Over the years, as SAFCO's customer base has grown, so has the operational burden of ensuring its customer base was up-to-date with inspections. The back office was spending more and more time trying to reach these customers through a mixture of phone calls and emails. Unfortunately, it became all too common for each customer to require multiple attempts before they were able to schedule a time for the inspection. What's worse, it was difficult to keep track of the different customer demands. Some wanted a set date and time, sometimes after hours. Others wanted to be notified 30 minutes in advance via a phone call. Others needed coordination among many points of contact. All of this placed a huge amount of operational burden on SAFCO's back office, leading to inefficiencies and sometimes even mistakes.
Owner and General Manager, Roger Lu, knew that there must be a better way to tackle this solution. This is where Essential came in. Because Essential was created to make integrations seamless, moving customer data from SAFCO's records in QuickBooks Desktop and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets was easy. The team at Essential did most of the implementation work after getting the necessary data and instructions from SAFCO. With less than a day of work from SAFCO's end, Essential's professional, timely inspection outreach and scheduling were up and running.
"The team at Essential provided excellent customer service and support from day 1. They provided a clear plan of how to install the software without disrupting our operations, and it was all very easy from our perspective."
Within the first month, SAFCO was able to automate all customer outreach for inspections. Further, they used Essential's scheduling module to send automated reminders and dispatch technicians, moving from their previous antiquated system. Though moving their scheduling workflow was not necessary to utilize the full benefit of inspection automation, SAFCO found that moving their scheduling workflow into Essential also yielded additional efficiencies.
"With Essential, we have been able to do more with the same staff. Customers are happier, employees are happier, and we are on track to have a record year. Highly recommend."
The team at SAFCO remains committed to using the latest in software technology to remove tedious, mundane work from its operations. SAFCO knows that Essential is at the cutting edge of creating intelligent software applications for their industry.
"Working with Essential is like getting your own customized software at a tiny fraction of the price. We're looking forward to our long-term partnership with the company."
