Category: Customer Service

The Customer Experience Questions Service Contractors Should Be Asking

As a commercial service contractor, providing an excellent customer experience is essential for building a strong reputation and growing your business. In competitive markets, facility owners and managers have many options to choose from and they’re more likely to work with a contractor who can give them a positive experience at every turn.

How Does Customer Experience Differ From Customer Service?

Customer service refers to the interactions between a customer and your company’s representatives, such as your front-office staff and technicians. Customer experience, on the other hand, encompasses all interactions and touchpoints a customer has with your company, including the use of the equipment you install and service.

Customer experience begins at the research stage, when a prospect first encounters your brand, typically through word-of-mouth or the internet. (What are other people saying about you? Are prospects able to find the information they need on your website? How easy—or difficult—is it to get in touch?) And it continues throughout the entire lifetime of the relationship or contract (and even after), giving rise to certain perceptions and feelings about your company.

When people have a premium experience with your brand, they’re more likely to pay a premium price for your services, refer you to others, and stick with you for all of their relevant needs. That’s why the broader measure of customer experience is one of the most important growth KPIs for service contractors.

Gauging Customer Experience: 10 Questions to Ask

There are ways to measure customer experience with metrics like Net Promoter Score, customer satisfaction scores, on-time completion rate, third-party star reviews, and plenty of others. But if you’re looking for ways to get started without existing analytics—or, alternatively if your data shows a need for improving customer experience—these 10 questions will help you make a plan.

What is our brand visibility online?

Are prospects and customers able to easily find us online? Does our online presence—on search engines especially—inspire confidence in our brand?

What kind of reputation do we have online and in the community?

What are our customers saying about us? Do they sing our praises and refer us to others? Do we receive positive reviews on Google, and if so, do we display these high scores and testimonials on our site?

How well are we communicating with our customers?

In general, how responsive and helpful are we? Can our front-office staff access customer records and service history to better address inquiries and concerns? Do we remind customers of upcoming appointments and let them know when technicians are on the way?

How reliable are we?

Are we completing installations, maintenance, inspections, and repairs correctly the first time and on time? Are techs showing up on schedule with all the service history and other info they need to properly answer questions and complete the work order?

Are we providing detailed and prompt repair and/or installation quotes?

How long do customers have to wait to receive a quote or estimate? Do we provide rich media like videos and images to explain repair needs and build trust?

Are we providing self-service options to customers?

Do we provide customer portals that allow customers to access maintenance records, request service, and pay bills?

Are we providing a fair and transparent pricing structure?

Can customers easily access contract terms, past quotes, and pricing agreements? Are customers often surprised by the numbers on their invoice?

How do we demonstrate the value of our routine maintenance and service work?

Do customers recognize our good work when everything is running smoothly?

Do customers feel in-the-loop regarding the status of projects and maintenance?

Do we have a way to easily show customers the ongoing work we’re doing and real-time progress on installations or other projects?

Are we listening to the feedback from customers?

Are we asking for feedback, taking it into account, and making improvements accordingly?

Improving Customer Experience With Software

As you begin to think about improving customer experience and establishing your company as a premium brand, the matters of expense and resources will come up. Perhaps your budget is locked and your team is already spread thin. How can you improve customer experience without significantly expanding the budget or making more work for your team?

How about a tech solution? Software, with its abilities to centralize data and automate tasks, is the most cost-efficient way to improve customer experience. Finding the right software partner is essential for a growing commercial service contractor looking to scale without sacrificing their good reputation in the market.

Finding Customer-Focused Software: 10 More Questions to Ask

Most commercial service contractors already use some third-party tools and software. Many utilize service management software in the field. But it’s worth mentioning that not all field management tools are made equal, especially when it comes to elevating customer experience.

Here are 10 questions you can ask when evaluating software solutions.

How does the software handle scheduling?

Can it facilitate the scheduling of recurring services to ensure you never miss an appointment? Does it allow customers to request service online?

Can the software automate appointment reminders and other communications?

Will your customers receive automatic notifications when an appointment is coming up or a technician is on the way?

How does the software handle customer account management and service history?

