– Can you talk about either of those, Hannah, document management, payment management, that you thought were kind of big changes or big improvements for you guys?

– Well, the document management really goes back to those packets.

– To the packets.

– The packets. That’s where the document management came into play, more than anything. It was that now everybody was seeing the same information, because it’s contained in the same place, and that’s where everybody is going.

As far as payments, we were able to streamline that a lot, because we elected to go with FinancialForce, which was kind of a secondary process. But we went with FinancialForce because of the way that it communicates with Salesforce, where one– you really don’t know which one is working at any given point if it’s done correctly. They’re really just going side by side. And the only difference that you might see is from one profile to a next, who has access to see the information and who doesn’t.

When you’re in both sides and you see it happening flawlessly– the payment is recorded at the same time that it’s being made– it is– the information that is contained in it, and that feeds back to the real-time reporting. It’s been an absolute shift, when you’re talking about paper. I don’t even know where to begin with that. And I’m imagining that there are a lot of companies on right now that, now that they’re starting to actually visualize how much paper is sitting on their desk, is flowing through their offices, is coming in, when you actually start to take inventory of the amount of paper, I can’t– come look at our office now versus August 1st of two years ago, and it’s different. We’re no longer a fire hazard, for one.

– Can you talk a little bit more about the rest of the project life cycle?

– So the next step is, all of a sudden, the paperwork has been uploaded remotely, the job is done. Our finance department is now reaching out to the customer.

– I just saw your paperwork come through. I just saw this job.” So the customer is hearing their name, which they love, and they’re hearing, we know you exist and we’re here to help you. Here’s another voice from our company in real time.

– And we’re connected. You met our sales guy.

– And we’re connected.

– Now you’re meeting our finance guy.

– Right. This is some Chuck in a truck who’s trying to sell you stuff out of his garage. Like, this is Merle, with our finance department.

And it plays through those departments seamlessly from there. Because the finance department puts their notes in, and down the line it goes, right? There is no paperwork to make copies of, and hope that you have the same copy as everyone else. It’s right there. So it goes to our production department.

Then it goes to our Customer Care Department, who’s making phone calls every two weeks to the customer, that’s automatically programmed to feed to that individual. So we can keep our customers updated in real time. No, your material still isn’t here, but I do see that the load date is still dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

– That’s huge. That actually gets to this person’s question– when your technicians are on the way, are your customers alerted automatically? Are there other options possible?

But there’s something even kind of before that. All right, when we’re getting your materials, or when, God forbid, there’s a delay, we’re already keeping the client in the loop. So the client is already in the loop that way.

– Absolutely. We created– we call it the Customer Care Program. We have a Customer Care Department and a Customer Care Program. And those touch every single office.

– Awesome.

– So we had phone calls that are programmed. The next stage– right, it’s a journey, so we’re working through stages– the first stage was to get the human interaction, which was through the phone calls. And that alerts like a task. The next stage is going to be automated emails and text messages, right? “We weren’t able to get a hold of you, but this is the update. Please give us a call at this number if you have any questions.”

And then the next step in the process is more of a platform, where they will be able to actually check the status of their job on their own, without having to talk to somebody, if they don’t want to.

– That’s awesome.

– So the journey, first step is customer satisfaction, and then second step is to step up from there.