The AI dispatcher for Australian pest control
Hunter's Dispatcher suggests a better order for a technician's booked day, showing the drive time before and after and the assumption behind both — and moves nothing until a person accepts it. It blocks an expired licence outright, ranks who should take a job on licence, skill, availability and extra driving, and refills a cancelled slot from the standby list without texting anybody until you say so.
Last reviewed
Replaces a scheduler and the whiteboard. Employing somebody to do this work in Australia costs about $70,000* a year — which is what the figure is, not what we charge.
What the Dispatcher does
Suggest a better order
Hunter looks at a technician's booked day and proposes an order that drives less, showing drive minutes and kilometres before and after with the assumption printed underneath. It is a suggestion: nothing in the diary moves until somebody presses accept. The word optimisation appears nowhere in this product, because the previous version of this claim was removed from our own site as untrue and cost a demo. Drive times are estimates from straight-line distance and a banded average speed, and they are not traffic-aware.
What we do not claim
The offer originally promised: Route optimisation with dynamic re-optimisation as the day changes. Hunter's own site records that this exact claim was removed as untrue and cost a demo. Re-asserting it would reverse a documented decision.
A weather strip over the days you have work booked
Hunter flags the days ahead that look wet where you have jobs, so you can decide what to move. It never moves anything for you, and it never prefills the weather field on a chemical record. Until a licensed production forecast provider is chosen, the strip says on its face that the forecast is a stand-in — which is a smaller claim than the offer's and one you can rely on.
What we do not claim
The offer originally promised: A weather-aware scheduler on the Bureau's feed. The Bureau publishes no supported public interface, and the keyless alternative's free tier is not licensed for commercial use.
Rebooking that actually refills the day
Select the affected visits and move them together, with one undo that puts the whole thing back. This is a bulk verb rather than a routine looping single updates, which is why a wet Thursday takes a minute instead of an afternoon.
The standby list, matched to the gap
When a job cancels, Hunter works out who on your standby list could actually take that slot — honouring how much notice each of them asked for — and drafts the offer for you to send. It does not text your waitlist automatically. The send goes through the same consent, quiet-hours and calling-hours gate as every other message, and the fact that you asked is recorded.
Dispatch on licence, skill, location and capacity
Hunter will not let you book an expired licence onto a job that needs one, and every override needs a written reason that is logged against the job. Ask who should take a job and it ranks your technicians on licence, the skills you have said that service needs, whether they are free, whether they are rostered, and how much extra driving it adds. The narrowing: skills are your own records, not a verified credential. Hunter knows what somebody typed into the skills tab. It does not verify a licence or a skill with a regulator, and a licence it has no record of is not treated as one it knows has lapsed.
Only offering slots that fit the run
Where you have set up zones and service days, Hunter narrows the times it offers to the days the crew is already in that postcode, and names the run so somebody can say it out loud. If nothing fits it offers everything and says why, rather than telling a customer you are fully booked — a system that lies about availability to protect a route loses the job. The narrowing: this needs the address before the times, which is how it works when Hunter is asked for slots for a site or a postcode. The public booking page asks for the address after the time, so the times it shows are your open times, unfiltered.
Zones, and which of them are worth driving to
Draw your service zones, assign sites to them, and see revenue, margin, drive time and callback rate per zone. Most operators discover one of them has been losing money for years, and the argument about whether to keep servicing it stops being a matter of opinion.
The town day, for regional runs
Set the days you are in each town — the second Tuesday out west, every Thursday down the coast — and Hunter holds you to them: asked when you can get to a postcode, it answers with the next day you are already going, and offers times on that day rather than sending a van out for one job. The narrowing: it is a rule Hunter answers from, not an algorithm that rearranges your diary. Nothing re-clusters work you have already booked, and the density comes from booking into the day rather than from anything Hunter moves.
A suggestion, with its assumptions on the page
The offer promised route optimisation with dynamic re-optimisation. That is not what shipped, and re-asserting it would have reversed a decision already recorded on this site: the same claim was removed once as untrue, after it cost a demo.
What ships is a proposal. Hunter reads a technician's booked day, works out an order that drives less, and shows you the drive time and distance before and after — with the assumption printed underneath the figures. The diary does not move until somebody presses accept.
The assumption matters because the coordinate underneath it varies. With a mapping key configured, a site's position is usually its exact address. Without one — which is every business until somebody sets it up — it is the centre of the postcode, which can be kilometres from the property. That precision travels with the number to every screen that shows a drive time or an arrival estimate, because an operator who repeats a postcode-grade estimate to a customer and misses it by twenty minutes blames the software, correctly.
The licence gate is the one that stops a real problem
An expired licence on file blocks the booking. Not a warning afterwards, not a report at the end of the month — the booking does not save, and the override needs a written reason that is logged against the job.
A missing licence is treated differently, and deliberately so. For termite work it still blocks, but only for a business that actually maintains a licence register. A business that has entered no licences has told Hunter nothing, and refusing their bookings on the strength of an empty table would be Hunter asserting a licensing requirement it cannot see.
That distinction — a licence we know has lapsed is not the same as a licence we have no record of — is written into the product and into what the agent is told. It is the same posture the whole product takes toward regulated facts: Hunter holds and surfaces your records, and does not interpret the regulation on your behalf.
- An expired licence blocks the booking outright
- Overrides need a written reason, logged against the job
- Missing licences block termite work only, and only for a business keeping a register
- Skills are your own records, and Hunter never verifies one with a regulator
- Assignment ranks on licence, skill, availability, roster and extra driving
When the day falls apart
Two jobs cancel, it rains in the morning, and a technician calls in sick. Every pest business has this week. The Dispatcher's job is to make the recovery cost minutes instead of an afternoon.
| What happened | What Hunter does | What it will not do |
|---|---|---|
| Rain forecast where work is booked | Flags the days, so you can choose what to move | Move anything on its own |
| A customer cancels tomorrow | Ranks who on standby could take that slot, honouring their notice | Text the waitlist without you sending it |
| Half a day needs shifting | Moves the selected visits together, with one undo | Loop single updates and leave half of them moved |
| A technician goes off sick | Ranks who else can take each job on licence, skill and driving | Reassign a job to somebody whose licence has expired |
| A day is scattered across the map | Proposes a shorter order with the before and after shown | Call it optimal, or claim to know the traffic |
Common questions
- Is this route optimisation?
- No, and we deliberately do not use that word. Hunter proposes a shorter order for a booked day and shows the drive time and distance before and after, with the assumption behind the estimate printed underneath. It is not traffic-aware, and nothing moves in your diary until you accept it.
- How accurate are the drive times?
- As accurate as the coordinate underneath them, and Hunter tells you which kind you have. With a mapping key configured a site is usually pinned to its address; without one it is the centre of the postcode, which can be kilometres out. That precision label travels with every distance and arrival estimate in the product.
- Can it stop an unlicensed technician being booked on a termite job?
- An expired licence on file blocks the booking, and the override needs a written reason that is logged. A missing licence blocks termite work for a business that keeps a licence register — but Hunter will not refuse bookings on the strength of an empty table, because an empty table tells it nothing.
- Does it text my standby list automatically when a job cancels?
- It works out who could genuinely take that slot, honouring the notice each of them asked for, and drafts the offer. A person sends it, or a sequence you have decided to trust does. The send passes the same consent and quiet-hours checks as every other message.
Want to see this one on your own book?
We take one pest control business per postcode, so the demo starts with whether yours is open.
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