Cleelynd Potgieter had tried CRM after CRM before giving BaseCloud a go at KPC Brokers. Back then Cleelynd was the only user; today nine people use it. Client communication was spread across Outlook, a VoIP phone system and an office phone with WhatsApp on it, with nowhere to see it all together.
Now every email, call and WhatsApp sits on the client’s record in BaseCloud CRM. Email tracking matches around 3,500 emails a week to the right client, renewals that used to be a whole person’s job take a fraction of the time, and with calls running over the internet the team keeps working through power cuts and strikes.
“No one likes an additional cost, but once you see the full picture, the benefit outweighs the cost of the CRM: more business, and less business lost.”
Transcript
I'd bumped my head so many times with CRMs, processes and systems. I was like, well, let's give this a try. It was just me. Now we've got nine users on the system.
What we thought was managing isn't managing. We had Outlook, we had a VoIP system, and a phone floating around the office with WhatsApp on it. It was all over the place. We had all these things, but no center point, no central hub where the communication happens. It still happens on WhatsApp, Outlook, VoIP or a file system, but now you can actually see it all as one.
The deciding factor was that it was simpler than what I'd looked at to actually get the data into the system. That was a huge advantage. I wasn't looking at employing someone to develop it or capture data.
It's not like an IT system where you log a ticket and hope like hell someone fixes it. It's not that. The system is customizable, which can be quite daunting at times. It's like a streaming site with all the movies. You don't know which one to watch. But then your team comes and guides you, gives you the attention you need, and gets you past the steps you need. If the system's down: "Hi Eduan, we can't access our emails." Fifteen, twenty minutes later, you're back online.
We're processing about 3,500 emails a week. Now email tracking tells you which client it is. It's in the client file. It's marked done. We've taken a one-minute process down to a couple of seconds.
For example, renewals. It's quite a tedious process. Populating Excel spreadsheets was a whole person's job. If they were really fast, they'd get to about 10 a day. In the 45 minutes I worked this morning, I did 8. That's the difference.
I can sit in the office with Jonathan and make business decisions looking at the system, seeing where we're falling short. We've got the VoIP now, and in South Africa you don't know if your office can run tomorrow morning because there's no electricity, no water, or a taxi strike. It creates no delays. All you need is internet access, and everyone's working.
No one likes an additional cost, but once you see the full picture, the benefit outweighs the cost of the CRM: more business, and less business lost. If you're buying Salesforce or Zoho or something like that, you're not going to change it. It's like asking Bill Gates to update Microsoft to suit you. BaseCloud allows you to make suggestions, to build it and customize it, so it actually suits your business.
I'm a little bit jealous I wasn't on this venture with you from the start, because I think it's going places.
See how BaseCloud CRM works for insurance agencies and financial advisors.
