Commusoft Testimonials

"Commusoft has only gotten better since we started 10 years ago. And we’ve never looked back."

After celebrating 10 years with Commusoft, we sat down with Daniel Brough, owner and manager of Furness Heating Engineers, to discuss how Commusoft has been pivotal in their growth and success over the past decade. 

Furness Heating Engineers have served the Furness Peninsula, Cumbria, for over 20 years, specialising in everything related to heating, bathrooms, cookers and fires; from servicing to installation.

Back in 2014, Daniel managed a team of 5 gas engineers and 1 office staff. Today, Furness Heating Engineers is close to trebling in size, consisting of 10 engineers and 5 office staff. “Without a doubt Commusoft has helped us expand”, Daniel says, owing the progress to their transition away from paper:

“It was hard work, really, really hard work. We were using Outlook for diaries and we’d print out job sheets and pick them up every day. Once we realised we could be doing this from our phones and how much easier it was, all the lads took that up straightaway.”

A Decade of Streamlined Operations and Scheduling

It’s the details that make a difference for Daniel’s team, from required questions when arriving or leaving jobs, to attached site photos, and custom forms. But the instant syncing between office and field is the real game changer, explains Daniel:

“It makes a huge difference rather than being sent through a message trail in WhatsApp or Messenger which can get lost or confused. It’s all tied to the job, which makes life a lot easier. Once the job is complete, office staff can work on ordering the parts for the boiler same day, rather than waiting for the job sheets to come back.”

Job scheduling has improved dramatically thanks to Commusoft, allowing the team to keep certain engineers in certain locations, reducing driving time between jobs and improving overall efficiency. “We try and keep an engineer in that location for the full day, to make sure he’s not coming back and wasting an hour driving back to another area”, Daniel explains.

This has an additional bonus on work-life balance for the team too, adds Daniel, “For engineers that live out of the town, we give them their last job on the route home, so they can go straight home and save driving out just to go back. It’s much better.”

Driving Customer Satisfaction for 10 Years

When it comes to Furness Heating Engineers’ customers, they too benefit from the fast and organised CRM that Commusoft offers, according to Daniel:

“Customers are amazed at how much information we keep, especially on their boiler. If they call up a couple months after a job and say it’s still having the same problem, we don’t even need to go back out. All the boiler details and work history are saved, so we can review, order the part, and get it booked back in.”

The other benefit Furness Heating Engineers’ customers really find useful is the ease of accessing their old certificates with gas certificate software, “they just call up and we send it to them straight away via email.” Commusoft’s customer database software saves every job, service, and certificate indefinitely. With 10 years of data at their fingertips, Daniel can be confident that his team can always see the big picture and answer any customer queries – no matter how far they date back.

Continuous Growth; Adopting Vehicle Tracking

“Commusoft has only gotten better since we started. And we’ve never looked back.” With updates and new features being added regularly, Daniel and his team have continually had new areas to explore.

Six months ago they started using real-time vehicle tracking as part of Commusoft, Daniel details:

“Just recently we started using the trackers and it’s amazing how much more helpful that makes it when a customer calls and you can know exactly where the engineer is. Our office staff just click on the maps and can follow along and see where they’ve been.”

After trialling it with a couple vans, they’ve now moved away from their prior tracking software and have installed Commusoft trackers in all 10 vans, Daniel elaborates: “the tracking software we had before wasn’t linked to Commusoft and was just much harder for the team to use.”

Beyond improved operations, Daniel’s found a creative way to utilise the safe driving data offered from Commusoft:

“Whoever tops the best driving leaderboard that month wins the ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ award. It’s a little bit of fun, but it does get the engineers to think about how they are driving their vans and it has worked. It gets quite competitive at times…”.

The Next 10 Years with Commusoft

Powered by Commusoft’s job management software, continued growth and expansion is definitely on the horizon for Furness Heating Engineers, Daniel is confident: “with Commusoft, it doesn’t scare us moving and expanding further.” Even after 10 years, there’s still new functionality and benefits to explore in the software.

For Daniel and his team Commusoft is central to both their daily operations and the level of service they can offer customers. Daniel reflects, “when I open my computer, Commusoft opens automatically, because it’s always the first place I’m going.”

Daniel Brough
Managing Director

"We’re getting our proposals out in record time, which means we can focus our time elsewhere, which is the biggest plus!"

PCL Heating and Gas Engineers, based in Whitehaven, Cumbria, offer a wide range of cost-effective, reliable heating and plumbing solutions for their customers. Phil Clarke, Director at PCL, and one of the early adopters of Commusoft Sales sat down with us to discuss how the system has been benefiting his business so far.

Here’s what he had to say…

‘’The new Sales platform has been a game changer!’’

Helping PCL Create Sleek Proposals

Using Commusoft Sales’ integrated proposal builder, Phil and his team have been able to enhance their selling process, creating more personalised and detailed proposals.

‘’It gives us the chance to sell to customers more visually and cuts down on lengthy, plain paragraphs of text. We can incorporate photos and videos, which help the customer to decide on the options within our proposals, and make it a more personalised experience.”

Analysing Their Costs in Real Time

Alongside creating captivating proposals, the system provides PCL with real-time cost tracking, ensuring clarity on profit margins.

“Being able to clearly see our profit margins for each job has made it a lot easier to price up quotes.”

Speeding up the Sales Process

With its range of functionalities, Commusoft Sales streamlines PCL’s sales process, enabling faster deal closures, with the added benefit of having more time to complete other tasks too!

“The overall speed of getting our proposals out has skyrocketed, with ready-made option templates we add and alter to suit each job… we’re getting our proposals out in record time; which means we can focus our time elsewhere which is the biggest plus!”

Commusoft Sales is proving to be an invaluable tool, empowering clients like Phil to build strong sales strategies and secure success for the future!

Do You Want to Try Out Commusoft Sales?

If you want to incorporate these benefits into your business and share Phil’s and PCL’s success, take a look at the Commusoft Sales page, where you can book a demo!

Phil Clarke
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

"I can't say nice enough things about Commusoft. It made us grow up and actually think about what we really want."

Voity Electrical has operated out of Rutland, Vermont since 2017. Mary-Rachel Voity manages the office while her husband, Matt, leads the electricians in the field. This team provides world-class residential and commercial electrical services. Mary-Rachel met with us to discuss how Commusoft revived their business and helped elevate their workflows.

Before Commusoft

Hard work and passion are two trademarks of Voity Electrical; but while they were working hard, they were drowning under the stress. Mary-Rachel remembers their past workflows:

“It just wasn’t working… there was no open communication. Everything was in Matt’s head. And if we were gonna make the move of hiring someone else, we needed to be able to have a system in place where we would be able to empower the crew leader with information.”

She continues, “It’s about working smarter, not harder… My heart was breaking that my husband was working so hard. He wasn’t able to be part of the family.” Voity Electrical needed to resuscitate their daily operations. Mary-Rachel set out to find a job management solution, and found Commusoft.

She walked us through her decision-making process,

“The most important thing for the crew was having the ability for the system to be offline and still connect when it got into service and still retain all the information. So it wouldn’t stop the workflow; one less thing for them to worry about. That really weeded out what we were looking at.”

Commusoft’s powerful field service engineer app works offline and syncs when a WiFi signal returns.

Growth is important to Voity Electrical, and helping clients grow is important to Commusoft. Mary-Rachel elaborates; “Commusoft allowed us to grow up as a company and allowed us to be able to move forward. I can see this software growing with us, or we’re going to be growing with the software. And that was huge.”

Training With Commusoft

Mary-Rachel describes Commusoft’s training and on-boarding process as “wicked easy”.

She continues,

“I’ve been in CRMs before; the logic of Commusoft was very easy for me to pick up. I was able to catch up really fast and it made me have to think about the things I should be doing. There was a great framework of being able to organise everything in a system. I don’t recall a process or procedure where I wasn’t able to have two different ways to solve it.”

Learn more about our training and onboarding process.

Revamped Daily Workflows

Commusoft’s flexibility and customisation made it easy for Voity Electrical to reinvent their workflows.

Mary-Rachel states,

“Commusoft allowed us to be able to change our process and procedures, because we didn’t know what we were doing. With the flow, who’s doing quotes, and just everything. The system allowed us to do and experiment different ways to do processes and be able to change on a dime”.

Commusoft is all-inclusive and flexible; we take the guesswork out of field service. With important processes standardised and organised, our clients can handle their operations with confidence. Voity Electrical doesn’t wonder what comes next anymore; they’re in control.

Currently, Voity Electrical operates with a “one to five” ratio of office staff to technicians. Mary-Rachel’s office schedule is optimised and efficient. She explains, “I’m able to get a routine in place because I have the reports. I’m posting payments, I’m making my deposit slip all in Commusoft and then I start uploading all the supplier’s invoices and putting it underneath the job numbers.”

She continues,

“Before this, when it was billing time, we were searching through papers, we were trying to pull this, ‘what was the time’? Just absolute craziness. Commusoft allowed us to have processes and procedures. We know we’re not missing any money. We’re not missing and forgetting about invoices. Because everything is a report. I go into my reporting and I see the jobs that are completed that need to be billed, the ones that need attention”.

Commusoft’s reporting software offers 40+ preconfigured reports, the ability to filter data, create custom resorts, and more.

Optimised Remote Operations

Voity Electrical electricians are thriving with their new mobile workflows: “The staff was very excited about the software and finding solutions and having it being so custom. The crew loves the Office Tasks. That’s their favourite one.”

