IoT company Samsara launched its customer feedback loop that has fueled its growth when it met with Revolution Foods, a company that delivers healthy meals to schools in 23 states across the U.S. When Samsara showed up on site with a box of temperature sensors for the company to deploy on its vehicles, the team recognized an even greater need in a room full of paper: charts everywhere and maps on the walls.
“That's how they were doing their route plans, and then we heard it. We heard phone calls everywhere from their customers, and these were cafeterias basically calling in asking where the driver was,” said Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas. “They wanted a better way to operate, but they didn't know how. Being the tech people, we had some ideas. We went back, started writing a bunch of code, and came back a couple of weeks later with a new feature. This was the feature that literally put Samsara on the map: real-time GPS tracking.”
And the company has expanded from there across many industries.
In the past year, Samsara has added more than 200 new features and enhancements to its connected operations cloud, and it introduced its newest product features on Wednesday at its inaugural Beyond user conference.
Through its well-established customer feedback loop, the company is now working to create solutions to a variety of problems in the trucking industry, from supply chain and fuel efficiency to labor shortages and driver safety. Its newest features focus on transforming the worker experience to help companies not only retain drivers but also to improve operational efficiencies and, ultimately, save money.
Those new features include Driver Workflows to improve productivity, In-Cab Nudges to encourage safe driving behavior, Multi-Stop ETAs to provide customers with exact arrival times and potentially help decrease driver wait times and Remote Support so carriers can help their drivers troubleshoot from anywhere.
Just like with Revolution Foods, the industry standard has been using paper to keep track of tasks, which is an inefficient use of time. Driver Workflows digitizes driver tasks to get drivers on the road more quickly and easily, prevent a driver from forgetting an important step that could land him or her in violation of regulations, and keep them on track throughout their day.