Does it centralize and share data in a way that allows your entire team to access customer information? Can customers easily find a record of services?

Does the software include a mobile technician application that enables techs to richly document their work?

Can technicians attach images, audio files, and/or videos to better show the value of their work?

How does the software handle invoicing and billing?

How long does it take for customers to receive an invoice? Does the software help facilitate prepayment for recurring services and online payment of open invoices?

Does the software offer customers a self-service portal?

Can customers review, approve, and submit payment through an online portal? Can they access inspection forms, service record, quotes, and invoices on demand?

Does the software offer transparent progress reporting for projects?

In addition to providing easily accessible service records, does the software offer project management capabilities and customer-facing progress reporting?

How does the software handle customer feedback and reviews?

Can the software automatically request online reviews from satisfied customers to boost your SEO and reputation?

Can the software provide analytics to monitor customer experience metrics?

Does the software include analytics or integrate with your preferred business intelligence tool?

Does the software include sales management tools?

How does the software handle sales activities? Does it provide one central location to store important information pertaining to all steps of the selling cycle? Does it include convenient tools for customers like e-sign?

Premium Status is in Reach

Providing a top-notch customer experience is required to become a premium brand and maintain a good reputation as you grow. Your customers want ease, transparency, reliability, and clear communications from their service contractors. Choosing the right software partner will help you deliver just that.

Want to learn more about ServiceTrade?

We’re the premier field service management and customer operations platform for commercial HVACR and MEP contractors. Our mission is to help you be more valuable to your customers and grow your business.

You can find out if ServiceTrade is the right software for your business by booking a demo.

How to Grow Your Service Contracting Revenue 23.4% Year Over Year

On average, commercial service contractors who use ServiceTrade grow their invoice revenue by 23.4% year over year. All you have to do is buy ServiceTrade and you’ll grow! Our work here is done. The end.

If only it were that simple. There is a big difference between the best and worst performers. For example, contractors that engage their customers online, quote more repair work, and drive more revenue per customer and per job grow much faster than those that don’t.

These conclusions came from an analysis of millions of data points. Over the last year, ServiceTrade customers invoiced over $1 billion through 1.5 million invoices on 1.9 million jobs. On top of that, their customers approved 140,000 quotes to the tune of $450 million. That’s a shedload of service work! We measured YoY revenue growth for companies generating invoices in ServiceTrade since 2017Q2 and here’s what we found:

Drive more revenue per customer and per job to yield faster growth

We wanted to know where the fastest growing contractors earn their new revenue. As it turns out, the old business adage that it’s easier to drive more revenue from your existing customer base than from acquiring new customers is true even for service contractors.

We found that a company’s growth rate is proportional to how quickly they grow the average revenue per customer (chart) and revenue per job (chart). Surprisingly, a company’s ability to attain net new customers does not impact revenue growth. In fact, some of the fastest growing companies have a shrinking customer count because they fire lots of their worst customers and win a smaller group of new customers that represent more revenue.

So, how are you going to drive more revenue from the work you already have? Read on!

Engage customers online to create revenue growth

We divided ServiceTrade customers in half based on how often their customers engage with Service Links*. The top half, whose customers viewed Service Links more often, grew their service revenue an average of 29.1% YoY. The bottom half only grew 9.2% YoY. Your customers want to trust that they are getting the value they are paying for. If you provide more transparency with a convenient, online experience, you build that trust and differentiate yourself from your competition. Being different and better makes it easier to command a premium price and earn more revenue from each customer.

*With ServiceTrade, you send online summaries of the services you are performing with a feature called Service Link. Here’s an example. Much like the notifications you receive for every Amazon order about shipping, delivery, and feedback, Service Link keeps your customers informed about the value you deliver on each service. We call these Marketing Impressions Per Service (MIPS) and they reinforce your value while keeping your customers informed about the service process.

Sell more repair work

Then we divided our customers based on a ratio of the number of approved repair quotes to overall job count — how often are they earning new repair revenue for each completed job? The top half grew their revenue at an average rate of 27.7% YoY. The bottom half only grew 10.8%.