Commusoft’s Office Tasks feature empowers engineers to make requests and tasks for office staff.

Mary-Rachel elaborates,

“With the remote teams, we did get laptops for them, and they also have their clock in and clock out within the system, which eliminated our payroll service because now everything is in Commusoft…Everything is in front of them.”

Commusoft strengthens working relationships and oversight between the office and field.

Commusoft’s timesheets feature automatically logs time spent traveling and at job sites.

She explains, “I’m on top of things…I get to track what’s going on with their time and make sure there isn’t any kind of craziness going on.”

Exceptional Customer Service

Kindness and great service was always at the core of Voity Electrical. With Commusoft, they were able to focus on their customer experiences.

Mary-Rachel states,

“Our customers are amazed that people actually call them back or answer the phone. But also the confirmations, cause we know when the technicians are gonna be there. Because everything’s customisable, we’re able to do some branding within the communication. With the customer journey, we can just bring them along”.

These efforts have paid off. Mary-Rachel was excited to share “12 months ago, our Google rating was a 3.0 and now today we’re a 3.8!” Voity Electrical is continuously improving; as of May 2023, they currently boast a 4.4 rating on Google!

Voity Electrical is Growing With Commusoft

Voity Electrical has hit the ground running and are excited to build on their success.

Mary-Rachel explains,

“We’re able to work on the business, not in the business…We’ve moved into a new warehouse space because we have the ability to track inventory. In the next five years, I would like to hire another office staff. I’ll be able to run three different crews with three different leaders, and be able to control all those things like prices and parts. We want to scan the parts when we start picking parts. And I want to have a part-time job for someone to pick parts. So then the crew can just focus on the job at hand”.

Voity Electrical found their confidence with Commusoft. Their system is organised, and they’re in full control of their growth.

Most importantly, with work details squared away, the Voitys have time to spend together as a family. Mary-Rachel was excited to share, “We get more family time. When I say ’Commusoft saved my marriage’, I’m really not kidding. We very rarely forget the details now that need to make the business run smoothly. We’re able to be proactive instead of reactive.”

She concludes, “In hindsight, we still would make our choice again. Commusoft allows us to streamline everything and make us more meaty instead of fat.”

Voity Electrical is clearly going to electrify the industry, and will continue to thrill more and more customers; there’s no looking back.

Mary-Rachel Voity
Office Manager

"Commusoft has directly helped us take on more business and manage everything efficiently. We've seen so much growth!"

Director of Merit Facility Management, Ness Aguilar, sat down with us to discuss Commusoft’s impact on their operations since implementing our Customer Journey plan in 2022.

Why Commusoft?

From HVAC installations to plumbing repairs, pest control inspections, and more, Merit offers a wide range of services for customers. Ness outlines, “Our customer base consists of restaurants, apartment complexes, and commercial properties. We’re also getting into hospital facilities and some government facilities.”

To keep up with demand, Merit employs a variety of subcontractors. Ness and his team knew they needed a job management platform that could effortlessly organise their varied customer base and subcontractors.

He explains, “Out of all the demos that I did, Commusoft was the best and also the biggest. The deal breaker that made us go with Commusoft over any other software was the way the billing is set up.”

He continues,

“No other software has the ability for a Daily License, which was the most perfect thing. It’s the only thing that could work for us. Every other company wanted to charge us a set rate for the amount of users that were gonna be on the system. I wasn’t going be able to pay that because with how many subcontractors we work with right now. We work with 30 to 40.”

Commusoft differs by offering unique licensing options, including Daily, Rolling, and Contracted.

Offering Customer Self-Service Solutions

Facilities management is extremely competitive. After all, building managers want the very best communication and solutions for their facilities. Merit is able to stand apart by offering a self-service Customer Portal.

Ness explains,

“The biggest thing that really hooks them is the Customer Portal. Especially for restaurant customers that have multiple locations. For instance, we’re working with a company called Churches Texas Chicken, and they have multiple locations. I’m able to tell their regional manager, ‘Hey by using us you get a Customer Portal, and you can see all the different locations that you have. They’re all separate, but you can click into a specific location: Store Number One. And on there, it’ll show all the work that we’ve done at Store Number One, along with all the invoices and all the forms that you need.

‘You’re also able to give your managers access to that so they can also see what’s going on at that property. But the cool part about it is that you’re able to see all your different properties in one place’.

I tell them, ‘The more that you use us, the better. If you only use this for one service, you’ll still have all the information there, but it’s way more convenient if you’re using us for four different services instead of one because all the information is gonna be put into one place”.

Commusoft’s Customer Portal ensures Ness keeps commercial customers updated and encourages them to work Merit again and again.

He continues,

“The Customer Portal has allowed me to be able to focus on getting other jobs, opportunities, contracts and more. It’s freed me up from doing the bare minimum. When you’re stuck on responding to complaints or responding to simple requests that can be done in a more efficient manner, it takes away from your ability to grow or focus on other tasks.

I can focus on the things that really matter, like bringing us projects and talking to new customers. This is what will bring us more business, rather than just barely trying to keep up with the business that we already have.”

Ness is confident his team can stand apart from competitors: “Commusoft is able to put us ahead of everybody else that’s doing something similar because of the communication aspect alone!”

Perfecting Customer Communication

Updating and supporting customers is impossible without the right support. That’s why Merit Facility Management uses automated notifications and messages to keep each customer in the loop.

Ness outlines,

“Commusoft is so efficient when it comes to communicating for us, whether it’s emails, notifications, text messages, or the Customer Portal.

Customers are able to access everything; they don’t need to call us with any questions. I make sure I’m calling to touch base with them, just to make sure that they’re doing well. Even if there’s nothing wrong. I talk to customers in-person or over the phone and make sure that relationship is still there and going strong because Commusoft does such a great job of communicating with them.

It’s so smooth and convenient, it’s like the business is on autopilot! Honestly, I could not call them and they’ll still be fine because they’re getting all the communication they need. They’re almost self-sufficient, you know?”

Commusoft’s Alerts and Notifications remove the need to manually update customers. Automated reminders and messages ensure customers have access to the information they need, meaning Ness and his team can tackle higher-value tasks!

Capturing Data With Custom Forms

Ness’s contractors need to gather and record valuable information while on-site: “Custom Forms have been a massive help when comes to covering ourselves. It’s something that has been a godsend!”

Ness explains,

“For kitchen pest control, the restaurants are required to be given a form after the service has been completed for compliance reasons.

We, as a company, have to provide the Pest Control Report to the restaurant as proof of what we did. I was able to create a Custom Form listing all the chemicals somebody could use, the option for them to input the quantity of chemicals, and the different types of pests that they could be targeting.

Our pest control company goes ahead and does their service. Afterwards, they complete the pest control form. The customer, in their Customer Portal, can access that form when requested by a Health Inspector at any given moment.”

Commusoft’s Custom Forms empower Merit contractors to digitally capture valuable information, fulfil safety requirements, and complete inspection checklists directly from the job site.

Seamless Dispatching With Job Descriptions and User Groups

Stress-free job booking is essential for Merit’s operations. Ness walked us through two Commusoft features that have transformed scheduling and directly supported the business’s growth.

“Another feature is the ability to create job descriptions that are ready behind the scenes instead of having to input it manually. My scheduling department don’t have to worry about what the notes and price should be. Everything populates automatically whenever they select that job description.

The drag-and-drop ability on the scheduling has been so easy. Rescheduling something is the easiest thing ever because they can do it in two seconds. They just drag something and drop it!”

Commusoft’s Job Descriptions allow Merit’s office team to set details, like pricing for each service type they offer.

Pivoting to User Groups,

“Another thing that has helped us tremendously has been User Groups. We’re starting to not only do work in San Antonio, but also Houston. We’re also starting to do work in Austin because the word is spreading!

Commusoft’s User Groups allowed me to be able to separate these vendors and subcontractors per city. I have User Groups set up as ‘East Texas’, ‘West Texas’, ‘Central’, etc. Now, whenever my scheduling department get a dispatch call from Houston, they make sure they select the user group ‘Houston’.

“This allows them to see all the technicians only in Houston. That way they’re not dispatching somebody from San Antonio to do work in Houston. Some Commusoft features might be small. But if they’re not there, you realize how big of a problem it could cause!”

He continues,

“So in Houston, let’s just say for plumbing, I might get six to 10 calls per month. With Commusoft, I’m able to find a subcontractor out there who wants to do the jobs. I’m able to dispatch them just for those calls in Houston, and I don’t have to turn work down. Commusoft allows me to be able to take any ticket that I need because it’s so easy to add subcontractors with a daily license!”

Commusoft’s User Groups feature ensures the best technician is selected for the task at hand. This removes much of the guesswork out of scheduling, meaning jobs can get booked faster!

Expanding with Commusoft

Growth was always in the cards. However, with Commusoft supporting the team, Merit Facility Management was able to accelerate their growth, while remaining in complete control.

Ness details,

“We wouldn’t have been able to expand as fast as we have without Commusoft. It’s allowed us to get a foothold in other cities without having to wait until we have a lot of business there.

Everything’s just very efficient and organized. We’re confident in being able to take on more customers. Commusoft allows our sales team to help grow us. Also, with any word-of-mouth business, we’re able to take jobs on and not turn them down because we’re confident in knowing that we have a system that can handle a lot of customers.”

