Plumbing dispatching is triage more often than planning. A leak now outranks a booked service, and the decision is made in seconds on incomplete information: how bad, how far, who is free, who has the part. The board has to support that decision rather than document it afterwards, which means the two queues, the booked week and today's emergencies, need to be visible in the same place without one silently eating the other.
Two queues, one board
Booked work has promises attached; emergency work has none but outranks everything. Dispatching and scheduling on one screen lets the dispatcher see what a reassignment costs in broken promises before making it, which is the judgement the software cannot make.
Deliberate slack beats heroic recovery
A day booked to capacity means every emergency displaces a customer who was given a window. Holding a share of each day open is not lost revenue; it is the capacity that lets you take the high-value emergency at all.
Parts decide whether it is one visit or two
Most plumbing second visits are a part. Putting the likely parts on the job at booking, and letting the technician check the van before leaving, converts a proportion of two-visit jobs into one-visit jobs, which is worth more than any routing optimisation.
Questions people ask about plumbing dispatching
How should emergency calls be priced into the day?
With a premium rate and deliberate slack. If emergency work is priced the same as booked work, it is pure disruption; priced properly it is the most profitable hour of the day.
Who decides what counts as an emergency?
The office, from a short script of questions, not the customer's description. Everything is urgent to the person phoning, and a consistent triage question set is what stops the board being sorted by whoever sounded most upset.
Does the booked customer need to be told?
Always, and before they notice. A call at nine saying the visit has moved to the afternoon costs nothing; a customer waiting from eight and phoning at eleven costs the relationship.