Sending online quotes to your customers that are easy to approve and include details, pictures, and videos reported from the field is quick and easy with ServiceTrade. And, as I showed in my last data-driven blog post, quotes that are sent quickly, that include rich media, and are convenient for the customer have much higher approval rates.

At the beginning of this post I joked that all you have to do is buy ServiceTrade to grow. The fact is, when used effectively, ServiceTrade is a powerful tool to help you drive more revenue from the customers you already have. ServiceTrade will help you grow by engaging your customers online and executing more effectively on repair sales.

The data analysis and graphs for this blog post were all generated with Amazon QuickSight that is available to ServiceTrade customers to analyze their own service data. Call us at 919-246-9900 if you’d like to learn more.

Selecting Service Management Software (that keeps accounting happy)

You know it’s time. You need to purchase software to help streamline your services department. Up until this point, your accounting software has been your biggest investment in technology to run your business.

As tempting as it is to throw away your current system in search for the perfect all-in-one (a mythical unicorn if you ask us), transitioning away from your existing core financial system is risky. On top of that, why change what works for your construction division and back office just to solve the problems in your service department?

While an all-in-one is not the answer, you also know you can’t afford to adopt service management software that doesn’t work with your company’s accounting system.

What are Your Options?

Given that 1) you want to stick with your current accounting system, and 2) you need service management software that works well with this system, you have two options:

An add-on service module to your accounting system
A stand-alone application that integrates with your accounting system

Option 1: Add-on Service Module

Most construction-focused accounting programs have attempted to solve the service management pain point for their customers with an add-on module that talks to the core accounting system. Examples include Sage Service Operations (SSO) as an add-on to Sage 100/300, and FieldEase as an add-on to ComputerEase.

But these add-ons are designed with your accounting system (and ONLY your accounting system) in mind. These modules help gather the relevant accounting information, but how else are they benefiting your company and your customers? More on this below.

Option 2: Stand-alone Application

Integrations may vary depending on what’s possible with your accounting system. Look for a page like this on the application’s website. Integrations with server-based systems require more of an investment than integrations with cloud-based software. You’ll want to ensure the company offering the application has made that investment and knows their stuff. You can address this in the evaluation process during your demo. After the demo, ask for referrals from customers who use your accounting software, so you can hear directly from them how the application works with your current systems.

5 Questions to Help Evaluate Options

Let’s start with the most essential question – one you need to answer for yourself before speaking with vendors.

Question #1: Who Drives the Decision?

Up until this point, your accounting department has likely led the way on technology decisions because they hold the keys to what has been the most important software system in your business. But prioritizing the needs of accounting above all others when selecting a service management application is a common trap for commercial service contractors.

The good news is you can adopt service management software that keeps your accounting department happy, while also prioritizing the needs of your customers – the group of people whose needs must be driving your decision.

Make Your Customers Your North Star

You are operating in a market that is more competitive than ever. You have new competitors that are undercutting you on price, you are finding it more difficult to hire and retain good techs, and your customers are demanding more information, transparency, and convenience.

These customer expectations will only grow. Look at what companies in other industries did to leave the competition in the dust, or worse, put them out of business:

What Amazon did to Walmart (and bookstores before that)
What Netflix did to Blockbuster
What iTunes did to record stores
What Uber did to taxi companies

The success of each of these market leaders is in large part due to their relentless focus on meeting customers’ needs and exceeding expectations by delivering an unparalleled customer experience. It’s time commercial service contractors adopt the same approach. A strong service management application will help you do so.

Accounting needs relevant information from service management software so they can deliver an accurate invoice to the customer. But is that all your customers need? Of course not.

Your customers need to know what your techs found on the service call – risks to their business, their severity, and how the customer should address those risks. A strong service management application will empower your techs with tools to collect this information and deliver it to customers quickly and conveniently, which builds trust and generates additional revenue for your business.

Avoid Costly Mistakes – Get Started

So you’re ready to invest in software to improve service management but you need it to work with your current accounting system. You know your decision must be guided by the needs of your customers, not the needs of accounting.

What other questions should you ask when evaluating your options?

To help you along, we’ve developed a simple, straightforward resource for those involved in the software purchasing process for commercial service contracting companies. If your company is ready to take a customer-centric approach to service management software adoption, then it’s time to talk to ServiceTrade.