He continues,

“We had the idea, the goal, the ambition, and the drive. We had the team. But without this platform, we wouldn’t have been able to be as convenient to our customers. We wouldn’t have been able to do what we do without Commusoft. I’m forever grateful, and we plan on continuing to grow.

One thing that we love about Commusoft is that you’re always trying to better yourselves just like we are. That’s one thing you do that no other company that I know of does: nobody does that. Everybody says, ‘This is our software, this is our platform. Take it or leave it. We’re not making any adjustments’, and they just collect money on it. The fact that Commusoft is always willing and wanting to adjust, that’s one thing we just love.”

Commusoft is always working to better our solutions. We listen to our clients when developing new features, and regularly release requested tools and functions that our client base has suggested.

Ness concludes,

“The growth that we’ve seen in this past year wouldn’t have happened without Commusoft. It’s been tremendous. I’m curious to see where we’re gonna be at two years from now, three years from now! Every step of the way we’re gonna be growing. It’s exciting to see!”

Ness Aguilar
Director

"Commusoft is a completely scalable solution... We’ve quadrupled our workload, but we’ve only doubled our workforce."

Premier Heating Solutions Ltd has been in business since 2015, operating out of Reading, Berkshire. Phil Mulvenna, the company’s Managing Director, sat down with us to highlight his company’s growth since utilising Commusoft in 2017, and recently upgrading to our Customer Journey Plan in 2020.

Customer service has been the backbone of the business from the very beginning. Phil explains,

“We believe in putting the customer at the forefront of everything that we do, and customer service being absolutely key. Working with Commusoft has allowed us to refocus on that, and being part of their Customer Journey package allows us to embody everything we preach”.

Before Commusoft

Before switching to Commusoft, the company was booking and completing “approximately 100 jobs a month”. They relied on a combination of T Cards and Microsoft Office to organise their workflow.

However, with a growth mindset, desire to expand, and need to better serve their customers, Phil and his team knew that these archaic systems were stunting their progress. He explains, “using Microsoft Office was obviously going to be a problem for us in the long term. It wasn’t a scalable solution and it was causing us headaches because we couldn’t do any reporting at all”.

Moving to a new field service software wasn’t a decision they took lightly; after all, the future of the business depended on the software they selected. Phil and his team weighed many other field services software before deciding to proceed with Commusoft.

But Why Commusoft?

Phil describes, “our industry, historically, has always been a couple of steps behind other industries that use software as a service…Commusoft is at the forefront of that growth and allows us to have access to the most up-to-date software solutions available. So, that really, really, helps us grow our business”.

The training process, and ongoing relationship maintained by Commusoft’s client services team, is another merit according to Phil.

He expands, “the training is great, and the help desk and ongoing support that you get from Commusoft is great. We deal with a lot of software companies for various different parts of our business and often it’s an email, and a couple days response, but these guys are really on top of it and that makes it a lot easier to do business”.

Intelligent Scheduling Boosts Productivity

Commusoft’s job scheduling software analyses driving timing and distance for engineers against newly booked appointments, making suggestions to office staff for the most efficient routing and scheduling. Phil states,

“We can pop in a postcode, and it tells us where our nearest engineer is on a specific day…we can get our travel time down to 10 or 15 minutes in between jobs. And that really helps us in a reactive sense, making sure we’ve got the person closest to that job who’s being booked to carry out the work”.

Automated Invoicing Smooths the Billing Process

Phil was concerned about streamlining the invoicing process when searching for field service software. His customers used to wait days while his office staff scrambled to assemble an invoice with the correct services and parts allocation. “Even though we were only doing 100 jobs a month, it was a time-consuming exercise”, he asserts.

Commusoft’s automated invoicing software was able to slash their invoicing time from days to “less than 30 seconds”; Phil continues, “now we’re able to automate the whole process, generate an invoice based on the settings we put into Commusoft, it allocates the parts to the job… and sends it out to the customer.”

Office staff can quickly send accurate invoices and concentrate on growing their business, and not the admin work that slows progress. 

Stock Control Cuts Costs and Processing Time

Commusoft’s stock control software has impacted the business’ revenue by cutting unnecessary time and costs. Phil was happy to tell us that his company has “made some fairly significant savings. It’s allowed us to start buying our parts wholesale and we now carry a significant amount of product within our building. That has allowed us to save approximately 12% on our parts cost, which is touching on six figures”.

Functioning to maintain organisation, Commusoft “allows us to stay on top of stock management, so we don’t have to have a warehouse person managing that. We just have the auto-ordering system…and we receive those parts the following day. It’s a really, really, powerful tool, and you could argue it does the job of a warehouse manager”.

SLAs Support Customer Service

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are a pillar of a commitment to offering quality customer service. Phil explains, “as we’ve grown, SLAs have become far more important to our business”. Premier Heating Solutions uses SLAs in two capacities. The first is through a Tiered Membership program in which customers are offered same-day service. The other is for a time limit on return appointments.

Phil details how Commusoft aids this process: “SLAs are really important for our business; they help us track the service we offer. If the SLA isn’t met, I will get a notification, or my manager will get a notification, and we can look at why that happened, and be on top of the situation before it escalates”.

Ultimately, dedication to customers and following through on promises has contributed to the company’s growth: “If you’re able to deliver a service, and meet the promises that you’re making to your customers, it helps you scale up further.”

Looking forward With Commusoft 

Company growth while maintaining optimal customer service are non-negotiables for Premier Heating Solutions.

Rather than being stressful and disjointed, Phil and his team were able to seamlessly navigate the leap from 100 to 400 jobs with Commusoft’s support. Phil elaborates,

“That’s 400 jobs managed well, where there aren’t mistakes, or a lot of callbacks. Before, it was 100 jobs, all over the place, with a few mistakes a day…we’re able to make sure any follow up queries are dealt with in the moment, whereas before, all of those things may take two or three days to put together; we were constantly chasing our tail. It’s been a real gear-shift for us to have something like Commusoft.”

This growth has saved the company on hiring costs, thus increasing overall revenue. Phil explains, “although we’ve had to double our workforce, we haven’t had to quadruple it. So the features Commusoft offers us has allowed us to significantly grow and take our business to the next level”.

It wasn’t just the Premier Heating Solutions team who noticed the improvement; their customers reacted with staggering positivity to the change in services since switching to Commusoft. Phil shared that they have received “over 1000 five-star reviews online”. He attributes a portion of this accomplishment to Commusoft saying, “we wouldn’t be able to offer the service as efficiently as we are, or, as effectively as we are” without it.

Phil was excited to tell us that Premier Heating Solutions is “anticipating having very significant growth over the next 12 months. We’re looking to add around a million in revenue to the business. That’s completely doable with the systems and processes that we have in place. And the beauty of Commusoft is that it’s a completely scalable solution”.

Phil Mulvenna
Managing Director

"This software is enabling our day-to-day processes to run smoothly… we’ve been able to leap forward instead of taking one step at a time."

The Register of Tradeswomen, established in March 2021, was founded with the mission of making field service more accessible to, and safe for all tradeswomen. Founder and tradeswoman, Hattie Hasan MBE, sat down with us to discuss the impact of Commusoft’s Customer Journey plan on her rapidly-expanding organisation.

The Register Before Commusoft

Hattie has always valued customer service, and set out to assure that her customers would always have a positive experience. She explains,

“Before I was a tradeswoman and I was just a customer, I was very dissatisfied with the kind of service I was getting, I couldn’t believe that people wouldn’t ring me back. I couldn’t believe that people wouldn’t turn up. I couldn’t believe the mess they left when they came into the house. So when I decided to become a tradeswoman myself, I was determined that that wouldn’t be the experience a customer would have”.

But providing unrivalled service is a difficult task without support from a job management software.

Originally, Hattie and her team used a cluttered and disjointed system, but quickly realised it wouldn’t be enough to support the demands of her growing business. She states, “before we had this amazing Commusoft software, we were working purely off spreadsheets that were massive and really unwieldy”. This kind of record-keeping meant that important information was falling through the cracks, impacting her team, and interrupting the register’s progress.

Since Implementing Commusoft

Quickly, the team shifted to Commusoft, where customer and company records are securely stored and are easily accessible in real-time! Hattie’s team was able to innovate their daily operations, save admin time, and forget about spreadsheets. She details,

“When we were introduced to Commusoft, it saved us hours and hours and hours of time. We’ve been able to get rid of our paper diary, our phone book, everything really paper-wise and it’s just made life so much quicker”.

Commusoft’s reporting tools and real-time updates allow admin teams and engineers to adjust whenever unexpected delays or cancellations occur. With Commusoft, engineers can be kept accountable with job leave questions, such as a requirement to clean up the work site before leaving.

Commusoft’s inclusive reporting features keep the team on track. Hattie elaborates,

“I can just log in, have a look on the reporting pane and I can see how many jobs we’ve got going on at any one time and how many have been completed. And that tells us how well our business is doing. That’s a really brilliant thing”.

With real-time information on job and engineer statuses, what’s going on across your business is never a mystery.

Stress-Free Booking With Intelligent Scheduling

Commusoft’s job scheduling software is a favourite of The Register of Tradeswomen. Hattie told us,

“I love the idea of opening up the map and saying ‘actually, we know that engineer A is quite close to that job, we can probably allocate that job straight away’ and she might go that afternoon, which is really brilliant for the customer. We’ll know immediately which engineer to send the notification to. She taps on that notification and gets all the information she needs”.

Intelligent scheduling, available on our Customer Journey plan, suggests appointments based on your engineer’s unique schedules, skills, and drive times, saving your admin team valuable time and offering unrivalled efficiency.

