Automating your company – my personal perception, this is not common. This is not one of those things that a lot of people are saying, but I don’t like automating the client experience. I like automating internal communications, and I’m going to explain what I mean by that. More and more and more as you see self-checkouts, you see automated stuff. For example, you see one click purchase on Amazon. People are able to do things in their life without human interaction. In some sense, that’s good. In some sense, I think it creates a muted customer experience across different platforms, different organizations, different businesses, different we’ll say verticals, and it creates an environment where there’s no differentiating between different businesses. My personal opinion is that you should not automate your client experience. I am heavy human environment in there.
We used to when we onboarded coaching clients, at first it was an email, an automated email. You signed a contract, you got an automated generic email. Then we went to a custom email that came from my operations manager. Now we’re doing a live onboarding call with my operations manager to get you queued in as fast as possible. And if I look at how long it took customers to get onboard into the program when it was an automated message, compared to a custom message, compared to a human message, we’ve decreased the time from two to three weeks to a day or two. And we’ve also sped the comfortability of our client experience into believing they made a great decision. From the sales process when I was selling remodeling, to the sales process when I was selling roofing, especially in roof and rail, there’s people saying, “You can sell online, you can do virtual reports, virtual tours, get the customer to take the photos.”
I get it. You’re trying to create efficiencies in your business to make more money with less people. I totally, I do not disagree with that as a concept, but I do disagree that people in the marketplace are not looking for human interaction. The downside is most of your employees suck at empathy. Most of your employees suck at communication, which is why you want to automate it. You’re trying to protect your brand. You’re trying to protect the client experience. What you’re actually doing is muting it. You’re diluting it, and you’re creating it where it looks just like everybody else’s. And so if you want to automate things, automate internal communication. When a project gets approved, automated message to the scheduler, when estimate goes out, out, automated message for a follow-up, automated task for a follow-up, automated email internally, automated bill pay, automate this, automate that, automate the communication internally.
You can use most CRMs. I’m a big fan of JobProgress, Markate, Buildertrend. There’s different levels of CRMs. There’s thousands of them. I’ve done a couple different videos on what CRMs I recommend. You got to pick one that works for you. There is not a rule of thumb here, but you want to use your CRM to automate certain things internally. An example would be, and this is maybe a blend of internal and external. Let’s say you schedule a client for production. You say, “Hey, contract signed, deposit’s paid. We’re putting you on the schedule.” You can set your CRM to once you schedule something, an email goes to the sales rep, and an email goes to the homeowner, but then you, part of your SOP would be sales rep calls the homeowner. So you’re blending both together. So the automated saying, because the salesperson doesn’t know, and the homeowners know when you’re scheduling or operations person schedules the person on the calendar. They just don’t know.
There’s no way for them to be alerted in a normal environment. And like client will call the sales rep, “Hey man, when we scheduling,” and they’re like, “I don’t know. I haven’t heard.” You call. “Oh, they’re scheduled for two days from now.” I’m like, now you have this incongruent communication happening within the business. So I’m for and I promote automating that initial email. “Hey, your project has been scheduled for next Thursday. We should arrive at 10:00 AM.” Automated email goes to the sales rep and the homeowner. Perfect, but your SOP then needs to be, “Sales rep when you receive those emails, your next step is to call the owner. ‘Hey, just want to see if you got the email. We’ll be there 10 o’clock. I’ll be there at 11 just to check, make sure everything’s going all right. Do you have any questions? Are there any concerns?'” “‘Is there any reason we can’t operate on your property next Thursday at 10 o’clock?'” That is that human element where the alerts happen automated, but the communication is still interpersonal. It’s still human to human. It’s still an approach that makes that customer feel like you are just bought into their experience. I’m not saying that we’re not headed in a direction where being easy to do business with and where millennials like to purchase online is not something that you can’t implement into your company. But when it comes to automating communication and processes, I am not a fan of putting a customer behind an email in their engagement with you. Because ultimately, people build relationships with people, not brands, not logos, not processes. They build relationships with people. And the better job you can do to create a relationship between human to human, the higher retention, the higher referral, the higher renewal, the higher testimonials, better overall client experience you’re going to get because they’re going to like the person.
If you don’t trust your sales team, if you don’t trust your organization, if you don’t trust your operations manager to communicate to homeowners in a way that you think builds that trust, fire them or train them. Don’t alleviate it by automating things that dilute, mute and ultimately destroy the human to human engagement that your customers have with your brand. I’ll tell you, I’ve sold remodeling. I have sold roofing. I have sold high ticket. I have sold low ticket. I have sold technology. I have sold coaching. I’ve sold a lot of different things, both homeowners, B2B and B2G, which is business to government. I’ve been across the board on this. What has made me the most success and the most money is people trusting Mike. Nothing has been more valuable than people trusting Mike, not a process, not an automation, not a talk track, not a copywriting, not an email, not some special in-house digital presentation of what I’m offering you, me, the human.
And yes, I am a very good communicator, and that’s just proven over the last decade. I’m different, but you can train your people to be different too. So look at automation to simplify and create consistency to the process internally. But I would suggest highly that you keep a very tight leash on a human to human engagement with your customer base because there’s nothing tying that person to a person. And if they don’t, they’ll just as easily move on to the next automated message that just looks a little prettier, and that’s not the type of business I want to run. So if you have questions on that, you have concerns, you have things you want to figure out, you have some things you’re trying to do in your business, reach out. Shoot me a DM, shoot me an email, connect with me, comment below. I’ll engage with you.
It’s still me. I don’t have a team doing all that stuff. They edit it, they distribute it, but I still am the one that’s engaging with everything. I want to help you. This is what we do for a living. We help contractors simplify and systemize their business growth by having impact with every conversation we have. That’s the mission we’re on. That’s how we do it. Things just like this are things we can help you do to increase your overall kind value, increase your revenues, increase your profits, and ultimately help you win fast and win often.