How Commercial Service Contractors can Dominate with Mobile Tech

This post is the second in my discussion of how to use mobile technology to dominate your market. If you haven’t read my first post, you can find it here. In that post, I discuss the basics in taking your customer service mobile – you’ll want to meet this milestone before jumping into milestones two and three: Marathon Training and Race Day.

Milestone 2: Marathon Training (Research and Development)

Once you achieve basic fitness, you are already in the top 10-20% in your market regarding ability to compete. Now it’s time to begin the specific marathon training in earnest. Again, this is not a quick tune-up; it’s a commitment to building up the muscle and stamina to be competitive in a marathon race. Don’t expect it to happen overnight, but instead develop a training plan that will get you there over a period of one to two years.

Marathon Training in Practice

When ServiceTrade was just starting out, we spent about five months and about $80,000 on our first mobile app design iteration. It never went to a single customer or prospect, because we threw it away and started over. We had picked the wrong combination of technologies, and the result really sucked. It worked (sort of), but it was not up to our expectations for our brand, so we literally threw it in the trash heap. We did, however, learn a lot about what we really wanted, and that was a valuable experience. We began the effort anew with a different set of partners who were true experts in the mobile space.

Even large companies need a long training period to get ready for a mobile marathon. About 18 months prior to Chick-fil-A having a mobile app, I noticed that many of the locations began sending cashiers into the drive-through line with iPads to take orders. I’m willing to bet that this was a deliberate marathon training activity to understand exactly how to achieve effective mobile order-taking. Chick-fil-A got more than a year of feedback from “friendly” users to help them get it right for the major launch of the Chick-fil-A One app to the masses.

What Marathon Training Means for You

For the best results, undertake similar training. A small subset of your best customers, or perhaps your salespeople and customer service staff acting on behalf of customers (like the Chick-fil-A cashiers in the drive-through line), are great partners for getting a truly scalable customer mobile experience to the market.

Start with a few simple things like having a basic customer service portal on your website where an existing customer can request service and browse a limited set of service history. Make yourself into a customer contact and see what your customers see by spending some significant time browsing with your mobile device and using the interface just as a customer would. Be critical. Remember, this is marathon training and not the middle of a race that you are already losing. There is no point in desperation or exasperation. Take deep breaths and carry on with the training. Expand your muscle and fitness and move ahead to make the adjustments that move toward a competitive marathon outcome.

Milestone 3: Race Day (Your Branded Mobile App)

To win the mobile marathon, you need a branded mobile app for your customers just like Starbucks and Chick-fil-A. In addition to the obvious capabilities that are simply carryovers from your website service portal (service history, equipment assets, contract details, quotes, etc.), here are additional capabilities you’ll want to include:

Available in the app store or by scanning an equipment tag: Everyone looks for the apps they need at the app stores hosted by Apple and Google. Your app should be no different. This will mean some work to post it there, but if you have already done the training (that is, the testing discussed above), it should not be a problem. The app should also be available on demand by scanning a tag on a piece of equipment that is covered by your premium maintenance plan. This is the modern day version of leaving a “Call for Service” sticker on equipment. In this case, it is “Scan for Service.”
Asset and location awareness: The app should be context aware. Just like the Chick-fil-A app lets me choose the location nearest me for placing my order, your app should default to (be “aware” of) the nearby location or nearby equipment for reference as the most likely candidate for review or service. After quickly navigating to the record of the nearby equipment, the customer can then annotate the record to facilitate better service (such as access-code updates for your benefit, an update from a related vendor that changes your service scope, etc.) or submit a request for service or support with perfect contextual awareness for your staff to respond quickly and accurately.
Self-service: Any information or feature that might help the customer help themselves without contacting you is a good idea. The app should show official service manuals, recent equipment inspection or certification results, original commissioning documentation, likely faults and quick relief guidance (such as how to clear a false alarm), and “Things you should know about this equipment” videos. Self-service is not a loss of revenue for you. Instead it is a powerful customer loyalty magnet, and you should engage it whenever possible to stick the customer more tightly to your premium program.
Real-time collaboration with multimedia engagement: This feature works like placing a FaceTime call. If the customer can initiate a callback to your experts that includes both context (which piece of equipment they are standing near) and video capability, it should be easy to walk them through a relief mechanism for a malfunction. Self-service is better, but quick relief from a malfunction is very powerful as well. Quick relief is easier if you and your customer are collaborating with the same information – that is, the equipment records and your what-you-see-is-what-I-see capability.
Push notifications: Your app should ping your customer when you are delivering value for them. Push notifications are better than email because they simply give a quick heads-up to the user in real time without requiring a pause to check email. Your system will follow up with an email that provides more detail, but push notifications are standard operating procedure for mobile apps. The customer can always turn the notifications off if you are delivering so much value that it becomes a distraction.
Recommended for you: This is the list of repairs, retrofits, and upgrades you have scoped for this particular customer to review and accept. When a customer is in a mood to spend money on something, it needs to be easy for them to spend that money with you. Maybe it is the end of the year and the capital budget is still full of money. Maybe they are having a great quarter and want to plow some of the revenue back into improvements. Whatever the reason, always have a set of recommendations out there for consideration when your customer accesses the mobile app.