With Commusoft, Hattie and her admin team can see where all of the register’s engineers are on the live map. “So you go on the map, and you zoom it out, and it’s really exciting to see our engineers here, there, wherever they are. It’s so seamless and it’s in real time. That’s a really brilliant thing. We don’t have to keep on updating it to get what’s happening in real time”. With real-time information incorporated by Commusoft, Hattie and her team can easily stay on top of all their jobs and engineers.

Peace of Mind With Real-Time Engineer Tracking

Through Commusoft, Hattie found a way to protect her tradeswomen when in the field. She elaborates,

“Each tradeswoman has the app, and as she enters the property, she can then inform the customer she’s arrived, which informs us, starting a clock”. Letting customers know that she’s informing the office where she is “immediately acts as a safeguard… if anyone was thinking of being a little bit dodgy, then maybe they would change their mind”.

Protecting employees while they’re in the field is important for any field service business. Hattie’s team always knows exactly where each tradeswoman is, and how long they’ve been at each job site thanks to the field service engineer app, keeping everyone accountable and safe.

The Register of Tradeswomen Continues to Grow With Commusoft

For anyone questioning if Commusoft’s job management software is right for their field service business, take Hattie’s word for it:

“It’s a really easy software to use…If it wasn’t easy, then I wouldn’t do it! I didn’t realise how easy it was going to be until we started using it. And as soon as we started using it, it just got easier and easier”.

The Register of Tradeswomen has big goals: “We want to build a little tradeswomen world where we can propagate our own tradeswomen…we want to build this whole ecosystem that changes the world”. With Commusoft supporting her team 24/7, Hattie can continue to further expand her game-changing organisation and outreach with confidence.

Hattie Hasan MBE
Founder

"It was huge, Commusoft was like going from a tricycle to a Ferrari!"

Carlisle Corp is a restaurant and hospitality company based in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

Owning over 200 Wendy’s franchise locations spread across the southeast United States, Carlisle Corp found they had many IT and system maintenance needs, from cash registers to payment terminals and beyond. Instead of using a third party to handle that maintenance, they decided to bring it in-house. And to do that, they needed the right system.

IT Manager Ashton Holton joined us to discuss his company’s expansion since implementing solutions from Commusoft’s Customer Journey plan in 2022.

He explains, “One of the biggest reasons we went with Commusoft was the tracking”. Whether tracking vehicles on the road, specific jobs, or engineer timesheets, Commusoft ensures Ashton’s team has everything they need.

Confident Onboarding With Commusoft and Engineers

Choosing and implementing a new software package can feel like a roll of the dice. Ashton remembers working with Commusoft’s trainers:

“They held our hand through so much. It was huge, Commusoft was like going from a tricycle to a Ferrari! The trainers went at our pace, so we really enjoyed it. This helped whenever we had to ‘sell’ Commusoft, such as to engineers or other departments. We could say ‘hey look, this is why you’re doing it’.

He expands,

“Some of the crew were very hesitant to Commusoft at first, because it was a new way of learning to do things. But once they came around to it, it made sense and they saw the value added.. So that’s been pretty nice.

Accurate Timesheets

To make sure Carlisle Corp could be as efficient as possible, it was important to them to keep an eye on engineers and any unexpected detours.

Ashton explains,

“The timesheets feature is great mainly because anytime you clock in and out, it’s on your phone. The huge eye-opener for us is the time traveled versus the time worked on a ticket. Engineers hit ‘travel’ and then we have that travel time and can compare that with what the installed vehicle trackers recorded. If they took a crazy detour or something, we’d know.

“Or”, he expands, ”we see they hit ‘arrive’, they work the issue, resolve it, get a signature, and boom, Bob’s your uncle.”

Commusoft’s engineer timesheet software enables teams like Carlisle Corp to accurately monitor their mobile workforce. With this digital solution, engineers can easily log their hours, without involving the office. Furthermore, admins can ensure field crews are accountable and follow company procedures.

Comprehensive Service Scheduling

With so many jobs and franchises to oversee, Ashton and his team need a reliable way to build out engineer diaries. He explains,

“The scheduler and the visual aspect of it is fantastic because I can see at a glance and see that everything looks good. I can see the store numbers. I see the colour-coded calendar of who’s going where and what’s happening. We can see engineer drive times. Utilising this system, we were able to create a more efficient program, allowing our engineers to hit multiple issues throughout the day, instead of travelling, working an issue, and travelling home.”

Optimised scheduling not only benefits his team, but their customers too. Streamlined calendars are most successful when customers are kept up to date. With their engineer tracking portal, Ashton’s team shares live crew ETAs with customers. Ashton explains, “Both our field techs and our customers enjoyed the communication aspect of knowing when that engineer was going to be on-site to address the issue.”

Commusoft enables service dispatchers to build time and cost-effective schedules, this means Carlisle Corp can boost their productivity and profits without additional administrative strain.

Planned Preventative and Reactive Maintenance

Staying ahead of issues is essential. Ashton outlines, “We do preventative audits, where we visit each site every month and take photos of their equipment.”

While preventative care is a keystone, Commusoft enables Ashton’s team to incorporate reactive maintenance too.

He explains,

“Every now and then there will be a engineer on their way to a job, and we’ll find out ‘a certain restaurant is completely down. They can’t accept credit cards. They can’t serve customers right now’. So we’re losing money from this point. We can easily divert the engineer, cancel a job, assign them the new one, and have them fly over with it.”

Real-Time Reporting

Ashton relies on Commusoft’s reporting software to confidently oversee and track the outcomes of the many maintenance jobs logged across their 200+ restaurants.

He states,

“The reporting feature pulls everything together with what was already built in. From the main reporting dashboard, I can see SLA breaches, job statuses, and drill into everything I need to. It gives us a 10,000-foot visibility of the business. And then whenever you look at Commusoft, you know green means good: everything’s fine, we’re doing great.”

Commusoft’s reporting software offers 40+ reports and customisable widgets, empowering managers like Ashton to gain full insights into their business. This way, Carlisle Corp can organise all aspects of daily operations, and expand the business with confidence.

Ashton summarizes,
“I would 100% recommend Commusoft to any company with a field tech program that is looking to resolve more jobs, improve visibility, and increase operations.”

Ashton Holton
IT Manager

"We certainly wouldn’t be able to run our business as we do at the moment without the use of Commusoft. It’d be impossible to do. "

Switched On London provides plumbing, gas & heating, and electrical services to customers in southwest and central London. Company Director David Whyte joined us for a chat over Zoom to tell us about his team’s experience implementing Commusoft’s Customer Journey plan.

Stock Control

As a multi-trades business, Switched On London uses a large variety of different parts. Organising stock, and facilitating the movement of parts through the business is essential for keeping David and his team working efficiently.

David explains,

“We’re vastly cutting down on the repeat buying of stock we already had, and the general rotation of that stock. We can see that we’re spending much less in this department than we were previously. And also, [there’s] much less wastage, which would be an obvious loss”.

With a Stock control system, each part is accounted for, and our software supports multi-location stockroom workflows, like engineer vans, the office, or a dedicated storeroom. Learn more about Commusoft’s stock control software.

Automated Invoicing

Just like other field service businesses, an uncomplicated, and quick invoicing process is important for David and his team. As Customer Journey users, Switched On London utilises automated invoices to both take the pressure off their team, and get paid quicker.

David elaborates,

“We get Commusoft to automatically generate invoice[s]. And in quite a lot of the situations, automatically send it out to our clients as well. [There’s] much less time spent doing repeat tasks…it allows us to contribute much more time to interact with our customers, and [take] more enquiries”.

Automated invoices boost company productivity, meaning office staff can accomplish more each day. Digital invoices also help company reputations, cultivating a professional image, and making it easy for customers to pay for services online. See how Commusoft’s automated invoicing software can help your business get paid faster.

Custom Forms

Custom forms are becoming a foundational part of Switched On London’s daily workflows. Whyte explains, “We’ve created ones which we can use for any damage… rather than just writing it and taking a photo”. This form ensures Whyte’s engineers are gathering better-quality data, directly from the field.

Whyte describes a popular custom form his team utilises: “each client can sign a disclaimer…the flexibility of creating anything you want available for basically the engineer or customer to sign is now available to us”. He also elaborates on the benefits for his business: “It just gives us a lot more avenues of where we can cover our clients, or cover ourselves while completing tasks”.

Custom forms help businesses like Switched On London capture the information that matters to them; directly from the job site. Learn more about Commusoft’s custom forms feature.

Prospering With Commusoft

Whyte and his team are always looking forward. Dedicated to effective communication, and great customer service, Switched On London continues to win more business, strives to provide unrivalled service, and knows they can grow comfortably with Commusoft’s suite of tools.

Whyte concludes with this: “We certainly wouldn’t be able to run our business as we do at the moment without the use of Commusoft. It’d be impossible to do”.

David Whyte
Director

"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

"The contracts functionality has really helped us ensure all required maintenance visits are carried out and that nothing gets missed."

“Rio Pools have used the contracts functionality in Commusoft to schedule in our regular maintenance visits for both our commercial and domestic customers. This has really helped us ensure all required maintenance visits on our customers swimming pools, spas, and the associated equipment are carried out and that nothing gets missed. The contracts function allows us to plan the various different visits required in a certain time frame, our customers contract periods tend to be 6 months to 1 year.”

