GREAT CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
are the foundation of any business. This is especially true for moving & storage companies, where the growth of your business depends on the number of customer relationships developed and maintained over the long run.
MANAGING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
when you first open your business is pretty simple, given there aren’t many customers you’re dealing with. As your service portfolio grows, those customer relationships become harder to manage without the right toolset.
CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a set of tools that allow businesses to manage their customer relationships and the information associated with them. CRM is now a major tenet of operating a successful business. Simply put, CRM software is like Facebook or Twitter for your business. As their moving company, you connect and collaborate with your customers using the CRM tools. These powerful tools also act as your customer database and serve to remind you of the next followup, estimate or move, while keeping your customer information updated about the move in one central place, and much more.
TOPICS TO CONSIDER
If you manage a moving business but are unfamiliar with the benefits of CRM, we’d like to first give you some questions to think about before we discuss the specific benefits of CRM.
- How do you manage your customer relationships? Do you go the extra mile to strengthen these relationships?
- How does your sales team capture customer information? Do they enter the information in a form in a software? Do they use post-it notes or spreadsheets? If they use post-it notes or note cards, how consistently is the information transferred to a spreadsheet or program? How much time is spent completing the transfer?
- Think about the last time a customer called you for an update? How long did they have to hold before you could find their information? Were you able to rapidly look them up by name, phone number, email, or zip code?
- Does your sales team treat all customers the same way? If you could, would you rather isolate and prioritize the largest moves that you are prospecting.
- Can you determine which of your leads are ‘hot’ or ‘cold’?
- On average, how much time does it take for your team to respond to a rate request?
- Are you closing enough leads? Do you know how your closing ratios compare to your competition?
- Do you do interstate moves? Do you know how your closing ratios compare for your local, intrastate and interstate moves?
- Do you get leads from multiple sources? Do you know how much money you made through each lead source last month? Do you know which lead sources are yielding the larger moves that substantially help improve your topline revenue?
- Do you set sales quotas? How often do you measure actual sales against those quotas?
- Are you tracking your sales pipeline? A sales pipeline is a visual representation of your prospects and where they are in the booking process. Your sales pipeline also provides an overview of your sales forecast 30, 60 or 90 days out.
- Do you provide storage services? How do you manage and track vaults? How much time do your monthly billing storage runs take?
- How do you notify all employees involved about changes or updates to a move?
- Can your current sales and operations processes scale up as your business grows?
- Have you ever missed a move, lost a customer or dealt with poor negative reviews on Yelp, BBB or social media because someone in your office actually forgot something or didn’t pass on vital information on time?
- Most importantly, if you have the answers available for these inquiries, consider the time it takes you to find the answers to these questions. With a good CRM system, you can answer each of these questions in just a few seconds and with a couple of mouse-clicks or taps.
“WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON’T GET YOU THERE”.
To borrow from Marshall Goldsmith’s famous book, ‘What Got You Here Won’t Get You There’; maximizing your businesses’ potential requires you to find a new set of tools that will complement the strengths you already possess and take your business to the next level.
A good CRM system helps both start up movers and established moving companies alike to maximize their profits. A good moving software with intelligent CRM features turns a good team into a great one. When your staff is firing on all cylinders, you can expect more clientele, cream of the crop moves, a great reputation, and greater returns on your investment.
While good CRM software can be valuable to any business, it can provide immense value to small and medium-size movers as a toolset that can help them compete with larger players in the marketplace. A CRM system helps bridge the divide in efficiency between smaller business by using apps and software previously only available to larger corporations.
A GOOD CRM SYSTEM COULD BE THAT COMPLEMENTARY TOOLSET YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS TO ‘GET YOU THERE’.
THE CASE FOR BUILDING A GREAT ONLINE REPUTATION
We are in the social media age where customer interactions are amplified on the internet. When a customer has a fantastic experience, they may tell their friends. When a customer has a poor experience, they’re likely to broadcast their thoughts to thousands, even millions of people.
As noted by ‘Hug Your Haters’ author Jay Baer, social media has turned customer service into a spectator sport.
As more and more businesses establish a digital presence, their social customer interactions become very significant – but what are customers most likely to complain about?