The most successful service brands have a mobile app as a defining feature of their premium program. If you want to win, a mobile app is your future. I was very deliberate with the marathon metaphor so that you would envision a long-term plan with multiple plateaus of achievement leading up to race day. If you don’t commit soon to the fitness plan, however, it is unlikely that you will be racing with the best competitors in your market a few years from now.

When race day comes in a few years, you do not want to be an out-of-shape, flatfooted bystander watching the racers while you hand out refreshments. Start getting in shape now. Work your way toward maximum fitness. Mobile marathon training will begin shortly, and race day is going to be a ton of fun.

Winning the Mobile Marathon as a Commercial Service Contractor

There are plenty of examples of companies that have built market success because of their use of mobile technology, including Domino’s, Chick-fil-A, and Starbucks. Starbucks launched their mobile app in early 2011, and it included a mobile pay feature similar to a gift card. Mobile innovation has paid off for Starbucks. They reported that in the third quarter of 2017 approximately 30 percent of sales were transacted using the mobile app. The real win, however, is that mobile app users are spending three times more than other customers! Starbucks delivered an innovation that helps assure the loyalty of their best customers.

Starbucks and other stories of leading markets through mobile make perfect sense if you look around anytime you’re out in public. Fifty percent of the folks you see have their noses in their phones, and the other 50 percent all have their phones within arm’s reach. The phone has bridged not only the last mile to the customer but literally the last three feet.

What Market Leaders Know

If you are committed to leading in your market – if you expect to be the premium brand that is known for outstanding customer service – you must be committed to leading in mobile customer service just like Chick-fil-A and Starbucks. Fortunately it doesn’t have to happen overnight, and there is still plenty of whitespace in the market. No one owns this space or has such a lead that you are forced to follow their example. You can define your mobile future.

The race to mobile customer service in service contracting is going to be a marathon and not a sprint. Just like a marathon, competitiveness begins with a commitment to a training routine. Using the marathon metaphor, let’s lay out a basic program to get you prepared to compete for mobile dominance in your market.

First Milestone: Achieving Basic Fitness

No one serious about marathon competition just wakes up one day and decides to run a race the following day or even the following week or month. A basic level of fitness is required to even begin a serious training program; otherwise injuries plus mental and physical fatigue will seriously hamper achieving your goals. Basic fitness in this case means your current interfaces with customers are mobile-friendly. Let’s look at the three steps to achieving this first important milestone.

Start with a mobile friendly website

Use Google’s mobile friendly analysis tool to test whether or not your current website is recognized by search engines as being easy for customers to use with a mobile device. Clearly your site needs to pass this test. Beyond that you should also be critical of the presentation of your brand value online in the mobile interface.

Does the basic information come across in an easy-to-consume manner?
Can the customer easily contact you by phone or email with a simple click? (They should not have to remember the number or email address to complete this task, just click.)
If they need to come to your office for some reason, will your address information launch a maps app for navigation?
Do the video case studies play on the device without the hassle of a separate app or, God forbid, a download?

