A CRM for freight transport is there so that every enquiry, whether it comes from Telegram, a phone call or the website, lands in a shared database and is followed through to payment where everyone can see it. It shows which dispatcher handled the enquiry, which truck went out, at what rate and whether the customer has paid. If you have a couple of trucks and one dispatcher, a well-kept spreadsheet is often enough. When there are several dispatchers and enquiries are scattered across chats and phones, the spreadsheet can no longer keep up with the work.
Below: how to tell that enquiries are already being lost, what a CRM should track for a carrier and a freight forwarder, which one to choose, and how to start so that dispatchers don't go back to their old files.
Signs that enquiries are being lost
Lost enquiries rarely make a noise. More often, the customer simply didn't get a reply in time and gave the trip to someone else, and you never found out. See whether any of this sounds familiar:
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Enquiries live in personal chats. A customer messages a dispatcher on Telegram on Friday evening, the dispatcher goes off for the weekend, and the enquiry sits on their phone until Monday.
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Calls aren't recorded anywhere. Who spoke to the customer yesterday and what rate they quoted is known only to whoever picked up the phone.
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Every dispatcher has their own Excel file. To count the month's trips, files are collected from everyone and merged by hand, and the numbers still don't add up.
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You find out about debts at the end of the month. Which customers haven't paid for past trips only comes to light when you already need the money.
If you recognised at least two of these, the problem isn't your dispatchers: your enquiries have no shared home. Other signs that apply to any business are collected in the article on when it's time to move from spreadsheets to a CRM.
What a freight CRM should track
A good CRM follows the path an enquiry already takes in your company, except that every step is visible to everyone who needs to see it. For a carrier or freight forwarder, the path usually looks like this:
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Enquiry. From where to where, what the load is, when the truck is needed, the customer's contact details. The record looks the same wherever the enquiry came from.
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Quote. The dispatcher gives a rate, and the CRM shows who was offered what and who hasn't replied yet.
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Trip. A truck and a driver are assigned, and the trip has a status: awaiting loading, in transit, delivered.
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Documents. A note that the trip documents have been collected and handed to the customer.
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Payment. Invoice issued, paid or overdue.
Around this path, the CRM keeps what is currently scattered across files and phones:
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Customers. Contact details, trip history, payment terms and current debt, all in one record.
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Trucks and drivers. Who's free, who's on a trip, when they'll be free. The dispatcher sees this on screen instead of finding it out by phone. A freight forwarder also needs the carriers they work with, and their vehicles, in the same place.
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Rates. How much you charged the customer and how much you paid the carrier. In a CRM for a freight forwarder, this is the key field: it shows which trips made you money and which only broke even.
Enquiries from the website and Telegram go straight into the CRM
A CRM is only as useful as the share of enquiries that actually reach it. If a dispatcher copies them over from chats by hand, some will stay in the chats. So it's better to connect the channels directly:
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Website. A customer fills in the form, a record with the route and contact details appears in the CRM, and the dispatcher gets a notification.
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Telegram. A bot asks the same things as the form: from where, to where, what needs carrying and when. The answers go into the CRM even if the customer writes at night.
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Calls. If your phone system is connected to the CRM, a call creates a record by itself, and the dispatcher only has to add the route.
We explained how this kind of link works and where it breaks in our article on connecting a website to a CRM.
An example from our work. It isn't logistics — we did it for a leasing company — but the task was the same: getting enquiries from different channels into one place. For Eskhata Leasing TJ we built exactly this kind of single client database, and we connected the Eskhata Leasing website in Uzbekistan to Bitrix24.
Off-the-shelf CRM or your own
A CRM for a transport company doesn't have to be built from scratch. Once set up, off-the-shelf systems such as Bitrix24 or amoCRM give you an enquiry pipeline, customer records and tasks. If your process fits their logic, that's a sensible first step. Features and terms change, so check the current ones on the provider's website.
You need your own system when your process doesn't fit an off-the-shelf one and dispatchers are back to doing half their work in Excel. Most often, one of three things gets in the way:
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The trip matters more than the deal. Off-the-shelf CRMs are built around sales, but you need to see trucks, drivers and trip statuses.
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Complex rates. One order needs several trucks, or one truck carries loads for several customers, and each one has to be costed separately.
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Your own reports. Earnings by trip, truck or customer, in the form management wants to see them.
This is especially true of a CRM for a logistics company that both runs its own trucks and works as a freight forwarder. An off-the-shelf system usually needs serious modification for that set-up, and at some point it becomes simpler to build your own CRM around your trips and reports.
Where to start with implementation
A CRM rarely takes root if you launch all of it at once, with every report, permission and integration. It's safer to go step by step:
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Map out the path of an enquiry. Write down the steps from the customer's first message to payment as they actually happen, not as they're supposed to.
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Start with enquiries and trips. Reports and the link to your accounting software can come later. First, dispatchers need to get used to working in the CRM every day.
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Connect the website and Telegram. Then enquiries will reach the CRM on their own, without being copied over by hand.
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Put someone in charge. One person, such as the senior dispatcher, collects colleagues' feedback and decides what to fix first.
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Agree on a rule. If an enquiry isn't in the CRM, it doesn't exist. Otherwise, very soon you'll have two systems again: the CRM and the chats.
If everything is currently kept in a spreadsheet, that's a normal starting point. We explained how to tidy it up before the switch in our article on tracking shipments in Excel.
Checklist
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Yesterday's enquiries. Can you find all of them, wherever they came from: Telegram, calls, the website?
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An unanswered enquiry. Will you know if a dispatcher still hasn't replied to a customer by the evening?
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Available trucks. Can you see which trucks are free tomorrow without ringing round the drivers?
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Earnings per trip. Can you say how much you made on a particular trip last week?
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Debts. Is there a list of which customers owe money as of today, and how much?
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A dispatcher leaving. If a dispatcher quits, will you keep their customers and enquiry history?
We'll help you work out which CRM your company needs: we'll look at how an enquiry makes its way to payment in your business and tell you whether an off-the-shelf system will do or you need your own. There's more on our pages about CRM and ERP development and our work with logistics companies. An example from this industry is the Renoda Logistics website.