Below are some findings from a study titled ‘Roasted Reputations’ by Corra:
- 52% of survey respondents said they were likely to complain publicly if customer service did a poor job resolving their product or service issue
- Almost 1 in 8 complainers do so with the hopes of hurting the company’s reputation
- 88% of consumers have avoided a company because of a bad review on social media
A marketing research firm, Ask Your Target Market, recently surveyed consumers and determined that 50 percent of the respondents checked online reviews “all of the time” or “most of the time”. An additional 25 percent of the respondents claim they check reviews half of the time.
Clearly, poor customer experiences lead to negative reviews, and a negative review can do serious damage- the kind that takes more than a good review to fix.
The facts are clear and they may make the Internet seem like a terrifying place for small businesses but can those negative reviews be avoided in the first place? Absolutely.
You can minimize negative reviews by employing a robust CRM system that will automate key tasks like sending timely updates to your customers, responding quickly to their requests and educating them upfront about your company’s policies. Additionally, you can set up automated tasks and reminders with CRM software at critical points throughout the move process to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. The right CRM toolset will have built-in workflows so you have all your bases covered, for example, getting your customers to sign or e-sign important documents before you execute their move.
A good CRM system will even let you automate the process of collecting customer feedback. Delight your customers with the help of a good CRM system and see the domino effect it has on the growth of your business.
THE CASE FOR CUSTOMER LOYALTY
If there’s one thing most businesses have in common, it’s that we all want loyal customers. Our growth depends on them. We thrive on them. CRM software can dramatically help strengthen customer loyalty by fostering strong customer relationships.
Generally, it’s much cheaper to keep customers satisfied than it is to acquire new customers. Gartner, a major global research firm, has done extensive studies on the value of repeat customers compared to new customers. They have discovered that repeat customers have a 65% chance of converting to another sale over just 13% with new customers – that follow-up phone call or postcard means a lot to them. Your repeat customers also serve as a great source of referrals – they refer 50% more business to you than single-transaction customers.
These powerful statistics translate to more dollars in your pocket. Place your focus on developing repeat customers and their future referrals by managing those relationships carefully.
Customer Relationship Management encompasses every interaction from beginning to end. It’s about ensuring that every customer has a great experience, that they get the right services, and that they become your satisfied customers, your repeat customers and even your brand ambassadors.
Benefits of Moving CRM Software
While moving companies are generally considered very ‘low-tech’ outfits, the future of the moving industry relies on strong CRM systems. A powerful CRM tool like Movegistics software can literally transform every aspect of your business – beginning with lead capture and all the way up to closing the move and getting rave customer reviews.
NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT WHAT AN EFFECTIVE CRM TOOL LIKE MOVEGISTICS CAN HELP YOU ACCOMPLISH:
Rapidly capture, engage and convert leads into booked moves. You can automatically funnel leads instantaneously from multiple sources including your company’s website, third-party lead providers, and realtors. With Movegistics, you will often have booked the move by the time your competitors get their estimates in.
Rapid Estimating – With our Movegistics moving estimate software, your representatives can craft accurate estimates for all types of moves in a quarter of the time it takes to fill out cube sheets and prepare estimates manually.
Real e-signature capabilities – Streamline the sales process from prospecting to conversion through e-signing. This feature eliminates plenty of headaches for your sales team and allows them to focus on more productive tasks while automated estimate reminders are sent out to customers. Your customers simply use their email or our convenient online portal to review and e-sign their documents.
Comprehensive Customer Relationship Management – Nurture customer relationships by leveraging automated email campaigns for upsells, tips, checklists and move anniversaries. Never miss a beat with the smart notes and call logs features. Don’t forget that repeat business and referrals makes you big bucks, so use these tools often. Why sell your customers once when you can sell them multiple times?
Help you close more deals by automating follow-ups, task reminders and by engaging your leads through informational email templates. Stay on top of your customer’s inbox with very little or no effort on your part and without being too intrusive at the same time.
Customizable templates – Make your business stand out. Wow your customers and establish professionalism with custom quotes, move documents, and email templates.
Native iPad and Android apps – Our mobile apps make your field operations a breeze. Your field representatives will gain a sense of greater autonomy with remote access to your database as well as our mobile estimate app and electronic Bill of Lading app. These apps eliminate the use of paper, streamline the sales & operations process, and provide access to electronic copies for both the customer and your company.
Build a healthy sales pipeline. Movegistics shows you where the money is in your sales process. In addition to setting sales quotas, you’ll be able to understand at what stage each prospect is, whether you have enough moves on the calendar to achieve your quotas, as well as understand whether certain leads need special attention. A business that is managing its pipeline well can score more three pointer field goals, i.e., benefit from larger revenues and higher profits by booking more moves in less time.
