Finch Trade Professionals Testimonial

"Commusoft is a big player; it really puts it all together for us, and without it, genuinely, we would be lost. "

G Jassal All Trades, based out of Glasgow’s West End, provides a variety of field service services to customers. Company Director Gurminder Jassal spoke to us about how his multi-trades business has flourished since implementing Commusoft’s Customer Journey plan in 2017.

Plugging Away With a Disjointed System

Gurminder describes his previous daily workflow as a “a jumbled mess” before finding Commusoft.

He explains,

“We used to run things was remarkably different from what we do now. I would have WhatsApp sent to an engineer, a text message sent to another engineer, a handwritten note…and a diary, which, simply, ran out of room because if you made a mistake or had to alter anything, you had to put a line through it…I was up till all hours of the morning trying to sort things out”.

Gurminder and his team knew this workflow wouldn’t support their business’s growth.

Revamping Daily Operations

Trading a chaotic workflow for a streamlined digital system wasn’t a difficult decision, but it was intimidating.

Gurminder expands,

“Using a new system can be daunting…you’re thinking ‘how much time is it going to take me to learn this? Am I ever going to get good at this? I don’t have time for it’, but my advice would be, definitely take the time for it…The service from Commusoft was great… They were always there, and that’s why we’re still here after all these years”. 

After settling in with Commusoft, Gurminder and his team wanted to organise their tasks. As a multi-trade business, easily distinguishing services was a necessity.

Gurminder elaborates,

“We can actually group the jobs into ‘plumbing’, ‘heating’, ‘decorating’, ‘miscellaneous’; having those separate files, I can simply pull them up and go ‘how much decorating did we do between July and August 2018’? I can [compare this], to July and August 2021. And I can say ‘that portion of the business is doing really well, let’s get a painter on our books’. Or I can look at something and say ‘why has it declined? Can we push it forward? Can we generate more social media? Can we gather more customers to increase the workload?’ And really, separating those out is very, very, important and it gives you information at a glance”.

With Commusoft, the G Jassal All Trades team are able to separate jobs by type, and can generate reports to keep track of all the moving parts. Learn more about Commusoft’s job tracking software and reporting system.

Focusing On Customer Satisfaction

Gurminder works to provide full transparency, availability, and service to his customers. He explains, “Communication for any business is really important. For a customer journey, it’s massive. In the trades business, unfortunately, there’s this stigma of ‘the plumber didn’t call me back’, or ‘the electrician didn’t turn up’, so people have their backs up sometimes. But Commusoft has helped us overcome that fear with our customers”. Gurminder expands, “Having Commusoft, and having a good admin team, combining those both together, has dramatically changed it because we get advanced warning of when a customer is going to be needing a service”.

Commusoft’s service reminders software keeps both our clients, and their customers on track, supporting PPM workflows, increasing the number of jobs booked, and boosting company profits. Gurminder explains, “[Commusoft] lets us gain more business as well because instead of a customer possibly forgetting our details, can’t find us anymore, they go online…we’re actually capturing them before they have a chance to go somewhere else, it’s really, really important for us”. Learn more about winning continued business with Commusoft’s service reminder software.

Custom Service Plans

On top of being a multi-trades business, G Jassal All Trades also offers tiered service plans for customers with their Homecare packages.

Gurminder explains,

“One of the sides of the business we have is Homecare…We have silver, bronze, gold packages, and this [offers] different levels of cover from whether they’re allowed call outs, how much parts are allowed, what the labour is, and really, what benefits they can capture from using our services…”

He continues,

“[With] Commusoft, we can look at the customer’s file, see how many properties he’s got, and what level of Homecare plan they’re on, and when the service is due. So we’re not being held back from providing a great service either… we’re happy because if we get in early, carry out the service early, we can pick up problems early, and that can save us a whole host of money. So it’s a really good benefit for us.”

With customised service plans, Gurminder and his team can ensure they’re always providing unrivalled service to their customers. Learn more about creating custom service agreements with Commusoft’s service contract management software.

Moving Forward With Commusoft

Gurminder’s engineers thrive with Commusoft and their new workflows.

He explains,

“So from their side, it’s a fantastic tool. They know where they’re going, what they have to do, and they can target and base their day around that…And the great thing is, because it’s all digital, we can actually add in what happened during the last service… [The engineers] can view who’s been there before, what actually happened, what’s the best course of action, and the customer’s having a seamless enjoyment of using our business”.

With Commusoft, Gurminder knows G Jassal All Trades can grow comfortably, and continue offering exceptional service. He explains, “[we] captured over 60% more services now than we did before…Anyone that’s out there, thinking of utilising a system, I would definitely recommend Commusoft…Anyone sitting on the fence thinking about doing it, I would definitely do it”.

Gurminder Jassal
Director

"Our office staff are now able to manage their time much more efficiently - I'd estimate we've reduced our office admin time to roughly 30%."

C.P. Jefferies Ltd is a family-run company based in the Cotswolds. With approximately eight office staff and twenty field engineers, they offer plumbing, heating, electrical, and renewable services to the domestic market.

