How to plan travel time between customer appointments

A one-hour customer visit uses more than an hour of a mobile business’s day. You have to reach the address, find the entrance, carry what you need, and get to the next job afterward.

Plan those movements alongside the appointments. The useful question is whether you can deliver the whole day at the times agreed with customers, including the journey home or back to base.

Start with the actual places you need to visit

Build the plan from customer addresses, not just distances from your business. Two customers may each be close to your base but on opposite sides of it. The journey between them is the one you need to allow for.

Confirm the address and any information that affects access: the correct entrance, parking arrangements, a floor or unit number, or a place to unload. Ask only for details needed to attend, and keep them in the appointment record or another appropriate restricted place the team uses.

Include the first and last journeys. If equipment must be collected from the workshop before the first visit, that is the starting point. If it must return there afterward, the working day ends after that return and any remaining work, not when the last customer appointment ends.

Estimate each journey at the time you expect to make it

Check the route between consecutive visits for the relevant day and approximate departure time. Keep the travel mode and starting point accurate; a driving estimate from your current location is not useful for a journey that will begin at a customer’s address tomorrow.

Google Maps lets you set a future departure or arrival time using estimated traffic. Google specifies that this works for routes with one destination. When using that feature to plan several appointments, check each journey separately at its expected time rather than treating a multi-stop route as a timed plan for the whole day.

Treat the estimate as an input. Add time for parking, walking to the entrance, carrying equipment, and getting ready. Decide where setup and packing belong: if they require the customer’s presence, include them in the appointment time you have agreed with that customer. Do not rely on being let in early.

Allow some margin for variation based on the journeys and access arrangements you actually encounter. Keep that allowance distinct from known work. Ten minutes spent unloading equipment is a task, not spare time available to absorb a delay.

Work through a complete day

Here is an illustrative day for one mobile technician working from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. All times are in the customers’ local time zone, which is the same throughout this example. The locations and durations are fictional.

There are three 60-minute appointments. Each includes the work requiring the customer to be present, including access inside the property, setup, and packing equipment at the end. Separate departure time covers returning to the vehicle, loading it, and finishing notes. Parking and walking to the entrance happen before each appointment; early access to the property is not assumed.

The day contains 180 minutes of appointments, 105 of driving, 35 of parking and walking, 35 of departure tasks, 35 of margin, and a 30-minute lunch. Together, that is 420 minutes, the full seven hours. This example assumes no further work is needed after returning to base. Add it if your own day requires it.

The margin belongs to the particular transitions where it is allowed. Fifteen minutes left over before the first appointment cannot help you reach the third customer on time if a later journey takes longer. Nor does an early arrival change the agreed appointment time: use the time as planned unless the customer agrees to a change.

Notice the hour between the first two appointments. It is occupied by departure, travel, access, and margin. It is not an hour available for another customer visit.

Make the service area fit the day

A service area decides which locations you are willing to visit. It does not establish that every sequence of addresses inside it will fit the same schedule.

When considering a new visit, check both sides: can you reach it after the preceding appointment, and can you reach the following appointment or return to base afterward? Keep the already-agreed customer times fixed while doing that calculation.

If distant visits regularly consume too much of the day, make a specific operating decision. You could reduce the area you cover, leave more time between visits, or offer new appointments near work already planned. Grouping nearby visits may make a day more workable, but it needs to happen while arranging bookings, with customers agreeing to the times offered.

For example, you might offer a north-side customer a morning when you already have another visit nearby, instead of placing that job between two south-side appointments. That is a decision about which appointment to offer. It is not a reason to move confirmed customers around without asking them.

If you organize days by area, check what your booking software actually enforces before relying on the arrangement. A note saying “north-side visits on Tuesdays” does not itself restrict which addresses can book on Tuesday.

Put the travel plan into the appointment schedule

Once the plan works, make sure the schedule preserves the time it needs. Use the supported availability, buffer, or unavailable-time controls in your scheduler. A fixed buffer can reserve a chosen allowance; it should not be treated as a calculation of the route between two customer addresses.

Choose an allowance you can use consistently within the area and kinds of visits you offer. If some journeys need more time than that allowance, arrange those visits with enough time before accepting them. The appointment buffers guide explains the difference between customer-facing duration and time needed around a service.

Review the next day’s locations and access details before setting out. If a disruption means an agreed time can no longer be met, contact the affected customer and agree on the next step. Do not turn an exact appointment into an arrival window without their agreement; the rescheduling guide covers how to handle a necessary change.

After a few comparable days, compare the plan with what happened. Record which journeys took longer, where access needed extra time, and whether departure tasks regularly overran. Use those observations to adjust future allowances or the area you serve, while keeping the time the service itself needs.