Ian Mills
Service Team Lead

"I can increase my revenue by 14% by the end of this year. When you look at that in terms of monetary value, it's a no brainer."

Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating, located in Bath, was started in 2016 by Managing Director, Nicola Seviour.

Nicola and her team were initially using a custom-designed job management software that was tailored to their business, however, this proved problematic. “It didn’t work. It wasn’t reliable and that hindered us right from the beginning,” says Nicola. She adds, “We were growing and I knew that we were in real trouble if we didn’t have a piece of software that could support us.” It was time for a change.

Moving to Commusoft

Nicola spent two weeks talking to people, searching the internet, and phoning software companies. She admits, “I wasn’t actually looking at Commusoft at all. But by chance I went on a review site and saw all the really good reviews and thought, ‘Let’s see what this is all about!’”

After speaking to the Commusoft team, Nicola trialed the software and before long, Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating were signed up and starting their training. When asked about the training process, Nicola replied, “It was amazing. I think your client services team are a real asset to the company. They were incredibly patient and their delivery was incredible.”

But it wasn’t just the training that got Nicola and her team off to a good start. Commusoft’s interface and user-friendly design helped too. “The thing that really grabs me with Commusoft is how it looks – it’s all very user-friendly and that helped me feel more confident on it right from day one,” explains Nicola.

Commusoft’s emphasis on after-sales service has also been critical. “I don’t feel that Commusoft has just sold me this software and told me to get on with it,” says Nicola, “I feel like you’ve backed us up and continue to support us as we grow. And that’s really important.”

Intelligent Scheduling and a 14% Increase in Revenue

From the start, Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating chose to implement Commusoft’s intelligent scheduling, which can radically improve job booking with optimised appointment suggestions.

For Nicola’s team, this has been one of the most important features, as she makes clear, “I love it –  I think for us and for me, it’s one of the best features”. Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating now use it 99% of the time when booking jobs into the diary. On the challenges of manual scheduling, Nicola elaborates, “If my engineers are driving all over Bath for their jobs, they’re going to cost me more petrol and they won’t be as efficient as I’d like.”

Nicola knew that to grow her business and revenue, she needed her engineers to fit in an extra job per day, which required a more efficient solution, “That means not travelling around so much… and it means I need an intelligent piece of software”. She explains further:

“As bright as my team are, it’s very difficult to manually find an appointment in the same area when the customer’s on the phone. So the intelligent scheduling has been amazing. It’s not disappointed us and it’s already made a difference.”

But just how much impact is intelligent scheduling having for Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating? Nicola’s done the maths on what one extra job per engineer, per day means for her business:

“I can increase my revenue by 14% by the end of this year. And that’s huge – that’s massive. When you look at that in terms of monetary value, it’s a no brainer. That far outweighs the cost of putting Commusoft on our machines.”

If you want to calculate your own possible return on investment for intelligent scheduling, try our ROI calculator.

Easier Scheduling, With Less Room for Error

Whilst intelligent scheduling is helping Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating improve revenue through greater efficiency, what role do supporting features like engineer skills and shift patterns play?

“They stop user errors… we all make mistakes, don’t we?”, admits Nicola. She explains how when a customer requires an oil service, the scheduling tool will only show the engineers who are qualified to complete that type of work, reducing the chance of sending the wrong person for the job.

Equally as important are shift patterns. As Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating’s engineers start at different times of the day, Commusoft won’t suggest appointments outside of those shift patterns. Nicola thinks this will be increasingly vital in the future:

“As we add more office staff and more engineers, it’ll be difficult to keep track of. If there’s a piece of software that’s just guiding us along the right track – that’s what we need. And that’s exactly what Commusoft offers us.”

It’s not only Nicola who is pleased with the improvements that intelligent scheduling is bringing to her company. The engineers themselves are also benefiting from the optimised proximity and travel distance between their jobs. Nicola recalls how an engineer rang her shortly after implementing this new feature:

“He called me up and said, ‘Today I’ve had a brilliant day! I didn’t feel stressed… didn’t feel like I had to race to the other side of town’, and he felt it worked much better for him. When I looked at it, I could see he’d done much more work that day than any other.”

Customer Satisfaction and Improving Communication

From the outset, Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating wanted to offer a service that’s different to other companies. Nicola explains, “We answer our phones until 10 in the evening and we always turn up… customer satisfaction is an absolute priority.”

Commusoft enabled the company to double-down on their commitment to customer satisfaction through tools like the online booking form, which allows work to be requested through the company website. Nicola details why this is essential for them:

“We live in a world where everything needs to be done online. Customers can go to the front page of our website now and book an appointment at their leisure, any time of the day. We’ve found that it’s really popular.”

It’s not only job bookings that can be done online, but accepting quotes and paying invoices too. When discussing the estimate portal, Nicola remarks on its simplicity, “The customer gets an email saying you need this part, it’s going to cost this much money, and all they need to do is click to accept the job.” Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating always back up their quotations with an automated SMS message too, “It’s just polite – and we’re making sure that they’ve got the information they need in a timely manner.”

The whole process is quick and easy for the customer, thinks Nicola, “It’s really to do with the speed and the fact that they can do it online –  from their phone, even when they’re on the bus going to work. It’s all done seamlessly.” As a result, Nicola says, “We get more sales. It’s that simple.”

A Wide Breadth of Benefits

Implementing Commusoft has led to a variety of other benefits for Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating too.

Saving Admin Time for Everyone

“Commusoft on a whole saves us a tonne of admin time.” Nicola remembers how engineers used to bring handwritten notes into the office for staff to decipher and type up into the software. “We don’t do that anymore. Everything is much speedier.”

Faster Invoicing and Improved Cash Flow

With Commusoft, Nicola’s team can get invoices out much quicker. “Before, it would take 4 to 5 days to send out an invoice. Now we get an invoice out to a customer within 10 minutes of finishing the job, which means we are much more likely to get paid quicker.”

It’s Easier to Train New Staff

Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating are a growing company, recently hiring a new pair of hands in the office. Nicola explains how Commusoft has made that process smoother: “When we take somebody new on, we need a piece of software for them to be able to pick up and run with. Jane, our latest hire, is already picking it up quickly.”

Engineers Are Happier

It’s expected when adopting any new system that there will likely be some scepticism. Nicola tells us how this was initially the case for her engineers, “They didn’t want to use it to start with. After 48 hours of launching though, I was getting messages saying, ‘This is brilliant. This is saving so much time!’”. It was apparent that the Commusoft mobile workflow was proving better for the team. Nicola adds that, “Previously, they would leave the customer’s house, sit in the van, and do their paperwork. Now, when they leave the customer’s house, both the job and paperwork is finished.”

Quickly Import Supplier Invoices

“I was manually entering our supplier invoices the long way round… these great big lists my supplier would send over.” Commusoft solved that issue with the automated supplier invoice import, allowing users to drag and drop them into the system in seconds, as a result Nicola says, “We haven’t looked back – we use it all the time.”

Future Growth With Commusoft

Looking to the future, Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating are planning to expand their geographical service area. As Nicola summarises, “We’ve got a model now that works and Commusoft supported that really well – all we need to do is expand into new areas and take on additional engineers.”

On top of that, Commusoft still has further functionality to offer and new features in development, which Nicola is eager to try. “I want to start using other tools you’ve got, like the stock control software. Plus, any new features that you introduce, I will be right there as your guinea pigs to try them out!”, laughs Nicola.

When asked for any last remarks, Nicola concludes, “Overall, I am really thrilled with Commusoft and I know it’s going to make a big difference to the business.” With a predicted 14% increase in annual revenue from intelligent scheduling alone, we couldn’t be happier about the clear and positive impact Commusoft is bringing to Ace Energy Plumbing and Heating.

Nicola Seviour
Managing Director

"A service invoice used to take 5 to 10 minutes, now it literally takes 30 seconds. We get invoices out much quicker and get paid faster too."

A & S Kingdon Ltd have been in business for 40 years, proudly serving the communities around Sidmouth, Devon. The company has grown significantly from when Alan and Sue Kingdon first started out, now employing a further 9 engineers and 3 admin staff. However, whilst experts in their respective field, effectively managing the growing number of engineers, customers, and invoices had become challenging. A friendly recommendation and piece of advice from a fellow plumbing company would change everything.

Lisa, who manages the office, explained how they found out about Commusoft at a Worcester Bosch training course, “We got chatting to a really friendly company there about the challenges in our business – and they said ‘Oh you need Commusoft!’ Somebody else in the room then turned around and added, ‘Yeah, it’s brilliant!’”

“It was really nice to get a personal recommendation, knowing that there’s nothing in it for them.” However, the team weren’t ready to make the jump, worried about how much time it may take to move onto such a system. Lisa will later tell us how wrong she was about that concern: “It was easy to be honest!”

Before Commusoft

At this stage A & S Kingdon Ltd weren’t using a job management software at all. Lisa refers to their process for handling jobs and their schedule as being in many different places, with “lots and lots of paper”.

“I tended to use an online calendar, but my boss already had a paper diary established that she preferred, so we used both. We’d give [engineers] printed job sheets, but sometimes they would just use scraps of paper to track what they were doing”.

The challenges that A & S Kingdon Ltd were having were very similar to other field service businesses their size:

• Losing papers and documents and having no backup records. “You lose that piece of paper and you knew nothing”.
• Wasting time with inefficient processes was also a problem. “We used to have service reminders in an Excel sheet, gas safety checks in another, and we had some on paper – we had it 3 times for one thing – it was really bad!
• Finally, over-reliance on individual staff. “We also had the issue that only the person who was dealing with a job would know what was going on with it.” This was detrimental to working as a team and for bringing on new staff members. “My boss, Sue, could look at the paper diary and know exactly what was what, but we couldn’t understand it”.

