We know using a mobile CRM can benefit a small business, but how exactly can it do that? We went and asked real WORKetc customers how they use our Android and iOS apps to work, run, and manage their businesses efficiently and effectively, anytime they need to, wherever they may be.
Up until around eight or nine years ago, I always kept a small notebook with me wherever I went.
I was already knee-deep into my entrepreneurial ventures back then, and that notebook was pretty much my database for everything related to my businesses.
Contacts, sales leads, project info, ideas both practical and slightly mad—I kept them all in that notebook.
Now, that notebook did wonders for me, but I inevitably got tripped up whenever I had to share something in it with employees or business associates.
I had my own system, but to anyone else looking at it, it was a complete mess. Contacts and updates would be sandwiched between meeting reminders and ideas with seemingly no order at all.
I knew everything was in there, but finding anything was still a bit of a challenge; sometimes even for me.
That all changed, of course, once smartphones entered the picture; even more so once we locked down and released the WORKetc mobile apps.
I was suddenly able to not only record and keep track of every piece of data I needed to run my business wherever I was, I was able to share that data with anyone else that needed to access it—even if that someone was halfway across the globe.
I’ve said before that we use WORKetc the app—both web and mobile— to run WORKetc the company. And so recently, I was thinking: how do businesses in different industries to WORKetc, use our mobile apps, day to day?
Well, we asked them, and here’s what they had to say.
Customer Support: Anytime, anywhere.
Our field technicians have the company CRM at their fingertips with this neat little app. The support case feature allows them to update their jobs in real-time and send the completed jobs back to our manager for review/invoice instantly instead of having to wait for paperwork to come back to the office.
– David Towers, Eco Communications
A recent study by Frost & Sullivan characterizes smartphone use as like rocket fuel for productivity: smartphone users reported that they gain back just under an hour by using a smartphone for work, and they see a 34 percent improvement in overall efficiency.
With the WORKetc mobile app, your support team stays fast, efficient, and effective, no matter where they actually are.
As David mentions, the app lets on-site support teams update tickets as soon as they’re dealt with. There’s no need to head back to or even just call the office to mark a job as completed or provide an update.
The same goes for any tasks attached to a support ticket or project. Once a task is complete, your on-site team can easily mark them as such through the mobile app. They can then quickly move on to the next one.
Let’s say you have a project that involves on-site work. You’ve just assigned a task to your survey team that involves taking site measurements for the construction of a new pool.
Your survey team can head out to the pool construction site, take the needed measurements, and then update the project with the required data as soon as they’re done.
Your in-house architect can then immediately start working on the pool’s design without having to wait for the survey team to report back.
Customers value speed when it comes to replying to their support queries. According to US market research firm Forrester, 73% of customers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good online customer service.
The mobile app’s support module also lets your support team respond to support tickets even when they’re not at their desks.
If a support agent is running late, for example, or is out of the office for any other reason, and a high-value client sends follows up on a support ticket they sent a couple of days ago, your support agent can just check the old support ticket’s activity history, see everything you’ve done for that client, and give them the necessary update—all without having to crack open their laptop and hunt for a WiFi signal.
Sales Leads: Response Time is Critical
The leads functionality is what we primarily use in the mobile app. It lets us change and edit leads as we need.
– Stan Zaslavsky, Eagle Vision
Any good sales agent knows to always be ready to sell, sell, sell. A new sales lead could very well appear at anytime, and no sales agent wants to be caught flat-footed when an opportunity does come.
The WORKetc mobile apps let your sales agents create and start nurturing a new sales lead immediately as soon as they get it.
If they happen to come across someone who shows an interest in your products or services while they’re at lunch, for example, they can use the app to create a new contact and a new lead and then start working on the latter immediately.
The same goes for you or any of your other managers or team leaders as well. If you get the lead info yourself, you can create a new sales lead and assign it to your sales team so they can start nurturing it ASAP.
Stan also mentions editing leads. With the WORKetc mobile apps, you sales agents can quickly edit and update a lead as needed—as soon as they finish a face-to-face meeting with the prospective client, for example.
Timesheets & Expenses: Make every minute and every dollar count.
I can create a timesheet on the fly, attach tasks directly to the client, and even upload expense receipts from my phone directly to my project. I take a few minutes to complete my tasks instead of having to head back to the office to regroup and complete them. The app makes the process much more efficient.
– Karen Snead, Filius Bonacci
On-the-go project management is made easy with the WORKetc mobile app. As Karen mentioned, you can easily create and attach tasks not only to clients, but to leads, projects, support cases, events, and more.
What’s even better is you can create a task—or a contact, a lead, a support, case, and more—from any screen via the Navigation Drawer simply by swiping the screen from the left edge to the right and tapping the + icon next to the item you want to create.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a one-man operation working out of your kitchen or a massive multi-billion-dollar enterprise—keeping accurate records is crucial for any size business.
Using the WORKetc mobile app, you can take a picture of any receipt for purchases related to a project or client and attach that image to the appropriate project or client record with just a few taps.
That way, you can easily keep track of any billable or tax-deductible expenses. Not one dollar falls through the cracks.
Almost every single leader out there has either gotten or given a lot of grief about keeping regular track of time spent on tasks.
Almost every single leader out there also knows, however, that tracking time is integral in creating more streamlined and efficient processes, be it for sales, for support, or for projects.
Now, it’s relatively easy to track time when you’re just sitting in front of the computer in your office. The WORKetc web app itself has a built-in timesheet creator, and there’s even a standalone desktop timer app.
Thing are different when you’re out in the field, however. Yeah, you can lug around a laptop with you wherever you go so you’re able to use the desktop timer, but it’s easier to just use the one built into the WORKetc mobile app.
The built-in timer in the WORKetc mobile apps makes it really easy to track time wherever you may be. As with the desktop timer, you can choose to either have the timer run in the background on your phone or enter your timesheet manually.
Just like the web app, you can launch a timesheet from practically any screen of the mobile app . The feature is further enhanced with the new “Start/Stop” timer. Keeping track of any running timers is also made easier since they show up in your phone’s notification area.
Knowledge & Custom Fields: ALL information in one place.
Our main uses of the app are the time sheets and the knowledge base. Essentially, the things we need to do our work on the go (and make sure we properly account for that work). It just means we don’t miss out on what we need.
– Branden Maynes, CompuEase
It’s rare to find an employee who knows every single thing about every single customer in your contacts database. An employee like that might probably even be rarer than a pink-winged unicorn with candy hooves.
This makes a mobile CRM full of important client information a must-have for companies who rely on client- or product-specific data to provide support.
Let’s say you run a company that installs high-tech HVAC systems. You can use custom fields, which allow you to attach any piece of information to a client or project or support ticket, to store the exact specifications of the HVAC systems you install for each specific client.
Your on-site repair team can then just check the client record on the WORKetc mobile app, immediately see the make, model, and even serial number of the client’s HVAC device in the custom fields, and be ready to immediately start troubleshooting once they reach the customer.
You can also keep additional information about the systems your teams install—tech specs, troubleshooting instructions, and the like—on your knowledge base.
By giving your installation and repair teams access to the knowledge base via the mobile app, you can make sure that they have all the information they need to properly install and troubleshoot every single specific HVAC system you sell.
Putting it All Together
Remember that Frost & Sullivan study I referenced earlier? That study only accounted accounts for regular smartphone use, so imagine what you gain with WORKetc, the single mobile app that lets you run, manage, and bring together every single department across your entire business.
And that’s the most important part: tying together a team without tying them down so they can do their jobs efficiently and effectively, anytime they need to, wherever they may be.