If you are not comfortable about passing this basic fitness evaluation, and you are also not comfortable with your current digital vendor, find one or two that will give you a second and third opinion. They should happily do this for free for an opportunity to become your supplier.

Optimize your company’s information in search

Next, make certain someone searching for you online can easily find your company, regardless of the device they use. Be especially critical of how the search results are displayed on mobile. Search results on mobile and desktop should be identical, but there are unseen variations that need to be in place for the best mobile presentation. In any case, anyone searching directly for your name should get lots of options for connecting with you online via their mobile device. Test it. If you aren’t happy with the result, either hold your current vendor accountable or ask for a second and third opinion. Chapter 8 in my first book, The Digital Wrap, is a great place to start in understanding the basics for a service contractor website.

Ensure customer communications are mobile friendly

Finally, assess the mobile fitness of all of your other routine communications with your customers. This begins with a commitment to have both email and mobile contact information for all your important customer contacts. I have never once answered a call at my office landline. If someone leaves a message, it comes to my mobile phone and I decide whether or not I want to call them back by pushing a button. Any of my customers or important partners who really need me have my mobile number and my email.

You should be able to reach your customers the same way. Make collecting email addresses and mobile contact information a routine part of your customer intake process. If you are sending them any sort of email or text correspondence that requires them to download and print a document, find a way to change that pattern to a “just click here” routine that presents the information in a way that allows them to take action right away without the hassle of a download.

ServiceTrade’s Quote Link and Service Link features are great examples of engaging the customer in a manner that invites them to appreciate your work and take action to award you more work without leaving the mobile interface. Send yourself test samples of several of the important correspondences you regularly exchange with customers. Evaluate whether or not you get the value from these messages without putting down your phone. If you are not happy, rework and reformat until you are.

Beyond Basic Fitness

Once you achieve basic fitness, you are in the top 10 to 20 percent in your market regarding ability to compete. Now it’s time to begin the specific marathon training in earnest. In next week’s post, I’ll discuss ways to build beyond the basics to truly dominate your market and win the mobile marathon.

If you want to read more about the mobile marathon and how to compete in the future of commercial services contracting, check out my books Money for Nothing and The Digital Wrap.

Avoid This Pitfall When Going Paperless

When we talk to commercial service contracting companies about going paperless, the conversation usually starts with how they envision paperless processes will benefit their back offices by saving time and money. They want to send invoices faster, save money on postage, and reduce tech phone time.

Going paperless definitely results in these and other improvements in administrative efficiency. But once companies start making the transition, we usually hear that it takes their techs longer to fill out a form on a tablet or their phone than it did on paper. And we don’t disagree with them. Pencil whipping paperwork is just faster.

However, these same companies find that moving the information online is worth every bit of additional effort when the ultimate goal is to make your customers’ lives easier. Going paperless necessarily means capturing, organizing and communicating that information in a more effective way that meets (and hopefully exceeds) your customers’ expectations. If you focus solely on the administrative efficiencies, you’ll miss the bigger picture – the opportunity to improve the customer experience and drive scalable growth.

What Do Your Customers Expect?

In short, they expect access to the information they want, when they want it. (You can thank companies like Netflix and Amazon for this on-demand mentality.) Remember when you used to have to watch the local news to get the weather forecast? Or better yet, when the Weather Channel made everyone’s lives a little bit better when they brought us weather every ten minutes through their segment local on the 8s? Today, you just open your favorite weather app on your phone, or, if you’re like my 5 year old, you just ask Alexa.

Your customers’ expectations are similar when it comes to engaging with you. Imagine a facility manager or building owner who has been running between meetings all day. He finally gets some desk time – at 9 pm, and wants an update on the work that was performed by your techs earlier that day. He needs details now and he can’t wait to call your office tomorrow morning when your first staff person arrives at 8 am.

How Going Paperless Improves Customer Experience

The most detailed information in the world is of little use to your customers if it’s all on paper copies of quotes, work orders, and invoices filed away somewhere in your office. Or if they have to call your office during normal business hours to get it. Let’s look at a few ways going paperless improves the customer experience and strengthens customer relationships.

