Missing tracking numbers can disrupt freight support systems as bots inundate customer service lines, but clients of software provider Carrier Logistics now have access to a remedy: A software interface that can deduce order information and prevent a surge in follow-up communications.
To build the interface, Carrier Logistics, known as CLI, partnered with AI-centered software business LSP44, a Chicago-based provider of AI agent and application program interface, or API, infrastructure. APIs are sets of rules or protocols that allow computers or programs to communicate with each other.
While APIs can successfully navigate shipment tracking most of the time, missing or incorrect tracking numbers can cause bots to send “intrusive emails and phone calls that overwhelm the customer service teams at motor carriers,” Wiesen noted.
"CLI and LSP44 are collaborating to solve AI bot fatigue," CLI President Ben Wiesen said in a news release Thursday.
The solution is an AI-powered API that “matches known shipment properties to shipments in the TMS, resolving ambiguity automatically,” the company said. While the new API might not handle every problematic instance, it seeks to greatly reduce the number of human touches needed, Wiesen said in a statement to Trucking Dive.
LTL carriers’ customer service teams absorb the cost of friction in traditional follow-up processes, LSP44 Head of Product Nick Ruggiero noted in the release. The new interface is meant to reduce that discord.
“API connectivity that works without a clean tracking number removes an entire category of friction overnight, for every shipper and 3PL connected to that carrier,” he said.