Sales reps are people persons (by nature and by training). If you have already done the hard work to hire great sales reps with a fire in their belly, give them a smart CRM tool like Movegistics and watch your closing ratios shoot up.
Create a central hub for information so every employee stays on the same page. Movegistics provides true 360 visibility on your team’s activities and follow-ups.
Build and nurture your realtor relationships. We know that realtors are one of your most important referral sources. For this reason we built you a mobile app that your realtors can download on their phones and refer leads to you on the run. They can even sign up to receive notifications on their phones when their referrals are booked or marked as lost. You can then run reports to see what referrals were received from each realtor and calculate commissions or send them thank you gifts.
Powerful sales & operations calendar – Track onsite appointments, moves, tasks and events with custom color coding based on trucks, sales reps or move type. You can even push all calendar events automatically to your Google calendar.
Help your team collaborate effectively with the customer using the customer portal, live chat, estimate notifications and custom email templates. Engage your customers with perfect timing instead of trying to chase them down with endless follow ups.
Dispatching – Improve your operations workflow and utilize your resources efficiently. Movegistics helps you assign workers and trucks or contractors to jobs, close-out jobs, calculate payroll/contractor commissions and monitor availability. You are able to see your crews, trucks and moves all in one intuitive timeline view.
Similarly, for a diabetes management platform tailored to drugs like Jardiance, software could significantly enhance patient care. This platform could automate prescription refills and scheduling medical check-ups to ensure timely and continuous treatment. Additionally, it could provide patients with real-time feedback on their blood sugar levels and suggest dosage adjustments. By integrating this system with health tracking devices, patients could receive personalized insights and alerts, thus improving adherence to their medication schedule and enhancing overall health outcomes.
Storage – With Movegistics you can assign moves to vaults or containers, track those vaults or containers and automatically invoice your storage customers every month. You can check warehouse capacity or view your customers in storage with only a couple clicks. You can even add customer credit cards to file for storage charges.
Billing – Our moving company software generates invoices, and collects payments electronically. This creates a streamlined, environmentally-friendly operation for both you and your clients.
QuickBooks integration – Our integration with QuickBooks is so much more than just a nice to have feature, it is a partnership that will benefit you immensely. With instant electronic transferring of customers & invoices into your QuickBooks, two notoriously lengthy and manual processes have been automated, saving you a tremendous amount of time.
Provide a holistic picture of the health of your business through dashboard analytics and powerful reporting. The big data – sales by rep, by lead source, pipeline, closed business, neglected leads, conversion ratios, Ops reports, A/R reports & more.
Online reputation management – Movegistics can help you automatically collect feedback from your customers. Wow your customers with great customer service and turn them into brand ambassadors. Build a rocking online reputation for your business.
True cloud-based software – Companies across the globe are migrating their computer systems to the Cloud for its various benefits. With Cloud-based software and the convenience of our mobile apps, your entire team will be connected at all times. We are recognized by CIO Review magazine as a Top 20 Most Promising Cloud Computing Company.
Extensive training – We are vested in your success, and we stand by our product. We offer workshops, 1-on-1 personal instruction courses, and we can even come to your location and conduct on-site training courses for your staff.
24/7 Personable Customer Support – Your business never sleeps, neither do we – count on us if you’re ever having any technical issues and we will resolve them immediately. Our staff is here to support you 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
When analyzing any major business decision, it’s important to ensure that your decisions make financial sense. Not only does Movegistics provide countless implicit benefits via improvements in your services and the customer experience, but you will also experience an impressive return on your investment. Nucleus Research, a major information technology research firm, recently wrapped up a 3-year long case study where they investigated the average return on investment of CRM systems. The study discovered that implementing CRM systems result in an $8.71 return for every dollar spent. Where else can you earn an 871% return on your investment?
If you are not getting the returns you have been expecting or if your staff is neglecting your current software it’s time to consider Movegistics. Think about how much you could improve your customers’ experience by providing them with quick turnarounds for document requests, accurate estimates, timely updates, convenient payment methods, reasonable pricing, and quality service? Get the tool that makes all of this possible – sign up for Movegistics today. Our customers see measurable improvements in just 30 days or less. Your competition doesn’t take any days off, so make the call today and get started.