The customer can engage with you 24/7 from any device.

Like I said, today’s consumer expects access to the information they need, when they need it. We can do everything from our phones these days. Order groceries. Buy a birthday present. Make a tee time. Why not make it as easy as possible for your customers to engage with you? So whether they need to submit a service request, review the work your techs did that day, or approve a quote, they can easily do so from their computer or phone.

The customer can speak with any employee to get an update.

They don’t have to wait until you track down the person (or people) who did the work. So when a new tech goes out on a service call, he can quickly see what work has been done on a piece of equipment by previous techs by looking at the service history. He can immediately jump into an intelligent conversation with the customer, and not have to tell the customer he’s going to have to get back with him after he makes a phone call.

Building trust isn’t limited to face-to-face interactions.

As you grow, it’s difficult to scale the personal touch that you built your company on. The good news is, going paperless provides ways to build trust through online interactions with customers. You can’t attach pictures, videos, and audio notes to paperwork. You can’t tell a rich story about the services provided with paperwork. All you get is chicken scratch in broken English. Going paperless means collecting rich media in an organized way that lets you easily share it with your customers and show them what’s going on with equipment.

Share urgent or essential information with customers in real time.

I remember the first time my weather app sent me a push notification about a serious storm that was sweeping through the area. I was about to leave my office and head home. Because of that notification, I made the safer decision and delayed my commute until the storm passed.

You can do the same for your customers. Take the facility manager or building owner from my earlier example. Would he prefer to be notified about a serious equipment issue while you are on site and can address it, or wait to get a call about it later, which forces him to schedule another call and wait for you to come back out? You guessed it. When it comes to information that is essential to your customers, sooner is better. Pushing notifications to your customers regarding essential or urgent information will set you far ahead of your competition.

Ready to Get Started?

Anyone who started down the road of going paperless will tell you it takes more than scanning all those piles of paper into pdfs and saving them to your desktop. Going paperless is a big step in the bigger journey of digital transformation – a journey that requires a company to take a closer look at their business processes and how they deliver customer service.

To realize the full benefits of going paperless, don’t limit your business by thinking small and focusing solely on administrative efficiencies. The real value is in improvements to customer engagement and service. A better customer experience means happier customers and a competitive advantage in your market. Going paperless allows you to leverage the power of the internet to drive truly scalable growth.

Mapping Your Customer’s Journey

Do you have ambition to become the leading service contractor in your market? Does it feel like operational and administrative inefficiencies are holding you back? We get it. It’s not easy to lead the market when it feels like you can’t even get your own house in order.

We’ve helped hundreds of our customers streamline operations so they can stand out from their competitors to grow their businesses. They don’t, however, stand out from the competition simply because they have a better work order process. Instead, they lead their market because they have a better customer journey.

What is the customer journey?

A customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company. From the marketing and sales cycle to service delivery to account management, the customer journey includes every transaction and every communication.

Actually understanding what makes your customer tick and offering a convenient journey will set you apart from the competition, reinforce how you are different and better, and help you win more business.

Stages of the customer journey

The journey can be difficult to map because it will vary from customer to customer and won’t follow a perfectly straight path. However, there are five general stages that you can use to start. These are:

Seek: They need a contractor and will begin the search.
Buy: They’ve narrowed down their options and will sign a contract.
Onboarding: They’ve signed your service agreement and will prepare for their service relationship with you.
Service: They are counting on you to keep their assets operational.
Performance Evaluation: They assess how the relationship is going. This can go one of two ways: 1) they continue to work with you or 2) they don’t.

Mapping your customer’s journey

To start mapping your customer’s journey, ask two simple questions for each of the five stages.

What do they need? Remember, what they really need might not align perfectly with what they think they need.
How can you best meet their needs?

Let’s walk through the framework to help you get started to mapping out the journey unique to your customers.

Stage 1: Seek

What do they need?

They need to find a new contractor. It could be that another contractor failed them, or they have a new building to manage with no existing contracts. It’s difficult to find good contractors so they’ll search online, ask their professional peers for recommendations, conduct an RFP, or reach out to contractors they’ve trusted in the past.