This article follows a dispatcher who has to fit an urgent call into a day that is already booked, and shows what the software does for them and what it leaves to them.

The problem, a day that never holds the morning plan

At 10:40, a property manager calls. A tenant found bed bugs in their bed and will not sleep there tonight. Every technician already has five or six visits. Nobody is free, and each minute spent hunting for a fix on the phone pushes the rest of the day back.

The real risk is not the emergency itself. It is the visit pushed back in a hurry that nobody reschedules, or the customer nobody warned who waits at the door.

Worked example, an emergency in Toronto, and the same call in Houston

In Toronto, one technician is working the west end until 2 p.m. Another is downtown, with a preventive mouse visit at a shop late in the morning that can wait a day. The emergency is a few blocks from her next stop. The dispatcher gives her the call and moves the preventive visit to tomorrow morning. In Houston, where drive times between jobs are longer, the same reasoning holds, only the question of who finishes closest weighs even more.

Five questions to ask on the phone

  • Which pest, and since when.
  • Which unit, which floor, which building.
  • How to get in, who has the key, who will be there.
  • Who approves and who pays, the tenant, the owner or the property manager.
  • Is the unit ready, or does the preparation sheet go out first.

Step by step, in Atlas

  1. Create the job in the right place. Link it to the customer, the building and the unit. That unit's history can be read at the office, with the visits already done.
  2. Read each technician's day. The schedule groups jobs by day, each line with its technician, address and status. That is where the dispatcher sees who finishes near the address.
  3. Push back what can wait. The preventive visit is dragged to tomorrow. It keeps its time, length and technician.
  4. Assign the emergency. On the job itself, the dispatcher picks the technician from the list. Drag and drop never changes the technician.
  5. Notify. « Create and notify client » emails a confirmation to the emergency's customer. The customer of the moved visit gets a change notice if they had already been notified and customer notices are on in settings.
  6. Leave the instructions. Access, key, tenant to call, all go in the job note, which the technician reads at the door. Ticked « Hide this note from the client », it stays internal.

What each person sees

  • The owner finds a readable day in the evening. The preventive visit did not vanish, it sits on tomorrow, and a visit that could not happen stays on the board with its required reason until someone reschedules it.
  • The dispatcher does it all from one screen, without calling anyone to announce the change.
  • The technician finds the emergency in today's list when they reopen it, with the address, the unit and the note. Without signal, the phone keeps the last list received and picks up the new one on its own when the signal returns.
  • The property manager gets the confirmation by email, under the company's name, and does not have to call to find out whether someone is coming.

What Atlas automates

  • The technician's list, which picks up the current schedule every time it opens and when the signal returns.
  • Emails to the customer when a visit is created, moved or cancelled, when notices are on and the customer has an email address.
  • Holidays for your province or state, respected by the schedule and by recurring visits.
  • A required reason when a visit fails, so it never drops off the board.

What stays in the company's hands

  • Choosing the technician. Atlas calculates neither distance nor workload.
  • What can wait and what cannot.
  • The price of the emergency, and the invoice, which is entered by hand after the visit.
  • Calling the customer when an email is not enough.

Atlas's limits with emergencies

Atlas has no map, no routing and no route optimization. It does not suggest the nearest technician or count the hours already booked. It sends no text messages, only emails. Those choices stay with the dispatcher, and the software makes sure no visit gets lost on the way.

For the detail of the schedule, the scheduling and dispatch page shows the screen and its limits. Settings specific to your country are on the Atlas in the United States and Atlas in Canada pages. For the invoice that follows the emergency in the U.S., read whether pest control is taxable in your state.