Before coming aboard with Commusoft, A & S Kingdon Ltd had hired a new member of the office team who had used a job management system in the past. Lisa elaborates, “She really gave us the push, telling us we’ve got to do it now. ‘You’re doing things five times for one task – you can’t go on like this!’ she said – and she was right”.

They took the advice and decided to make the move. “I’d heard many good things [about Commusoft] and I’d read some reviews online, so I gave their team a call”.

6 Months After Implementing Commusoft

Lisa describes the impact Commusoft has had on the business: “It’s now so much better, everything is in one place. It saves so much time and everyone can see what’s going on. It’s even reduced some of our bills for things like stationery, stamps, and certificate pads. But really it’s mainly about time!”

A & S Kingdon Ltd estimate that by reducing paperwork they’ve managed to save 80% of their admin time per week, allowing them to become a more effective team. “We are so much more efficient with our time”, explains Lisa. “The amount of hours we used to spend just putting job sheets out on the old system!” Thanks to mobile notifications and real-time job status updates, office staff can simply drop a job in a gap in the engineer’s diary without having to call them first to confirm. Lisa adds, “I know if they’ve accepted a job and can see when they’ve arrived too. Once I add the job I don’t think much more about it – I kind of take it for granted now!”

Invoicing Customers Faster Than Ever

The business has also saved significant time on invoicing, “One service invoice used to take 5 to 10 minutes, but now it literally takes 30 seconds. It’s so quick and easy with the Sage accounting integration”. This in turn has given the business better cash flow, says Lisa: “We get invoices out much quicker to customers and get paid faster too – sometimes paying the same day”.

Better Tools for Engineers

Office admin isn’t the only area that has radically improved, engineers now have access to everything they need through the mobile app too. Despite the engineers being a little apprehensive, Lisa thinks it went down really well with them. “It’s brilliant that they can see what’s in their diary and it gives them a little more control”. They’ve also found success with the digital certificates and automatic timesheets (an engineer favourite): “They all use the certificates really well. Plus they told me they no longer have the dread of doing their timesheets at the end of the week, or on a Sunday night, if they haven’t done it when they should have”.

Intuitive and Straightforward Implementation

Lisa too had been nervous about the change to start with, but Commusoft’s training team made getting up to speed with the system simple. “It was easy to be honest, Nisha, who did our training was fantastic. I definitely thought it would be harder and take more time than it did”. The team also found Commusoft intuitive and straightforward, “It basically teaches you itself, it’s that obvious how it works. I was scared I’d have to hold my team’s hand the whole time, but I haven’t had to at all!”

Commusoft has also allowed staff more flexibility in how they spend their time and given the business chance to evolve. Lisa’s boss, Sue, who used to manage the paper diary, now has time to chase up unpaid bills and has even been able to cut back on her hours. Lisa tells us this wouldn’t have been possible without Commusoft: “I wouldn’t be able to deal with the plumbers and take over Sue’s responsibilities without the software”.

The team benefits go further than that too, with other staff members now able to manage the office when required. “If I’m ill, the team can take over and know exactly what’s going on,” says Lisa, “they basically did my job for the day!”. With an intuitive all-in-one system it means hiring and training new staff is easier too. “I could actually teach someone my job now, which wasn’t really possible before. It gives us much more flexibility in how we manage the business and the team”.

We’ve seen how Commusoft has saved A & S Kingdon Ltd countless admin hours, improved engineer communications, and given the team more flexibility, but how has it impacted their customers?

A More Professional Customer Experience

Lisa is certain, “It’s definitely better for the customer”. For example, “they love getting their invoices by email, which I didn’t think they would”. The same goes for digital certificates, “They love that they get their certificates a lot quicker now”. Ultimately, for the customer relationship, it comes down to professionalism. “When they call up, you know exactly what’s been going on in their work history”. Lisa continues, “From the customer’s point of view we look like a more modern business, moving with the times, which customers are increasingly wanting now”.

Where do A & S Kingdon Ltd go from here? With regular updates to the system and a readily available support team, Commusoft continuously has more to offer. As Lisa says, “There’re still features we haven’t started using yet, so there’s always more we can do and improve upon in the future”.

Lisa Southwell
Office Manager

"As we’ve grown as a business, Commusoft has always been one stage ahead and we’ve grown into the functionality that Commusoft provided."

We caught up with Will from WPJ Heating to discuss their experiences with Commusoft.

“We started off with just two of us really, but we’re now 23-25 people. We’ve been using Commusoft for probably about 6 years [update: as of 2024, this is now 14 years]. Commusoft helped with all the admin and it became an easy process to handle. Commusoft allows us to give our customer a more complete service. Whereas before you’re limited with the amount of information you can convert on an invoice or a phone call, now we are able to attach files, jobs notes, and additional works. The engineers are getting on well with the smartphones, and this allows us to evolve as a company to give a better customer service.”

The central feature that we use is the job scheduling software. We have 7 people in the office, who are on the diary all the time, scheduling engineers and keeping customers in touch. Once that has been completed, then the information is uploaded on Commusoft, we process it on there and we take it through to the invoice stage.”

“Commusoft is so useful that we couldn’t function as a company without it. There is a lot of stuff that we’ve done for a number of years which Commusoft picked up on, have processed and are now bringing in-house so it will be part of the  Commusoft package that’s great because it allows us to keep everything under one roof or one platform. As we’ve grown as a business, Commusoft has always been one stage ahead and we’ve grown into the functionality that Commusoft provided.

Commusoft is brilliant because it’s a one-stop shop, everything is there – you can run your business on this platform.”

Ready to explore our job management software for yourself?

Will
Co-owner

"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

"I can honestly say going forward with technology, it's so much easier, so much more organised, and just a lot more professional."

Lorna Taylor, who manages the office for Westminster Heating and Plumbing Ltd, joined us to discuss the impact Commusoft has had on their business and how it helped their owner take a well-deserved step back from day-to-day operations.

Westminster Heating and Plumbing Ltd is a family-run business based in London. For the past twenty years they’ve offered a trustworthy, friendly, and professional service to thousands of customers. Since 2017, Westminster Heating and Plumbing have used Commusoft to streamline their office work and help manage their small team of engineers on the road.

How Has Tracking Jobs Changed?

“My dad would have it down on a bit of paper with just the customer’s name. But the engineers used to phone into the office, and quite often, especially if it was just me here in the office, I’d be putting them on hold to try and find a job ticket that fell down the back of the desk. Then I’d have a customer phone in at the same time – so I was always having to juggle between giving the engineer the details over the phone and dealing with customers calling in.”

“Now it’s a lot easier. Straight away I’m able to search the customer database, just from a few key points they’ve said. From that I can see who previously was there on the job and what they’d done. That procedure is a lot smoother than it was previously.”

Discover Commusoft’s customer database software.

What About Service Reminders?

“Prior to Commusoft, we used to have a service reminder system. It was a folder of customer’s records – as and when they’d had their service done – but there was always problems with it. Some customers used to bring their service forward, some would miss a service, so we needed something a bit more organised for our reminders, which is why we originally came to Commusoft.

“Every time you go in to do their boiler service or the gas safety inspection, you have to clear the previous one on and it automatically triggers the next year’s. I will go on there on a weekly basis rather than monthly, and send them out as and when they’re due. It’s all done with one-click and it’s so much easier for the customers.”

Learn more about Commusoft’s service reminder software.

How Has Scheduling Improved?

“In London, we only cover a 10 mile radius so it’s not far for engineers to travel, but the traffic to get from one part to the next part was always quite difficult to tell which job was located near to the next job.”

“Now all of the engineers are all on one page. So I can see exactly who’s got what workload compared to the other person’s workload. I can drop the job onto one of the engineers and double check on the map to see where it’s pin dropped and see whether that engineer is closest to that job or if I should send another engineer.”

Discover Commusoft’s job scheduling software.

How Was the On-Boarding Process?

“When we first took on Commusoft it was very apprehensive for us, especially for my dad. He was very dubious about having the system in place – and as were we, actually. But Nisha, who did our training and was the first one with contact to us, was fantastic at talking us through step by step, how to do that, how to set the different addresses up and how to link customers, which was brilliant.”

Has Your Dad Looked Back Since Moving to Commusoft?

“He is converted! Although he doesn’t really get too much involved with the office now, but I’ll show him the dashboard and what’s going on, this is how many jobs we’ve done. The fact that the job tickets are there on the board, then he’s not worrying about what jobs need to be done because it’s all on the system now – and it’s all in place. So it has enabled him to take that step back that he wanted to do.”

“We’ve been going for 20 years now – and only in the last three years we’ve been Commusoft customers – and I can honestly say going forward with technology, it’s so much easier, so much more organised, and just a lot more professional.”

Join Westminster Heating and Plumbing and dive into our job management software!

Lorna Taylor
Office Manager

"For the lifespan of a repair, from creation to completion, Commusoft’s job management process is unparalleled."

Heavenly Cool Appliance Repair, founded in 2012, serves residential customers in the Parkville, Maryland area. Business Manager Aron Francis caught up with us to discuss Commusoft’s impact on Heavenly Cool’s operations since implementing our Customer Journey plan in 2021.

