Customize How Long Latchel Waits Before Contacting Your Next Service Provider

When Latchel is in the process of assigning your preferred service providers to a non-emergency work order, we open the work order to multiple service providers until the first available one responds. Each service provider is given a specific window of time (usually 1 hour by default) to accept the job. If none of the preferred service providers respond or accept the job within that time frame, we then open it up to other service providers in the priority list.

As time passes, more service providers have the opportunity to accept the job. However, if we exhaust all the preferred service providers to contact or if 24 hours have elapsed (whichever comes last) without any responses or acceptances, we allow an additional 24 hours for them to accept. If they still do not respond within that time, we seek your team’s assistance in contacting the unresponsive service providers.

This feature is named, “Response Buffer” in Latchel.

From the Latchel dashboard select People, and in the dropdown click Service Providers.

Under Categories & Prioritization, you will see a list of skills, and depending on which category, click the dropdown to expand the list of service providers.

Look for the service provider that you need to customize the waiting time and click its corresponding ellipsis icon and select Edit Settings.

From here, you can modify the service provider’s “Response Buffer” time (how long the service provider has to respond to messages to claim an available job before contacting the next service provider on the list). Select Save.

Please note that this setting is modifiable for the service provider and each trade (skill category) they are assigned. This means that if you have a service provider that is prioritized for Appliance jobs and HVAC jobs, you will need to modify the response buffer for the service provider under the Appliance skill category AND the HVAC skill category. The response buffer does not carry over to additional skill categories the service provider might be assigned to.

Lastly, the Response Buffer is activated during business hours (8 AM – 5 PM) and your service providers will only be texted during these hours. The Response Buffer timer starts when the job SMS is sent to your service provider.

Scenario Example 1: If a non-emergency work order comes in after-hours, Latchel will wait until 8 AM to send the first service provider the job SMS and that is when the Response Buffer timer will begin.

Scenario Example 2: If a non-emergency work order is received at 4:30 PM, we will send the job SMS to the first preferred service provider at that time. The second preferred service will receive the job SMS at 8 AM.