Reminder programs you use?

Marketing
1

I’m finding that repeat business is the better money maker. But people tend to lose our info.

Do you guys/gals use a program that can easily send reminders to customers perhaps on a particular date, and maybe even automatically? Free is always better :wink:

I’m aware there are previous posts on this, but tech changes rapidly.

2

I designed a postcard specifically for reminders and use the phone for follow-up with that. I use to use the phone only but seem to get better results with both and customers love being reminded.

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3

I know there’s mixed feelings on here about Housecall Pro but I love the system and you can set up automated emails. Works great for me.

4

It’s because of what you get for the price. I use the customer factor and was on the phone with house call pro. Told there rep I was picking between one of the 2. I was telling the house call pro lady about the customer factor and she was like oh ya that is cool, yes we don’t have that, oh neat, that’s cool, oh they can do that. I kind of felt bad but the house call pro lady pretty much was like yep we charge 2 and a 1/2 times as much as customer factor and offer a quarter of the options. Obviously she didn’t say this but she was stumpped as she was trying to train me on house call pro and I was responding by saying wow you don’t have any of this stuff that I have now for way less.

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5

Yea, I know there’s a lot of guys who swear by CF. I’ve never used it but I do like HCP and don’t plan on switching anytime soon, its worth the cost for me. Customers tell me all the time how much they like my reminders and notifications and how professional my system is. When I was doing my initial research HCP just seemed like a much more user friendly interface. To each his own though

6

I could understand the user friendly aspect as I know it is very hard learning different softwares but I used the customer factor and get the same compliments on reminders. I am just saying I stumped a house call pro representative so that pretty much speaks volumes about which program is better when the rep is like ya we don’t have any of that, oh you can do what, ya we will look into that

7

What are some of the things CF has that HCP doesn’t? Could influence a switch down the road if its something I need

8

I’ll message you tonight about it from my computer.

9

When you finish a job always ask the client if they want you to put them on your list if they don’t ask. Once the season fires back up, I just look back at my calendar and text or call the new customers I had from the previous year. I generally try to schedule all of my customers around the same time I had them schedule the previous year. Google calendar is all I use.

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10

i use the customer factor to create lists of which customers to email eg “not serviced since” also to create and send the emails. i use pipedrive to monitor the emails to and from and to create/send emails and phonecalls to individuals and as a contact cal
endar.

11

i can’t remember all the specifics but i do remember asking can i use hcp to create and send mass emails-no, can i use hcp to handle prospects seperately from customers-no, can i use hcp to create an old fashioned letter and then use it to print the letters and envelopes or labels-no. after a long with an hcp help asking about features i use on tcf i was told rather bluntly “hcp is not a crm”.

12
  1. Housecall pro has a help section where if you need help you can click the help section and scroll through until you find your answer. This means you might have to go through 15 questions you don’t have to find the answer you want. The Customer Factor has this little yellow bubbles with question marks next to stuff on all of the pages, if you are unsure what something means just put the mouse over the bubble and it answers it. The Customer Factor also has a help section but the bubbles make it very easy to learn the customer factor.
  2. Customer Factor has whats called a big proposal where a Prospect can click what they want out of the bid and accept it. For example lets say you give a quote for Gutter Cleaning, Exterior Window Cleaning & Interior Window cleaning and they want the Gutters and Exterior Windows. They click both of those and hit accept. With House Call Pro there was no way for the customer to accept certain parts which means they either have to accept or decline the whole bid. I brought this up to house call pro and they said you can do this by making a bunch of line items and it is much more time consuming and when sent to the customer looks a lot less clean than the Customer Factors big proposal.
  3. The cost of the Customer Factor is about a third
  4. On the home screen of CF is a list of things they are working on, you always know what new features they are coming out with, housecall pro you see what they have but not what they are working with.
  5. My memory is a little foggy but if I remember correctly on the house call pro app you can see a daily calendar or weekly but no monthly. That is a problem as when I am booked out I need to be able to see my whole calendar. CF allows you to have a monthly calendar!
    There are more things I know that for sure but off the top of my head that is what I remember
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13

We have recently (since The Huge Convention) started using ResponsiBid and CF, and I’m finding that they both play their part… I use CF mostly for the regular route stuff (although it would be nice if I could have site names, rather than business names, but I’m told that’s coming… We use RB mostly for residential, and although the true test will be in a few months when it seems out the reminders, I like the features of it and the average ticket price etc.

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