How Restoration Software Can Help You Build a Supercharged Referral Network

As a business operator, you understand that customer relationships drive success – and that nothing is more valuable than referrals. But how can you leverage your existing customers to build the most effective referral network? The answer is more straightforward than you might think: Restoration software. With this tool, you can manage all aspects of customer relations, ensuring positive interactions that will lead to powerful word-of-mouth recommendations over time — driving growth for your company in the process. Keep reading, and we’ll share our insights into how restoration software can help turn good customers into great ones while supercharging your business’ referral network.

Customer relationship management in the restoration industry consists of various technologies, strategies, and policies aimed at handling interactions with potential and existing customers. Effective communication is crucial from the moment a customer reaches out to a contractor regarding their services, through the project, and even afterward. Contractors can use technology to collect data regarding their customers’ preferences and needs, enabling them to better meet client demands– ultimately promoting business growth.

Why Customer Relationship Management is So Important for Restoration Businesses

Relationships with customers are important for any business, but it’s vital in the customer-centric restoration industry. It’s about the initial phone call asking a homeowner in an area hit by a recent hailstorm if they can schedule an appointment to check for damage. It’s about the first in-person meeting with a field representative’s evaluation of a structure damaged by a storm. It’s about office staff returning a voicemail promptly to schedule a project. It’s about the project manager emailing their customer while copying in their insurer to ensure they’re kept up-to-date on the scope and pricing of a job.

For restoration contractors, customer relationship management helps with the following:

• Augmenting customer satisfaction: Through effective communications, a restoration contractor can better track a customer’s preferences and requirements for a job. By understanding what the customer wants, contractors can look at ways to add value while enabling quicker reactions to customer concerns or queries. 
• Building trust: The complexity of restoration projects and the substantial investments of money and time required require a customer to trust a contractor’s capabilities and trustworthiness. Much of this involves just keeping a customer informed about a project’s progress, which ideally leads to increased trust for the contractor. When a customer sees dependability and proficiency throughout a project, a contractor’s reputation develops, leading to referrals and repeat business.
• Facilitating decisions driven by data: Customer relationship management systems rely on gathering and analyzing data, including customer feedback and preferences. With this collected data, renovation contractors can better decide on serving their customers. Some more cutting-edge platforms include artificial intelligence (AI) tools that provide insights on key metrics like customer satisfaction. This enables a restoration company to improve its services based on this data.
• Heightening teamwork: An essential element within the restoration industry is the need for collaboration. Not only must a project manager, office staff, field teams, sales staff, and others within the company be able to communicate with each other, but they must also interact effectively with customers, insurance agents, material and equipment suppliers, subcontractors, and others involved in the project. A centralized platform that allows all parties to share information and communicate will help eliminate conflicts and keep everyone working towards the same goal.
• Improving communication: Effectively managing communications is integral to restoration contractors to ensure that customers, insurers, project managers, field teams, and other stakeholders are all on the same page. Keeping customers abreast of what’s going on with a project alleviates the chance of disputes and delays. This helps alleviate a homeowner’s worry while also improving outcomes.

Customer relationship management helps augment customer satisfaction by building trust, facilitating data-driven decisions, and heightening teamwork through improved communications. By addressing these factors, restoration companies can provide better service, thus establishing a reputation for excellence, leading to referrals that help a business grow.

Restoration Software and Customer Relationship Management 

Customer relationship management is about communicating with customers and others with a stake in the project. Even when negative feedback provides insights into areas where a restoration business can improve. Though less effective, this can even be done without technology. However, for a business in a competitive sector like the restoration industry, disregarding innovations will soon lead to a declining customer base.

Modern technological tools offer companies a more dynamic way of maintaining and growing a company’s customer base. Software designed for restoration contractors provides a means to maintain information about customers and potential customers, helping turn leads into sales. A customer relationship management element within this restoration software platform assists contractors with tracking customers’ insurance claims, policies, and other vital documents.

Engaging with customers and prospects helps build trust. The best restoration contractors already know this. Technology makes it easier to win a customer’s trust, as it makes it easier to understand the wants and needs of the customer. However, relationship management software doesn’t mean a contractor can get away with doing substandard work. Restoration companies must apply their skills to ensure any repairs and rebuilding work are done to a customer’s satisfaction.

Features to Look for in Customer Relationship Management Software

When looking for software that can assist with customer relationship management, restoration contractors should ensure it has certain features. Some more forward-looking restoration platforms include customer relationship management tools that enable contractors to better serve their customers.

Features ought to include tools for: 

• Routine notifications: Notifies users when clicking on app notifications to see project details.
• Project management: Centralizes management of jobs onto a single platform, which acts as a hub for project managers and from which all other software tools can be accessed; the best project management software should feature an open API to enable easier integration with other apps a contractor utilizes.
• Data collection: Helps contractors gather demographic information to understand more about the customers they serve and recognize areas in which they generate the most profit.
• Data analytics: Evaluates data holistically to provide a broad picture of if marking efforts are working.
• Customer feedback: Consistently gathers feedback from customers and those who refer business about their experience with the company, providing a picture of a contractor’s strengths and where it can improve.
• Contact management: Ability to store information about a contact relevant to assessors, customers, and other stakeholders, such as claims, policies, and other insurance-related documentation.
• Automated workflows: Allows contractors to automate and tailor the general sequence of the processes they utilize for certain tasks and build configurable reports.

These features not only benefit the customer. Relationship management additionally helps contractors manage contacts efficiently, helping to turn more leads into sales. Tracking insurance documents and other customer information lets contractors stay on top of their projects. Streamlining the dispatching of teams and scheduling appointments and projects also enables contractors to deal with customer concerns or questions quickly.

How Restoration Software Can Help Grow Referrals

As with any other construction, a restoration project offers very specific challenges that involve dealing closely with customers and often, insurers. How a restoration business deals with these situations will determine whether the customer will refer others and whether they’ll use the contractor again for similar purposes. Referrals result from effective customer relationship management, resulting in more 5-star reviews and greater brand loyalty.

Here’s how restoration software can help improve referrals: 

• Allows customers to connect to apps to rate the contractor’s services automatically.
• Social media platforms can virally expand awareness of a restoration contractor’s services.
• Gives contractors analytics tools that allow them to evaluate their reputation, including areas where they can improve.
• Offers a means for customers to refer the contractor instantaneously. 
• Provides a way to track from whom and where referrals come, along with who may be eligible for any incentives.

In the end, developing an effective system for customer relationship management involves cultivating a good rapport with customers. This involves getting to know more about them, which is made easier through personalized customer data collection. Nowadays, it takes more than just doing a good job as a restoration contractor; it also requires knowing each customer’s preferences.   

Investing in Software to Improve Customer Relationship Management 

Customer relationship management is key to any restoration company’s sales funnel, feeding referrals and repeated business to create growth. While communicating with customers is key, software specifically for restoration contractors increases customer satisfaction, trust, and teamwork through better communications that facilitate superior decision-making. Before choosing a platform, however, it’s important to understand what features will best drive sales referrals.

Albi’s effective and simple-to-use restoration software improves customer relationship management for contractors whose businesses rely on restoring structures after a disaster. By helping to track progress, along with handling sales and marketing, Albi offers a platform for restoration contractors by people who know the industry. To learn more about how Albi can promote your customer relationship management goals, book a demo today.