How Cartage Automated Customer Reporting

Cartage, a trailblazer in the freight coordination industry, is transforming how manufacturers and distributors manage their shipments. By replacing traditional freight brokers and internal logistics teams with a tech-driven, transparent system, Cartage is saving companies up to 30% on shipping costs. However, as the company grew fast, it hit big challenges.

They had loads of messy, unstructured data and complex customer questions to deal with. That's when they met Wordware. Using Wordware, Cartage built a smart agent that can dig into their huge database, read structured and unstructured data and quickly give customers the right answers—all without needing extra engineering help.

About Cartage: Redefining Freight Coordination for the Modern Era

Cartage is leading a revolution in freight coordination. In an industry where things were often unclear and slow, they're offering a bright, tech-friendly path forward.

Their approach gets rid of the need for traditional brokers & logistics teams. With better visibility on every shipment, they not only cut costs by up to 30%, but they also deliver services that can't be beaten. Companies across North America, spending $400 billion each year on moving goods, are choosing Cartage to make their operations smoother.

The Technology Behind Cartage

Cartage's success can largely be attributed to its robust technological framework. The company uses several technologies to enhance its service offerings:

Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI plays a crucial role in automating processes and providing predictive analytics that helps businesses make informed decisions regarding shipping routes and carrier selections. Natural language processing (NLP) is part of this AI-driven approach.

Cloud Computing: The platform operates on cloud infrastructure, allowing for scalability and flexibility. This means that as businesses grow or face seasonal fluctuations in shipping volume, Cartage can adapt quickly. Data processing and storage are managed efficiently.

Key Features of Cartage.ai

Cartage.ai combines cutting-edge technology with user-friendly interfaces to create a seamless experience for its users. Here are some of the standout features:

Autonomous Freight Coordination with AI automation

Utilizing advanced algorithms and AI-driven insights, Cartage automates freight operations. Cartage’s AI-driven platform automates routine tasks such as generating quotes, tracking shipments, and sending updates.

This allows shippers to save time by eliminating manual processes, while ensuring faster and more accurate operations. Moreover, it reduces reliance on human coordinators while ensuring that logistics processes are efficient and error-free.

Real-Time Shipment Tracking

Shippers and consignees gain full visibility into their freight with real-time tracking updates. It ensures that both the customer and the recipient know where the shipment is at all times, helping to avoid delays, gain insights into the shipment process, and improve communication.

Transparent Pricing

One of the standout features of Cartage is its commitment to transparency. They provide clear visibility into actual carrier costs, saving clients up to 40% on freight expenses by avoiding broker markups.

With Cartage, customers benefit from a cost-plus pricing model that clearly outlines the markups and the actual carrier rates. This level of transparency helps shippers avoid overpaying for freight services, offering predictable and fair pricing that’s often below industry averages.

Automated Customer Service

The platform automates routine tasks such as booking shipments and tracking deliveries. This allows logistics teams to focus on high-value activities that require human expertise. Automated customer service based on customer data tools plays a vital role in this efficiency.

Actionable Insights from Unstructured and Structured Data

Using Cartage stakeholders can access crucial information at any time, ensuring they are always informed about their shipments' status, which carrier overcharges the most, who is the most responsive carrier and more. All the questions can be asked in natural language and thanks to that, Cartage can automate customer service. This streamlines the process for Cartage's clients and provides valuable insights for informed decision-making.

Vetted Carrier Network

Cartage partners with over 40,000 North American carriers that are carefully vetted for performance, ensuring high-quality service. By focusing on carrier performance rather than just pricing, shippers can be confident that their freight is handled efficiently and reliably.

Seamless Integration

The platform easily integrates with existing systems like ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning) and WMS (Warehouse Management Systems), facilitating smooth operations without disrupting existing workflows. Clients can comfortably integrate all their data with Cartage's system. Such seamless integration ensures data quality and consistency.

Key Benefits

Cost Savings

Transparent pricing saves up to 40% on inflated broker markups. Cartage customer's can easily see how much they are saving, who is overcharging and by how much.

Speed

Fast quote responses and tracking updates, improving decision-making and responsiveness. With natural language processing, Cartage is able to create perfect customer service automation that enables businesses to save hours of manual work.

Improved Visibility

Real-time tracking eliminates the need for manual status checks. Cartage provides way to handle unstructured data with visual data representation.

Enhanced Efficiency

AI-driven automation reduces time and expenses associated with manual logistics processes. You can extract data from multiple sources in one place and manage it all.

Tailored Customer Service Experience

Via tailored customer service, Human partnerships ensure personalized support while AI handles repetitive tasks. Cartage's founders, Abdul and Josh, are doubling down on perfect customer experience via automation technology and ensuring data quality.

We love Cartage and what they are doing. So, what was the challenge we helped them solve?

The Challenge: Managing Unstructured Data and Complex Customer Queries

As Cartage grew, so did their data. They managed tons of records for every client—lots of info about shipments and services. With this growth came many customer questions, often super specific about accounts and shipments. Answering these questions manually took a lot of time and hard work. They did store unstructured data but in order to create true support automation they needed a way to pull the raw data from all different data sources and answer customer queries.

So, all in all there were 3 main problems:

Unstructured Data: Cartage had vast amounts of unstructured logistics data, making it challenging to efficiently retrieve and utilize information. Unlike structured data, unstructured data requires specialized tools for analysis and storage. They were looking for a way to transform unstructured data into a human-readable rapport. In order to do that they needed to find a way for real time data processing using AI.

Complex Customer Queries: Customers often needed specific information about shipment statuses or discrepancies in billing, which required significant resources to address manually. Automated customer service options and automated customer service tools were needed to handle these inquiries and customer expectations regarding the quality of answers were high.

