CRM
Pawel K
Registered: 6/21/11
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CRM
Jun 22, 2011 3:03 PM
One thing that's lacking in the current CRM market is software catering to the vacation rentals industry. Since your plan is to integrate email inquiries into your product, you will essentially serve as a repository where users can store information about customers. Making that information searchable, allowing users to upload / connect via IMAP/POP to upload historical data, and perhaps at some point organizing that information by customer, would all be helpful additions. |
Sam Westcott
Registered: 12/19/09
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Re: CRM
Jun 22, 2011 3:52 PM
Pawel, you're absolutely correct, and that is something we have discussed internally. After the inquiry management is flushed out, we are planning on refactoring our "Guest" model so that contact records are more cleanly represented. Inquiries, quotes and then bookings will all be tied to a central contact record so that you can see who is doing what, see who has inquiried or booked multiple times (and not just because you see the same email address show up twice) and use those contact records for more interesting things. For instance, be able to keep your Outlook or Gmail contacts in sync. |
Pawel K
Registered: 6/21/11
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Re: CRM
Jun 23, 2011 10:38 AM
I guess my only advice would be to not go nuts on features. There's something to be said for the 37Signals method of developing software - embracing constraints, simplicity, and less features. |
thegmann
Registered: 2/23/12
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Re: CRM
Feb 23, 2012 2:39 AM
I think that at least rudimentary CRM would be awesome, the ability to track lead sources, see the income from each source, track what customer preferences are, have profiles on different customers, etc, would be awesome. |
thegmann
Registered: 2/23/12
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Re: CRM
Feb 24, 2012 2:07 PM
I would love to be able to get an inquiry by email from within ownerrez, reply to it, track the conversation, add in things such as "called person, left a voicemail" or "this person wants a bottle of wine and flowers waiting when they arrive.", automatically add people who inquire to a third party mailing list service, add information to the lead as I converse with them such as name, phone, email (if not already captured), address, preferred property, lead source, dates of stay, current not-booking excuse, lead value, and track all of this information. Then when they are ready click one button to convert it to a quote or a booking and send it off to them. If you integrate with a service such as mailchimp what would be amazingly useful would be to add them to a certain list in inquiry state, then when they book add them to a list for the just booked state along with their dates booked, name, city, and other fields, then remove them from inquiry state list, then when they've just checked out the ability to shoot off a survey email, and if the survey is positive ask them to leave reviews on yelp, tripfinder, etc. THEN put them on another mailchimp list of previous guests and remove them from the booked state list. |
Glenn Moore
Registered: 11/11/12
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Re: CRM
Apr 6, 2013 3:26 PM
At the very least it would be nice to be able to create email templates that pull mail-merged data from a booking and allow for some simple rules around generation and delivery. For example, once my guests have made their final payment, I email them the lock code to our house, our neighbourhood (gated community), etc. A few days before arrival, I like to send out a reminder summary email with their lock code, etc. Finally after they have left, I like to send them a thank you and a request for review. |
Sam Westcott
Registered: 12/19/09
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Re: CRM
Apr 6, 2013 5:21 PM
Glenn, I agree completely, and we're working on more now than ever. Don't take my word for it - check back in the next two weeks or so. We're finishing the first release of a design overhaul and some of what you just mentioned. Trust me, 2013 isn't "dry" on development. It will be far FAR bigger than 2012. ~Sam |
Glenn Moore
Registered: 11/11/12
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Re: CRM
Apr 7, 2013 1:44 PM
Thanks sounds great! I look forward to the next two weeks! |
Glenn Moore
Registered: 11/11/12
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Re: CRM
Apr 27, 2013 3:25 PM
Have you guys checked out your competition at bookerville,com? Fantastic customer management tools + very flexible emailing system where you can create templates and also define events for when emails go out (ie. when full balance is paid, 3 days before arrival, 2 days after departure, etc). It even has the ability to create and use user-defined fields (such as my lock code), etc. Customers are stored in its database to allow you to rate them (privately) and therefore offer specific discounts on repeat business. |
Paul W
Registered: 6/9/09
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Re: CRM
Apr 27, 2013 3:58 PM
Glenn, we missed the two week mark that Sam mentioned, but we're wrapping up to release some of the new design shortly. |