We caught up with Rob Williams, owner director of C.P. Jefferies Ltd, to hear how Commusoft has been essential in transforming their well-established plumbing and heating business.

How Was Your Business Run Before Commusoft?

“Prior to using Commusoft, the operations were more or less wholly run on a paper-based system. There was some use of Outlook diaries for service engineers. However, every engineer had a paper diary that they would fill out each day. It became clear that this was not a viable process for us going forward with the company growing.”

What was your biggest challenge before using Commusoft?

“One of the main problems with the system that we previously ran was the clunkiness of relying on a paper-based system. Trying to get real-time information e.g. knowing how many customers we’d visited in a week or a month was very hard. Knowing how many jobs we’d completed or how many jobs were still outstanding and hadn’t been completed was also very difficult. Boiler and Aga servicing is a huge part of our revenue stream and contributes a lot to what we do as a business. Trying to maintain a comprehensive service record of all of our customers on a paper-based system was not straightforward.”

How Has Using Commusoft Helped Solve This?

“C.P. Jefferies pride ourselves on offering a quality service – Commusoft has helped us do that to the best of our ability. Now, with each engineer having their own device, they can see which engineers previously attended the customer and works that have been carried out. With each of our engineers having their own individual diaries, our office staff are now able to manage their time much more efficiently. I’d estimate we’ve reduced our office admin time to roughly 30%, now that we’re using Commusoft.”

Discover Commusoft’s job scheduling software.

How Has Vehicle Tracking Helped You in the Field?

“Working in a rural location, we often find that phone signal is not great and engineers would end up driving back to the office to find out they were going into the next village along from where they’d just been working. Now, with the vehicle trackers we can see that they engineer is still on site and we can phone their next customer to inform them if they’re running late. Rather than relying on the engineer finishing their work, driving to mobile phone signal, and letting us know – by which time it’s too late for us to preempt it with the next customer.”

Explore our real-time vehicle tracking feature.

Would You Recommend Commusoft to Other Field Service Companies?

“For any company working in the plumbing and heating industry or electrical industry – it’s very handy having all the certificates that you need for oil, gas, LPG, and electrical – all built into the software. The biggest impact that Commusoft has had on C.P. Jefferies as a business has been consolidating all of the information into one area, whether that’s customer information, job information, invoicing, product, testing – it’s all in one place for everybody to see.“

Join C.P. Jefferies and 1,000+ businesses that utilise Commusoft’s job management software!

Rob Williams
Owner Director

"There is no way we could run our business efficiently and effectively... we just simply could not run it without Commusoft."

Lincoln Smith, a director at Custom Heat Ltd, sat down to discuss why Commusoft is essential for running their heating and plumbing business.

Custom Heat is a family-run business that started with Lincoln’s parents in 1980 and has been operating for the past 40 years in and around Rugby, UK. Since implementing Commusoft in 2016, the Custom Heat team has grown from 60 in 2020, to over 100 in 2023!

How Was Your Business Run Before Commusoft?

“We had a paper-based system that we’d had for many years. The system was not internet based, so you couldn’t download a mobile app. We had engineers that would call in on a Friday afternoon to ask if they could pick another job up, or we’d have a customer that would all in at 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon and say ‘We’ve got no hot water, can you come fix the boiler?’. So we’d call the engineer and say we’ve got another job. He’d then jot it down on a sticky label or something in his van – or probably not write it down at all. He’d drive there, do the job – but then we’d never get paid.

“We were growing as a business, our customer-base was growing, the demand for our services was growing, so we needed a system that could cope with the increase in jobs.”

What Was Your Biggest Challenge Before Using Commusoft?

“Before we used Commusoft, our invoicing was done manually. A lady in the office would produce an invoice and at the end of the week she would send all those invoices out in the post. So you could complete a job on a Tuesday – by the Thursday or Friday you’re posting the invoice – by the Monday they’ve received it – and a few days later, they’re paying it. The whole process could be a week or more.”

How Has Using Commusoft Helped You Improve This?

“Now, you click a button – and send an invoice! In fact, the engineers do it from site. Not only do invoices not get missed, but the engineer can go to a boiler service, complete the work, and click a button – all within a second. The office staff doesn’t have to do any of it.”

How Has Commusoft Transformed Your Operations?

“We now have customers call our office, who are ready to handle the call and can book the appointment into a live diary. If it’s a call-out for that day, which happens very often, it will appear in real time in the engineer’s diary. The engineer can then travel to that job and carry out the work. If they need a part, they communicate easily back with the office – just click to select who to communicate with. Once they hit complete, it lets the office know they need those parts. The engineer can then invoice and it will automatically send off the after-care email asking for a review. It’s all made very engineer friendly and very easy to use. The communication between the office and engineer is instant.”

Would You Recommend Commusoft to Other Tradespeople?

“The way that Commusoft tracks every part of every single job – you will not lose anything – it gives you complete confidence in the whole system. Complete confidence to grow. Complete confidence to push on with your business. There is no way that we could run our business efficiently and effectively, presenting ourselves the way we do with our customers, with our reminders the night before, with our text messages that say ‘we’re on our way’… we just simply could not run our business without Commusoft, it would be impossible.“

Lincoln Smith
Managing Director