The roofing industry has become a lucrative yet competitive service sector today. Competition has pushed businesses to adopt more intelligent operations, such as in digital marketing, field staff management, customer relationship management, and smart service delivery. By being more innovative in their operations, roofing businesses complete more jobs, satisfy clients, and generate more revenue.
Some major tech tools have aided these innovative operations. Companies that are adapting these into their daily processes and procedures are quickly gaining a competitive edge over others who are becoming increasingly at risk of missing out on revenue generation. Modern technology is shaping the way modern roofing businesses operate. To ensure your business doesn’t get left behind, assess where it can help you by reviewing the tools and tactics below:
1. Scheduling software
Managing your team out in the field, scheduling appointments and tracking jobs can be a full-time job when running a roofing business. For you to be able to effectively eliminate the instances of double bookings, late shows, no shows and cancellations, consider getting scheduling software from companies such as Jobber to help you do this quickly and efficiently.
With this software, you can organize your team well in advance, or conversely at the last minute should you need to, and dispatch your roofers in time to complete the jobs assigned. You’ll also be able to track who is doing a particular job and assess performance as required. By being able to deliver your services on time, on schedule and as planned will go a long way to pleasing your customers and incentivizing them to provide a positive review or testimonial, or refer you directly. The value of this cannot be underestimated when it comes to growing your business.
2. Roofing estimating software
Creating, sending, and tracking roofing estimates can take a lot of time. Using physical copies increases the chances of making mistakes, losing estimates, and appearing unprofessional. Smart estimating software can help you quickly create, dispatch, and track estimates.
Ensure you invest time in adopting best practice in writing your service quotes and estimates. Ultimately, if done well, this can be an effective tool to support you in winning more business. Research indicates that those businesses that can share estimates faster, are more likely to get the business. Prospects perceive this as companies caring about the business they are offering.
During the quoting process, don’t forget to also include more traditional items such as your business card to clients so they can contact you for other jobs or refer you to other customers. The chances of clients referring you to others or contacting you will depend on how professional your quoting process is, so embracing the right software for this very purpose can make a huge difference to your bottom line.
3. Social media platforms
Social media can be hugely impactful for business if done well. Having social media pages and updating them regularly with pictures of before and after jobs, services offered, team news, industry best practice and helpful tips and how-to videos, will allow you to engage with your audience in an authentic way and elevate you as a voice of authority in your area of expertise.
Additionally, social media can be especially helpful to drive traffic not only to your social media channels, but also to your website. A good website will have a clear call to action to help users to convert into paying customers either through a contact us form or online appointment scheduling system or similar.
Ultimately, social media is a great way to gather reviews, handle feedback and showcase testimonials which all contribute to marketing your business and winning more customers.
4. Business website
A website forms an online representation of your business. Once you have a website, customers can find you, engage with you, and acquire your services. A roofing business without a website is missing a huge opportunity to educate your customers and convince them why they should use your services.
Choose a design that reflects what you stand for as a business and the impression you want to give to your customers, especially if it is likely to be the first interaction point customers have with you when assessing the credibility of your business compared to others. Importantly, ensure that it’s user friendly, easy to navigate, and has all the essential information your customers might need in order to decide to contact you for business.
5. Automated messaging system
Integrating an automated messaging system will help you respond to customers’ requests and concerns seamlessly. Often it can be challenging to update your customers, especially when dealing with multiple communication channels or managing several services. Consequently, failure to communicate to clients can leave them frustrated, which will impact your business’s reputation and ratings.
Using an automated messaging system will make external communication far easier and ensure that clients are always responded to in a timely way. These can be highly customized to give them a personal feel. You can set up automated messages to remind customers of upcoming jobs, site visits, approvals or feedback wherever they are in your process.
Final thoughts
You need to stay on top of your roofing business and get more clients by adopting at least one or more of the above tech tools discussed in this post. Job scheduling and estimating software, along with a user-friendly website, social media and automated messaging systems are invaluable to help you win and acquire more business, and build excellent relationships with your customers.