Manage customer access for carrier sharing, rating, and booking preferences

Turvo allows you to configure the level of access that your customers have to the assigned carrier’s information and even allows your customers to collaborate on shipment creation by selecting a preferred carrier or directly booking a carrier for the shipment. 

In this article, you will learn about:

• How to access the customer’s settings
• How to share the carrier operating a shipment with your customer
  • What your customer and vendors will now see
• How to configure whether the customer can directly book or select a preferred carrier
• How to select the preferred carrier as the customer
  • Responding to customer’s preferred carrier selection
• How to directly book a carrier as the customer

How to access the customer’s settings

By default, customers see only the logistics provider listed under the shipment’s Carriers block when a shipment is shared. However, some of your customers may request that you share the name of the transportation provider (carrier) moving the goods for them on a shipment. Doing so gives your customers visibility into who will pick up or deliver the goods at your location or 3rd party facility. 

1. Use the left navigation menu to navigate to Accounts > Customers.
2. In the Customers page, select the customer you wish to update by scrolling down to find it or using filters.
   1. Note: Customer account pages will also appear when typing their name into the global search bar. See our article, Searching in Turvo, to learn more about using the global search bar.

3. In the customer’s account page, click the Details tab.
4. Scroll down to the Settings section and click the header to expand the section.
5. Click the Sharing segment header to expand the customer’s sharing settings.

How to share the carrier operating a shipment with your customer

With this feature, you can determine whether each of your customers should see the carrier on shipments shared with them. When enabled, shipments shared to those customers and vendors will include a section called Operated by that shows the carrier operating the shipment.

Note: This feature is not automatically available in all tenants, and must be configured. Contact your Turvo representative to see if this feature is right for you and your customers.

1. In the customer’s Details tab > Settings section > Sharing segment (as shown in the section above), you will see the Share the carrier operating the shipment with  customer toggle.
   1. Note: The toggle directly beneath it, Display the customer to operating carriers on shipments, will share the customer’s information with carriers that are operating the customer’s shipments. 
2. If the toggle is grey, then this sharing is turned off. To turn it on, click the toggle so it is blue.
3. Click SAVE in the bottom right corner.

What your customer and vendors will now see

On the Details tab of shipments managed by your company, they will now see more information in the Carrier section.

Specifically, under the Route section, there is now an additional field: Operated by. This will display the specific carrier that has been assigned to this shipment.

To ensure you are able to manage all aspects of the shipment life cycle, the details fields on the shipment will be read-only for your customer. However, you and your customer will still be able to collaborate on the shipment using the messenger, tasks, tags and notes tools.

Additionally, in the Shipments page list view, Operated by is available as a configurable column. Simply click the More actions (three-dots) icon and select Operated by to details listed in this column.

How to configure whether the customer can directly book or select a preferred carrier

One of the ways Turvo allows for your and your customers to collaborate on shipment creation is allowing your customers to be involved in selecting carriers for their shipments. Using your customer’s account settings in your Turvo tenant, you can set preferences on how each of your customers can interact with your tenant’s shipment rating features. Customers can either be locked out entirely, allowed to select a preferred carrier, or even book a carrier directly without your intervention.

For example, you may wish to allow certain customers to directly choose which carrier is best for them using the rates offered by your platform integrations, while others are allowed to select their preferred carrier, leaving the final decision on the shipment’s carrier to you.

Protip: If your customer is viewing quotes received from the P44 integration, they will see prices that already include the markup configured in the Details tab > Settings section > Costs markup segment of their customer account profile in Turvo. See our article on Viewing and editing customer details to learn more about configuring the Costs markup segment.

Note: Currently, these features are only available for truckload (TL) and less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments.

1. In the customer’s Details tab > Settings section > Sharing segment, below the Share the carrier operating the shipment with customer and Display the customer to operating carriers on shipments toggles, you will find the settings for whether the customer can directly book or select a preferred carrier.

2. Use the following settings to configure the customer’s rating and booking settings:
   1. See ratings and quotes from our carriers: Enabling this toggle will allow the customer to see the available rates and quotes from carriers in your tenant. The selections below will be locked if this toggled is in the OFF position, and the SELECT button will be disabled when the customer views a shipment’s Carriers tab.
   2. Soft select carriers: If this radio button is selected, your customer will be allowed to select a preferred carrier in the shipment’s Carriers tab.
      1. Note: This radio button is selected by default.
   3. Book carriers directly: If this radio button is selected, your customer will be allowed to book/assign carriers directly in the shipment’s Carriers tab. 
      1. Notes: Selecting this will deselect the Soft select carriers radio button, and vice versa.
      2. Direct booking is not supported for TL shipments.
   4. Freeze Carrier section after selection: If this is checked, the customer will be prevented from changing their selection.
   5. Modes supported: Use the toggles in this subsection to select which shipment modes the rating/quote sharing features are enabled for:
      1. LTL: Use the LTL toggle to indicate that the customer can view rates and select a preferred carrier or directly book a carrier for your less-than-truckload LTL shipments.
      2. TL: Use the TL toggle to indicate that the customer can view rates and select a preferred carrier for your TL shipments.
3. Once you are finished making your selections, click SAVE at the bottom of the Sharing segment.

Customer soft-selects preferred carrier

Important note: For the shipper to be able to see the available carriers, shipper must enter the broker as the carrier in Shipment > Details > Carriers.

Once the customer is ready to soft-select a carrier for their shipment they will:

1. Go to the shipment’s Carriers tab.
2. Hover the cursor over the row listing the preferred carrier's rate and a SELECT button appears.
   Note: For LTL shipments, the Source column will display the name of the LTL platform integration that retrieved the rate. If your logistics service provider has multiple integrations, you may see multiple rates for the same carrier from different sources.

3. Click the SELECT button on the right of the row. The list refreshes and the selected carrier appears in a new Selected section.

This is a soft-selection that can be changed. Hovering over the shipment presents a DESELECT button. 

Selecting the carrier applies the #CarrierSelectedByShipper tag.
Protip: You can quickly find all shipments that have a selected carrier by using Turvo’s filter options to search for the #CarrierSelectedByShipper tag. See our articles, Using filters to quickly find information and How to filter shipments, to learn more about using Turvo’s filter functions on the Shipments page.

The broker then receives a notification that the #CarrierSelectedByShipper has been applied.

Responding to customer’s preferred carrier selection

As the logistics service provider, once your customer has selected a preferred carrier, the selected carrier rate will be shown in the Preferred by Shipper section at the top of the list view in the shipment’s Carriers tab.

1. While you hover the cursor over the row, Assign and Offer buttons appear on the right side.
   

• • To select the carrier, click the ASSIGN button on the right of the row. 
  • To send an offer to the carrier, click the OFFER button and fill in the offer information as you normally would. 

Once you have booked the shipment, the #CarrierSelectedByShipper tag is removed and, if your tenant utilizes Turvo’s P44 LTL integration for booking, the carrier that you assign or book will be sent to that service.

Requesting a spot rate

If no rates appear, shippers can request spot rates by clicking the Request for spot rates button.

The logistics service provider is notified that the shipper has requested a spot rate and a #RequestedSpotRate tag is applied.

How to directly book a carrier as the customer

Directly booking or assigning a carrier to a shipment as the customer will follow the same procedure as it does for the logistics service provider. For more information on booking or assigning a carrier for LTL shipments, see our LTL Shipment Guide.