It seems like my customer DB is a mess. I have google contacts, quickbooks online contacts, contacts in responsibid, contacts in pro-posal. some are duplicates, some are only in one of the above databases. they don’t sync together well because they all use different fields and don’t play nice with eachother.
so i’m looking for an efficient way to have all customers,prospects etc collected and complete. i need to get this more organized without spending a ton of time importing/exporting/editing csv files etc (if that’s even possible)
how do you manage your contacts? is there an easier way to make sure they are all available when it’s time to use one of your other services (like pro-posal?)
I started using Batchbook about 3 years ago (maybe at Chris’ recommendation? not sure). It doesn’t do a lot of what I want it to do in terms of automation (I use ResponsiBid for that, but we still religiously put every bit of customer data in Batchbook, every single time. We have multiple tags and supertags set up, so we can sort by neighborhood, by service type we’ve done for a customer, and of course we have tags for prospect, customer, residential, storefront and commercial. We also track referrals in there, by connecting different customer’s profiles together.
So within a few clicks, I can have all of the customers we have in Battery Shores subdivision, who we have done pressure washing for. We track service dates in there as well, so I can find the customers in that list we haven’t serviced in the last 6 months, and give them a quick phone call if we have a cancellation and we’re going to be in the neighborhood already.
Now, Batchbook is far from perfect, and I’m not even sure I would necessarily recommend it. We literally ONLY use it as a customer DB management software, but we have a LOT of info in there. At some point, when the perfect CRM is finished, I’ll import all of this data into that CRM.
For now though, $29/month is pretty inexpensive to have all the info available. The important thing, in my mind is to just pick something, and stick with it for a long time, so you get everything together in one place.
Here’s a snapshot of a customer profile. I edited the name, to protect privacy, and clipped the right side, where contact information is shown. You can see the tags she is tag with, and there are comments down below.
[MENTION=4869]Tastycruton[/MENTION]
i just signed back up.
i think what’s missing is something that handles contacts from multiple sources, but integrates them easily for mobile use. for instance- how do i call a customer in my TCF (or rb, or pro-posal) database from my cell phone?
All contacts are inputted striaght into TCF from where ever they come from.
Proposals are sent/compiled etc via proposify ($19/month) - similar to Proposal but doesn’t have the email keep reminding capabilty - but I use TCF for that.
When the TCF mobile app comes out for regular use not just scheduling i’d expect the function to search for customers and call them from their profile.
Sadly the more things/systems you use, the more complex it all gets… and the more time you need to spend getting it all in order.
HouseCall Pro has a CRM component where it will automatically store all the information for you, as well as Tags (new thanks to forum suggestions). It will also automatically sync with your Quickbooks to keep both sets of contacts up to date.
PS when anyone signs up for HouseCall Pro we will take whatever customer information you have from whatever database, cleanly format it, and upload it into your database for you. We’ve done many imports from other software like TCF, Jobber, Quickbooks, RazorSync, ServiceMonster and others!