High Engineering Costs: Building a solution to handle these queries within any other framework would have required extensive engineering resources, potentially delaying development and leading to suboptimal results. Automating customer service with appropriate tools was essential as Cartage during YC batch couldn't focus on hiring.

Impact on Customer Satisfaction

These challenges had direct implications for customer satisfaction. Slow response times and inaccurate information could lead to frustrated clients who felt unsupported during critical shipping operations.

Maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction became increasingly difficult as the volume of queries grew alongside the company’s expansion. Handling all that requests manually was impossible and hiring a customer experience specialist wasn't a scalable solution. That's why customer service automation was needed to enhance the customer journey.

However, support automation was hard when dealing with unstructured and semi structured data formats. Unstructured data, unlike structured data, cannot be handled with operation in a code base as it requires a bit more nuanced approach. Which is why autonomous agents seemed like the perfect option to try.

The Solution: Automating Customer Queries with Wordware

To tackle these challenges head-on, Cartage partnered with Wordware. Together, using Wordware, we created an intelligent agent using prompts and different LLM models. This smart agent was capable of quickly answering customer inquiries by querying their extensive database without additional engineering support. Because the agent could answer quickly questions, without needing any extra engineering help, the system improved customer service efficiency.

Autonomous Agent

Using Wordware, Cartage developed an app that acts as an autonomous agent. This autonomous agent can query Cartage's database and retrieve relevant information to answer customer queries accurately and quickly. It was developed in a way to fully enable automating customer service tasks and improving customer service workflows.

The agent itself works in the following way:

1. It reads the question and plans what can be queried in order to answer it and how to manage unstructured data in the system.
2. Writes a code to retrieve relevant information to answer customer queries accurately and quickly.
3. Checks the code if it returned any error or not, if yes, debugs the code.
4. If the code returned needed data and no further analysis is needed, it creates a report based on the data.

Streamlined Operations

The app significantly reduced the time spent on manual query processing, allowing Cartage's team to focus on further innovation and customer service improvements. Automated systems and automated service solutions were pivotal in this transformation.

Cost and Resource Savings

By utilizing Wordware, Cartage avoided the need to hire external engineering help. They were able to develop and deploy this solution rapidly, cutting down on engineering time and reducing operational costs. Automating customer service options proved to be cost-effective.

The Result: Enhanced Efficiency and Superior Customer Service

Thanks to Wordware, Cartage successfully automated their customer query process. They turned something that used to take ages into a quick and smooth process. Now the smart agent answers complicated questions easily, providing customers with quick and reliable responses. This change has boosted customer satisfaction and allowed Cartage to focus on what matters most: reinventing freight coordination.

Benefits of Using Wordware

The integration of Wordware into Cartage's operations brought about several key benefits:

Autonomous Agent: The smart agent efficiently retrieves relevant information to answer customer queries accurately. It can handle multiple inquiries simultaneously without compromising response quality or speed. Automated support enhances customer interactions.

Streamlined Operations: The automation significantly reduced the time spent on manual query processing. Employees could now devote more time to strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down by routine questions. Automated ticketing systems facilitated this shift.

Cost and Resource Savings: By leveraging Wordware's capabilities, Cartage minimized the need for external engineering resources. This allowed them to allocate budgetary resources more effectively toward innovation rather than maintenance. Operational costs were reduced significantly.

Improved Data Management: With better tools for managing unstructured data, Cartage was able to improve its overall data quality and accessibility. This led to better decision-making across the organization. Data cataloging and analytics provided valuable insights.

Future of Freight Operations

The future of freight operations is poised for significant transformation driven by advancements in AI and automation. As companies like Cartage continue to innovate:

Increased Automation

More logistics tasks will be automated, reducing human error and increasing efficiency across supply chains. Automation will extend beyond simple tasks; it will encompass complex decision-making processes enabled by AI algorithms capable of real-time analysis. Automated reporting will become standard.

Enhanced Data Utilization

Advanced analytics will enable companies to make data-driven decisions more effectively. Organizations will leverage big data not just for operational insights but also for strategic planning—identifying new markets or optimizing supply chains based on predictive modeling. Data analysts will play a crucial role in this process.

Sustainability Initiatives

There will be a growing emphasis on sustainable practices within freight operations as companies seek to reduce their carbon footprint. Innovations such as electric vehicles for last-mile delivery or optimized routing algorithms that minimize fuel consumption will become standard practices in the industry.

Customization and Personalization

As competition increases within the freight industry, companies will need to differentiate themselves through personalized services tailored to individual client needs. Advanced analytics will allow firms like Cartage to anticipate client requirements proactively rather than reactively addressing issues as they arise. Personalized customer service will be key.

Integration with Other Technologies

The future will see deeper integration between freight management systems and other technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things). Smart sensors can provide real-time updates on shipment conditions (e.g., temperature-sensitive goods), enhancing operational efficiency further while ensuring product integrity during transit. Sensor data will be critical for operational success.

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Conclusion: Wordware Supports Cartage in Improving Freight Management

Cartage is setting a new standard in the freight industry by combining transparency, technology, and efficiency. Partnering with Wordware let them tackle big challenges like messy data & tricky customer queries while staying true to their promise of innovation. Wordware gave them what they needed to automate important tasks, save money & keep giving amazing value to their clients.

As they continue evolving within this dynamic landscape characterized by rapid technological advancements—Cartage stands well-positioned not just as participants but as leaders shaping what’s next for freight coordination globally.

If you're interested in how Cartage is transforming the freight industry with its tech-driven approach, explore more about its services here.

Want to see how Wordware can help your business run smoother? Start exploring our platform today.