Before Commusoft

Aron walked us through Heavenly Cool’s paper-based approach to dispatching before Commusoft,

“Before Commusoft, we were doing everything with pen and paper. We would use carbon copies, and the office would fill out a paper for each customer. And then, technicians would come to the office every morning and get their route. Then they would return and drop off the carbon copies in the evening. And it was a process; we’ve been doing that for about eight, nine years.”

He adds, “Then I was like, wait, it’s 2021, and we have to make the business more efficient!” Aron knew that breaking bad habits was going to be difficult, but necessary.

He describes searching for a digital solution, “I was researching management software for a while, and one of the main things that caught my attention was the optimised scheduling, and the parts integration Commusoft has. It’s also remote, and the software runs efficiently.”

Optimised Dispatching With Commusoft

Organising daily operations with Commusoft’s job scheduling software allows Heavenly Cool to efficiently assign jobs. He explains, 

“Commusoft allows us to track technicians’ productivity and greater visibility. Our technicians can run eight to 10 calls daily to maximise efficiency if the scheduled locations are close enough. And now, if a customer cancels, we can easily add a new repair to the technician schedule.”

With increased control over scheduling, Heavenly Cool maximises the profitability of their services. Every trades business needs the flexibility to pivot when last-minute cancellations and emergency call-outs come up. Aron details, “When we got the GPS tracker, it helped us track the technicians’ location in case we had a call in a specific area.”

Commusoft’s Real-Time Vehicle Tracking system ensures admins have access to live engineer locations. Your entire team can confidently handle any situation when circumstances change. 

Commusoft’s Parts Management

Seamless communication and data sharing across the Commusoft platform is extremely valuable for Heavenly Cool. For example, the Heavenly Cool Appliance Repair team can efficiently straddle their parts management and dispatching workflows. Aron expands, 

“Commusoft allows us to expand our service area. We dispatch technicians directly from their houses to the first call, or if they have to pick up parts, they can go to the parts warehouse. They don’t have to come to the office to start their day.”

Our parts management software not only ensures you’re getting the most from your inventory budget, it also allows more freedom to streamline daily schedules. Aron adds, “Commusoft allows us faster repair completion times because we can keep track of parts.” 

When parts are organised, your schedules can be too! Outfitting engineers with the parts they need ensures less trips to the storeroom. Not only does this streamline routing and scheduling, it also makes it possible to add and tackle more appointments per day. 

Staying Efficient With Commusoft

Reinventing an entire business with a system like Commusoft is scary for any business director. But the Commusoft training and support teams ensured Heavenly Cool had all the product knowledge they needed to be successful. 

Aron states, “The mandatory training helped immensely because it explained so much to me. And then I taught everybody at the office.” He adds, “I can call Support if there are some parts of the system I don’t know; they’re responsive in everything.” 

Thanks to an organised customer database software, Heavenly Cool’s admins always have access to the information they need. And with the training he received, Aron can pass on knowledge with confidence. Aron explains, 

“I tell people at the office that Commusoft is like a virtual file cabinet because when calls are completed, they’re in a specific part of Commusoft. It’s there until you go in and you invoice it, and it allows some flexibility. You can go back a week, a month, or two months and see everything.”

From schedules, to customer data, reporting, and more, Heavenly Cool was given all the tools they need to transform admin workflows.

And, as they continue to leverage the full capabilities of the Commusoft platform, Aron is confident the Heavenly Cool team can continue to scale their growth! 

Aron Francis
Business Manager

"Using Commusoft helps us give customers service they wouldn't expect from your everyday maintenance company."

Front and centre on the Trio Maintenance Ltd website is this mission statement:

Three like minded friends had an idea to enter the London Property market and be different. Different in our approach, in our transparency and tenacious in our methods when contracting, buying, developing and maintain property in the real estate hub that is London.

‘The “difference” is about the way we service our clients and the way we run our business,’ explains co-founder Hugo Fonseca. ‘We have that never-say-no attitude to all our clients. So whenever they call us, it’s always a yes— and then we just resolve it on our end, and everyone in the team really puts in an effort to service them.’

In 2017, Trio was looking for a field service management system that would help them make that difference. The company was using an American job management solution that didn’t offer the ability to add subcontractors at a daily rate. Since Trio have a mix of 10 employees and subcontractors, and were planning to grow, that solution was going to get expensive… fast.

Then there was the lack of software updates. ‘We were with them for nearly three years and not much changed in that time,’ says Hugo. So when their annual contract was up, Trio decided to go looking for a new solution.

The Commusoft Difference In… Features and Integrations

Trio considered Commusoft because it allows businesses to add subcontractors at a daily rate – but passed it up because they were looking for a solution with maps. As they kept looking, though, they just couldn’t find job management software that fit their criteria.

A year passed, and Trio Maintenance Ltd was no closer to a solution. When Hugo finally circled back to take another look at Commusoft, the solution now not only had maps, but other exciting new features in the works as well.

Trio signed on in April 2018 and have been seeing the difference ever since.

‘Being different is definitely being more technologically advanced, and using Commusoft helps us give customers service they wouldn’t expect from your everyday maintenance company,’ says Hugo. ‘We definitely use Commusoft to try and make us stand out a bit.’

Trio Maintenance Ltd most recently started using Commusoft’s Outlook integration, which lets customer and job information appear directly within Outlook. Hugo’s excited to see how the new integration will help the company boost their productivity even more.

The Commusoft Difference In… Customer Service

Not long after joining, Hugo submitted a support ticket to the Commusoft help desk. He was trying to calculate the profit margin on jobs completed that month, and needed a profit report based on completion date rather than job date. ‘Completion date is more important for a profit report, as we want to recognise the profit when the job is complete,’ Hugo explains.

At the time, the Commusoft solution didn’t have the ability to filter the report this way. Two weeks later, it did. The client services team wrote back to let Hugo know that Commusoft had added that capability to reports based on his request.

‘I was pleasantly surprised,’ Hugo recalls. ‘I asked the guys, and within a couple of weeks they said, “We can do that”… and they did. Now I’m using it as a way to communicate with the staff what commission they’ll be getting that month, so everybody’s happy.’

When your company offers exceptional service to customers, you expect the businesses you deal with to offer the same to you. ‘But it’s not always the case, and it’s sometimes frustrating,’ laughs Hugo. ‘At Commusoft, everyone’s been really helpful. Nine out of ten times the support team come back within 24 hours. They’re fantastically quick at getting back to us and getting us information.’

The Commusoft Difference In… Responsiveness

A job management solution can impact every part of a field service business – so frequent updates are crucial for keeping the business with the times. After all, no one wants to be stuck with software that’s stuck in the past! ‘There’s always stuff being released, which I think is really, really good… and very well-communicated stuff as well,’ says Hugo.

Commusoft reaches out to clients frequently to stay in touch, gather feedback, and find out what new functionalities would help their businesses thrive. Hugo, for example, has regular meetings with Commusoft representatives to find out what’s coming up next and how it can benefit Trio Maintenance Ltd.

The Commusoft Difference In… Efficiency

Hugo reports that Commusoft has been a real time-saver for Trio, especially the QuickBooks integration. ‘That’s probably saving us a couple of hours a week, at least, on invoicing,’ he says.

‘Commusoft has also helped with the reporting side of things… it’s much stronger than what we used to have [with the previous field service management system],’ Hugo adds. Thanks to Commusoft’s reporting capabilities, Trio Maintenance Ltd is also able to create more accurate monthly reports – another major time-saver, and one that eliminates the hassle of having to fix incorrect reports as well.

Hugo Fonseca
Co-Founder

"Commusoft gives customers a quicker response time and enables us to not feel so stressed whilst giving that response."

You’d expect that a field service business would want a job management system to, well, get more jobs. But that’s not what it  was about for Heating South West Limited. This 25-employee gas and plumbing company in Liskeard, Cornwall, was instead looking to remove stress from their customers and their staff—and they turned to Commusoft to help.

Gun Shy After a Sub-Par Software Experience

Heating South West manufactures and services its own range cookers, sells wood-burning stoves, and offers many other services. Part of the business’s M.O. is to provide service in a way that makes their customers feel confident and relaxed; in fact, the tagline on one page of Heating South West’s website is “Choice, Customer Care & A Relaxed Atmosphere”.

The business does two to four jobs per engineer per day. “We cover pretty much the whole of the UK, which involves a lot of travelling and a lot of time”, says Brian Hardy, son of the company’s owner. “We’re not trying to increase the amount of jobs that we can do, we’re just trying to make ourselves more efficient with it”. Brian laughs that from 1975 until now, Heating South West’s way of doing organising and invoicing was “Hard work and a lot of paperwork”. He wanted to implement field service management software, but his father, the company founder, had a bad experience years ago with a software system that overpromised and underdelivered.

So Brian carefully examined several different field service management solutions before finally choosing Commusoft. “It was partially due to a recommendation from an electrician friend of mine, but mostly it was just down to homework and comparing the different types of software”, he says. “Commusoft seemed the most user-friendly, and I also liked the fact that it appeared to be constantly updating, constantly evolving, with more features always being added. That put my mind at rest that Commusoft was ahead of the game”.

The Customer Journey: Before and After Commusoft

Let’s get back to that ideal of the relaxed, confident customer. Heating South West has been testing Commusoft among a group of several employees, and experiencing how the software is helping to smooth out every part of the customer journey—from the first call to the final invoice.

