Getting and Keeping Customers via Online Collaboration

by Brian Javeline
President & Co-founder
ServusXchange, LLC
How things can change in such a short time.  It was just two years ago that I wrote a story about contractors being crazy because they were behind everyone else in adapting to technology.  Many people thought I was crazy for even trying to help automate the daily business practices of these crazy contractors.  To go back in time just a little (March 2008), check out my article for RedVector here.  It leads so well into this story that I suggest you read it.  I will continue knowing most are so busy that is hard to spend any time to review a past story.

In the time since that article was published, my corporation released our first collaborative version of MyOnlineToolbox.com and won a 2008 Dell Top 10 Innovator Award for Internet and mobile computing.  Even more impressive was that we won a 2009 Forbes America’s Most Promising Company Award.
The “Most Promising” of the Forbes award belongs not just to my company, but is rather to be shared with the evolving contractor community.  You see, MyOnlineToolbox is pretty much consistent with other leading technologies in other fields, but unfortunately stands alone when it comes to the vast majority of contractors understanding and embracing what is available to them.  Special Note: RedVector customers tend to be more advanced, since they already believe in online continuing education. That makes my story much easier to follow!

My last RedVector article talked about how contractors were just embracing email and websites.  Then within a relatively short time, a few were beginning to automate some of the basics of their business –such as estimating and invoicing – on the Internet.  And as of last year, they were even emailing those estimates and invoices to their customers.  I think this is pretty cool and want to tell everyone! It may have been like this for awhile in many other industries, but it is still pretty cool in our industry.
I am sure that some of the readers of this article will agree that now email is starting to get out of control.  Email subjects usually do not represent all the details of a communication.  And the emails themselves get overbearing after you go back and forth a few times.  So many things can get lost in an email that is not structured well enough, and that is the last thing you want to have happen when communicating with other business people, whether they are your subcontractors, vendors or – heaven forbid – your customers.

So now MyOnlineToolbox has extended itself beyond the boundary and created a collaboration platform for contractors to work with their subcontractors, and for contractors to connect to their customers.  I do not want to get ahead of myself since many readers may just be starting to use email more effectively and the word “platform” may come across a little scary.  So let me take away any fears by explaining this in simplistic terms.  A platform presents information from diverse sources in a unified way.  Platforms provide a way to give a consistent look and feel to items that come from different applications  - and thus otherwise would all have looked different. 

Here is a practical comparison.  Some contractors may sometimes create estimates for homeowners on a piece of paper and just leave it on the homeowner’s kitchen table.  Other times contractors have to go back to the office to accumulate various pieces of information to provide an estimate, and then possibly email a document to a homeowner.  The homeowner will then reply with questions and the contractor will make changes to the estimate and send a new copy.  In this regard, there are now many emails with many attachments that can slowly become confusing to the homeowner.  A better way is to electronically converse with the homeowner on a more advanced email system with a platform connection.

The way a platform gets started is that the contractor sends an abbreviated email communication, with a controlled subject message along with a web link for the homeowner to connect to. The link brings the homeowner customer to a specific spot in a shared work area of the contractor’s website application, and then the homeowner can review and print, approve or comment on the communication.  The best thing is that there is a controlled, easy-to-follow sequence of events.
You probably have already had an experience with a platform environment, most likely with an environment such as LinkedIn or Facebook.  All you need is for someone to post a topic and then everyone starts making comments and going back and forth.   Sometimes this becomes a little bit of a nuisance, especially as the comments begin to go off topic.  But a job-oriented platform allows the topics to always stay focused on the job, estimate or invoice. 

My suggestion is to seriously try collaboration and see how your customers react.  You should be open-minded since adapting to these new philosophies is many times weighted towards the age of the person you are collaborating with.  This is not completely true, but it seems more applicable to a younger generation of customers. Some older folk may just want email and some others just a fax because that is their comfort zone.  And there are some older people who fully understand.  You should communicate in the manner that best suits the person you wish to do business with.

It is a mistake not to try collaboration technologies, since technology and people’s expectations change so fast that you want to be ahead of the curve.  How long did it take everyone to fully embrace a fax machine?  How long to fully embrace email?  And you can bet that the time it will take to embrace collaborative platforms for business will be much less.  And if you doubt it, then try to think how long ago it was before you knew of Facebook, and then consider that there are now more than 400 million people collaborating.  That is not a typo, it is 400 million.

My last story for RedVector embraced the fact that the industry was slow at realizing how they could become more efficient by embracing change.  It is now that much more important to understand how relationships can change so fast, and we are happy to able to provide you a method to see for yourself the difference this can make.  Just go to MyOnlineToolbox and sign up free (and remember to select RedVector as the referring source).  Then create an estimate and Share it with a prospect, especially one who is open to giving you an email address.  Do this a few times and wait to see what happens.  You will not be disappointed in how easy it is, and you’ll see how much more connected you feel with prospects and customers.  It will be interesting when I come back to report on where contractors are going next with running their business.

Brian Javeline is President & Co-founder of ServusXchange, LLC, creator of www.MyOnlineToolbox.com, an Internet solution for contractors in the home repair and remodeling industry. Brian can be reached by visiting www.MyOnlineToolbox.com or calling 954-786-0883