time or that there are bathrooms available. Reviews can also let drivers know if the facility stops taking check-ins before their official closing time and which direction to go to get directly to the drop-off docks.
It’s a major help to drivers when they can get information about what to expect from those who have been there before.
How to Incorporate Reviews Into Your Technology
If you’re a carrier or a technology solution aimed at transportation, having driver reviews of facilities can add significant value and usability for your audience. But how do you get them?
Many carriers start by having their own drivers record reviews that are stored in company systems. Tech companies might do surveys. But the problem is that the data set is limited — a carrier is only going to have information from their specific drivers, and tech companies will struggle to reach a broad cross-section of drivers.
What happens when the carrier needs to evaluate a new facility for a possible contract? They won’t have access to reviews because none of their in-house drivers have been there yet. And that can lead to long-term contracts with less-than-ideal facilities.
Instead, both carriers and tech companies can benefit from using existing data from a provider like Dock411. We have reviews on hundreds of thousands of facilities from drivers that work for a wide variety of carriers. That means the data is more helpful and deeper than any carrier could assemble on their own.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel — simply connect to our easy-to-use API!
Let Dock411 Help You Gain Access to Valuable Driver Reviews
As a carrier, reviews can help your drivers know what to expect when they get to a facility — and be that much closer to the coveted “gravy loads” where everything goes as expected.
And if you’re a tech company, incorporating reviews can help your product be far more valuable to your audience, especially if you serve smaller companies with fewer trucks. Those companies have no ability to get the wide variety of facility reviews you can provide through our API.
Don’t feel like driver reviews have to take you months to collect and dozens of hours to incorporate into your tech. Instead, contact us today to learn how our API can bring this data quickly and easily to your technology!
