What Augment shipped for carriers this quarter

Carriers and driver managers spend a large portion of their time moving information between shippers, brokers, drivers, and the TMS. We call that work the coordination tax: the time your team spends moving information instead of moving freight.

The five new workflows we shipped this quarter take that work off your team—from order to cash—so that you can focus on relationship building and business growth. We also released a new custom workflow builder that lets you launch brand new workflows and edit your existing ones directly.

Order entry and BOL extraction

The problem: For carriers, paperwork never stops. Tenders land in a distribution inbox all day, drivers send in BOLs, and someone on your team keys each one into the TMS, field by field. As you scale, that volume only increases. Some carriers hire people for no other reason than to keep up with inbound tenders and the data entry behind them.

Our solution: Augie now builds those orders in the TMS for you by reading every tender, extracting the important fields, and applying your rules to the data. Augie learns the rules for each shipper and customer over time so that every order comes out the way that customer expects. Whether a tender has 50 rows or an email holds several tenders, Augie gets them into your TMS in a matter of minutes.

Every tender and every BOL becomes a verified order in the TMS, so your downstream operations start from clean data, and your people can focus on higher-value work.

Appointment scheduling

The problem: For every order, someone has to book pickup and delivery. Many customer service reps manage 30 or more scheduling portals, with a spreadsheet of credentials for each one. Meanwhile, appointment requests pile up in their inbox and ideal slots at a busy facilities get taken by whoever books first.

Our solution: Augie handles appointment scheduling in one workflow. When you update an order’s status in the TMS, Augie looks at the pickup and delivery stops’ facilities, works out how each one schedules and through which portal, and books the best available slot. Augie also writes confirmations back to the TMS and documents its decision-making process.

With appointment scheduling, Augie takes the hot slots before they disappear and confirms every appointment in the TMS so that your drivers show up on time to their appointments.

During our fall product recap, we showed how Augie schedules pickup and delivery for one load across two different portals. We also reviewed the audit trail to see every slot it passed on and why. Watch the replay.

Customer service

The problem: Customer service teams field hundreds, if not thousands, of emails a day from customers, brokers, and shippers. Most of these communications have to do with a load’s location, its delivery time, or the POD. Every hour your customer service team spends in the inbox is an hour they do not spend on the customer relationships that grow the business.

Our solution: Augie works as a fully autonomous customer service rep, reading and classifying every inbound email. If an email arrives without a load reference, Augie asks the sender for one before it goes any further. Once Augie has the reference, it pulls the load from the TMS and the truck's location from the ELD. Augie also attaches a document when the request calls for one, and replies with the status and ETA in a matter of minutes, around the clock.

Every reply is governed by your SOP. You can read each response, see its version history, and edit it yourself.

Customer service is also our fastest workflow to launch. A flat file of active loads plus an ELD integration gives Augie enough information to produce accurate ETAs and status updates, enabling you to see value in about a week.

With our customer service workflow, Augie handles the majority of the requests your team sees today, and your reps get back to the true exceptions and relationships that scale the business.

Proactive tracking updates

The problem: Brokers measure carriers on responsiveness, proactive updates, and on-time performance. Many broker contracts spell out how often you owe an update on active loads and how fast you must flag a load at risk. To meet contract requirements, reps have to pull hundreds of active loads, format them in a spreadsheet, and send updates every couple of hours.

Our solution: Proactive tracking with Augie complements our customer service workflow. With customer service, Augie answers questions as they come in. With proactive tracking, Augie sends answers before a customer asks.

Augie pulls every active load per customer, checks its current status, and calculates an ETA that accounts for the driver's hours of service. Then Augie decides whether the load is on track or at risk. For an at-risk load, Augie flags your team internally so someone can work with the driver manager or the driver to bring it back on track. For every other load, Augie sends the update straight to the customer.

The end result is that your customers get updates across all their loads before they need to ask, and nobody on your team builds another update spreadsheet by hand.

Capacity and demand matching

The problem: Backhaul is where empty miles turn into lost margin. Reps hunt load boards, call brokers, and log into shipper portals to find one load that clears the floor rate. Oftentimes, they settle for a load that pays decently instead of the one that pays best because the search takes too long.

Our solution: Because Augment works with both brokers and carriers, we are well equipped to match carrier capacity with broker demand. Carriers can load their empty capacity into the Augment portal with their truck lanes, schedules, and floor rate. You choose the brokerage partners you want to share capacity with. The same is true for the brokers on the other side. Only matches that meet both parties' requirements surface in the portal, so your data stays private. You can change or reduce what you share at any time.

Augie runs matching 24/7 against available loads. Matches reach your operators by email or Teams, and each alert lets the operator book the load right there or follow up with the broker directly to book. That means more profitable backhaul for your fleet without a rep having to constantly monitor the load boards.

On our fall product recap, Augie surfaced a backhaul match for a dry van, and I walked through every check it ran before it offered the load, down to how far above the floor rate it landed. Watch the replay.

Custom workflow builder

Every workflow above runs on an SOP, the written instructions Augie follows the same way a new hire would. Our custom workflow builder helps you generate and edit those SOPs. You don’t need to be an engineer or make a code change to create a new workflow. You describe what you want to do in plain language directly in the Augment portal.

To edit a workflow you already run, tell the builder what you want to change and why. The builder reads the whole SOP, finds the relevant sections, and makes the change. You see the exact lines it changed and its reasoning, and you can run SOP tests to confirm the change is safe before it goes live.

To build something new, describe the job, the rules, what to escalate and to whom, then upload reference material such as a handbook. The builder drafts the SOP, asks a question when it needs a decision from your team, and builds the agent. Agents can run on voice, email, chat, or SMS for customers, drivers, or internal teams. A phone line can go straight to users or plug into your existing IVR. One example is a driver support line that answers policy questions from your handbook.

All custom workflows leverage the same tools and channels Augie has today. The world is your oyster when it comes to building new solutions.

On our fall product recap, we built a working support agent from a handbook upload and a few sentences of direction, and then I called it live and tested its answers. Watch the replay.

Watch the full fall product recap

On our fall product recap, we demoed the workflows above and answered questions on launch timelines, TMS integrations, and guardrails. If you want to see these workflows on your own freight, book a personalized demo. Current customers can ask their account team to turn on any new workflow today.