September / October Customer Spotlight: Community Concepts
Fall is officially here, which means pumpkins, cool air and bonfires. It also means we’re excited to bring you another installment from our customer spotlight series. This month we’d like to highlight the important work that Community Concepts, Inc. is doing in Maine.
Since 1965, Community Concepts, Inc. has offered a variety of housing, economic development and social services for the people of Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties of Maine. Their mission: To strengthen individuals, families and communities in Western Maine by providing diverse programs, by engaging in strategic partnerships, and through advocacy that addresses the barriers to promote economic opportunities for all.
In 1984, Community Concepts started providing door to door specialized transportation services to residents, and today, they transport approximately 9000 clients yearly, mostly with volunteer drivers. In fact, though their number of drivers is down, Community Concepts’ volunteer drivers provide 600-900 trips per day! Community Concepts’ director, Kirk Bellavance, had this to say about their agency’s use of TripMaster to perform their day-to-day transit operations, “We have had tremendous success utilizing the key features of the software; Auto Scheduling, Tablet application and Custom Reporting. We typically perform 600-900 trips per day utilizing Volunteer Drivers. Prior to the software, this scheduling was done manually by three dispatchers for 6 hours each. The Auto scheduler function has provided us tremendous efficiency to schedule more trips utilizing fewer dispatchers in less time. This time savings has provided availability to focus on other operational critical tasks. Also, the tablet functionality was a game changer for us. All those trips mentioned earlier, were previously documented on paper trip sheets that drivers were required to turn in weekly to receive mileage reimbursements. Living in rural areas, this was often a burden on our volunteer drivers. With the tablets, we have all that data available to us in “real time” and our driver’s love the tablets!”
We love hearing these kinds of success stories from our customers, especially with all the challenges they face! Community Concepts, like many other transit providers across the country, is experiencing a driver shortage. They have an ever-growing number of Maine residents that need transportation, and unfortunately, a list of volunteer drivers that continues to shrink. They’re continuing their efforts to recruit new volunteer drivers and hope this message from their local news channel will aide in that mission (see video).
Great job Community Concepts! We love seeing the innovative and unique ways our software supports different transit operations. Your hard work and dedication to the citizens of Maine does not go unnoticed. Keep up the great work!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA8fs2b2CD0&list=PLEKd9FrMbJVc1LSyt60PfENHtGdku0zl8&index=1
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