Scheduling Service: Before

In the past, when a customer phoned to schedule a job the service coordinator, Steve, booked it into a paper diary and decided which engineer would be the best to send based on their experience. He then wrote out a job sheet and gave it to the engineer, who headed out to the job. At the end of the week, Steve received a load of job sheets that he then had to process through the company’s accounting system.

Scheduling Service: After

With Commusoft’s job scheduling software, Steve will be able to easily send the closest engineer who also has the right experience for the job. The GPS feature also lets Steve know where the engineers are at any time. “Having the software say, ‘They’re at this job’, or ‘They’ve finished this job and now are on the way to the next job’ gives you an understanding as to how well they’re doing during the day”, says Brian.

These Commusoft features help the customer as well: ‘The situation we have at the minute is that, being countrywide, we could be doing a batch of jobs and then a new job will come in and you’ll think, ‘I was up there only two days ago!'”, Brian says. “Whereas if we’d known at the time we could’ve planned it better. Commusoft gives customers a quicker response time and enables us to not feel so stressed whilst giving that response”.

Handling Schedule Changes: Before

When an emergency job pops up or a customer cancels a service appointment, it can throw a schedule into chaos—leading to missed appointments and late engineers. “We’ve had paper diaries up until now”, explains Brian. “If we had to change something, which happens quite frequently, then we have to either tippex it out or put sticky notes over it and then rebook it, which is confusing and very, very time-consuming”. The more time office staff spend on managing the diary, the less time they have to focus on their customers.

Handling Schedule Changes: After

Commusoft makes it easy to make changes to the schedule. “Being able to just drag and drop diary events in Commusoft is far, far easier,” says Brian. “It will help us to put jobs in further ahead and plan them better”. Not only that, but Commusoft syncs the schedule to the diary on field service engineers’ app, so the engineers know immediately when there’s been a change. Right now Heating South West is using a ‘prehistoric’ accounting system that’s embedded in the company’s accounting structure.

The company also use Commusoft’s Sage accounting integration. “We were just doing accounting in the accounting package itself”, Brian explains. “Then we manually exported all the details into our current accounting package. Nisha [Commusoft’s Training Manager] came up with a solution for the easiest way to do that”.

Sending the Invoice: After

Once Heating South West moved away from its homegrown system to one of Commusoft’s accounting integrations, when they raise an invoice Commusoft will now automatically send the information to the accounting package. The system will automatically generate invoices, payments, and credit notes. Sending invoices immediately after a job means Heating South West will get paid faster—and, believe it or not, customers want to receive invoices quickly and not have to chase them down, meaning this feature will boost Heating South West’s customer satisfaction rates as well. Discover more about Commusoft’s invoicing software.

Service Reminders: Before

Reminding customers of when their equipment or appliances are due for a service is a great way to increase customer happiness and generate recurring revenue. However, it can also be a time-consuming, laborious project. “Steve basically had a book, where every four weeks he’d log in the jobs that we’d done”, explains Brian. “Then that went into a book that’s a year behind, and he’d look at that book a year down the line and say, ‘we did a service for these customers last year, so we’ll send them a reminder letter.”‘ Finally, Steve would personalise a template letter and send it via post.

Service Reminders: After

Commusoft’s service reminder software takes all the stress off of Heating South West’s service coordinator and other staff. Two weeks before the service is due, Commusoft automatically sends service reminders to customers via SMS or email. Each day when Steve logs in, he gets a notification telling him how many reminders were sent. For print reminders, there are PDF letters attached to the notification; which Steve can print and send manually.

While Commusoft’s features are helping to perfect the customer journey, we can’t ignore how the solution also helps everyone in the business, from the office staff to the owners. Says Brian, “We’re trying to keep the stress down off the engineers as well as our service coordinator and, ultimately, us. Yes, we’re trying to give a better service, but we’re also trying to make sure that, as an employer, our employees are happy”. Commusoft’s service reminder, accounting, and scheduling features are helping Heating South West’s customers—and their employees—enjoy streamlined, stress-free jobs.

Feel like you’re facing the same problems Brian had? Book a call with our team find out how Commusoft’s job management software can help you go paperless and optimise all your day-to-day processes.

Brian Hardy

"Commusoft is scalable, so we can add engineers on at any time... It's a nice system and it will work nicely with how we're growing."

In early 2017, MPHG was using a system that owner John McGregor describes as “inflexible”. “You couldn’t customise things like certificates, and you couldn’t edit reports,” he recalls. “Sometimes you’d make a typo in a report and you couldn’t just clean it up before you sent it to the client. It was cheap, but you get what you pay for.”

An electrician friend tipped John off about Commusoft, saying it was so much more agile than John’s current system that he should give it a try. John signed on in May 2017, and quickly boosted his business’s efficiency and customer relations with Commusoft’s service reminders, custom forms, on-the-way text updates, and other features.

Tracking Success

A year later, John was one of the first to try out Commusoft’s real-time vehicle tracking system, a comprehensive solution that links engineer tracking data with the business’s job scheduling tools, and job information.

At first, John had a trial account to help Commusoft perfect the feature. When asked why he agreed to do the trial knowing he wouldn’t receive any of the GPS data, he replies, “I like Commusoft—they’re quite a dynamic bunch, and I like forward-thinking people.”

The GPS device is a simple plug-and-play module, meaning it was easy to install and set up: John spent half an hour on the phone with a Commusoft rep and was ready to go. Once the trial was over and the real-time vehicle tracking system was released, John had a tracker installed in his second van and started using it for real, benefiting from the safe driving data, driver leaderboard, and diary overlay.

Of course, one can buy stand-alone trackers that compile driving data.

“My brother-in-law, who’s also a plumber, has trackers on his vehicles but they don’t link into the field service management software. Being able to overlay the Commusoft tracker with the diary view is very effective, because then we can see exactly what’s happening, where and when.”

For example, John can see the entire timeline of a project, from when he’s accepting and creating a job through the actual journey to the job location.

Tracking Safety

Commusoft’s real-time vehicle tracking system integrates a leaderboard that shows how safely engineers are driving—the lower the number, the better the score. John and his team at MPHG once saw the driving indicators “go into the red”, and after talking with his plumber they’ve both been working to improve their scores.

“It makes you more conscious. It makes you think, ‘Am I doing the speed limit? Am I cornering too quick? Am I braking too hard?’ We’re now in the low 30s in our other vehicle, which is good, and got a 12 last week on mine.”

When asked what he likes best about the leaderboard, John laughs, “That I’m at the top of it.” He adds, “We’ll probably end up emailing the whole leaderboard to the operatives on a weekly basis. It could breed a good competitive spirit within the company.”

Tracking Savings

Only 30 days in, MPHG is already seeing a see a significant reduction in driving habits that might contribute to maintenance issues. John says, “The knock-on of that will be that we will greatly reduce our maintenance costs on the vehicle due to wear and tear.” It’s not only maintenance costs that will be reduced—the risk of cancelled jobs due to broken down service vans will also decrease.

MGPH also expects to save on insurance:

“I’ve already spoken to our insurance broker and told them that we have this in place, and asked if we can get a discount on our vehicle insurance because we have third-party evidence of our driving habits. If we can then go to our insurers after a year of data and say, ‘Here’s our vehicle, there’s the driver, there’s the score’—and then reduce the premiums accordingly—that would significantly reduce our insurance costs.”

Tracking the Future

John is planning to add another two or three engineers in the next couple of years. The real-time vehicle tracking system will help him keep tabs on his growing workforce, and John also credits Commusoft with helping him provide the professional customer service that’s making this growth possible.

“Commusoft is scalable, so we can add engineers on at any time and we’re up and running fairly quickly,” John says. “It’s a nice system and it will work nicely with how we’re growing.”

Interested in learning how Commusoft’s Real-Time Vehicle Tracking System can help your business grow?

John McGregor
Owner

"As a growing business, Commusoft gives us the confidence to grow, it works great for us and I am sure it will work for lots of other companies."

“Primary to moving to Commusoft it was a pretty laborious process to make an appointment, because we were duplicating information across about two or three possibly even four platforms now it’s just put in to one.

Everything that we do within the business, every job we go to are within the diary and everything that we need to know comes through or from the diary. And so without it we will be pretty stuck. It’s not just simply a diary, it’s a very feature rich and it’s intuitive to use, it’s very flexible, easy to move jobs around, changing jobs, adding new diary events into existing jobs and it’s easy to find new slots when you need to find them.”

Explore Commusoft’s job scheduling software.

“One great feature about the diary is if you have a customer phone call and they want a boiler service for example, it immediately brings up the date of the service, it remembers it and the following year you can send a notification to your customer to tell them their boiler service is due again. Customers really like that.

I feel the diary feature has given us more time to focus on other things. We’re able to plan better because you can go and see a customer and you can go on the diary and see what’s been going on in the past. You can select that customer through the diary, find the history, and say ‘I think I’m going to take this part with me because that went wrong last time’, whatever it might be.

For those considering Commusoft, a couple of things I will say, firstly it’s a very intuitive program, secondly there is a lot of video help – video tutorials you can use. And another thing I really like about the company is that they are incredibly approachable. As a growing business, Commusoft gives us the confidence to grow, it works great for us and I am sure it will work for lots of other companies.”

Tim Mycroft
Owner

"Commusoft is constantly updating, constantly evolving, with more features always being added. That put my mind at rest."

Otter South West Limited’s plumbing and heating contractors started as an in-store-based business, but have started offering service maintenance as well. The company has a local authority contract for service and maintenance, and also works with estate agents, letting agents, and private customers.

Knowing they’d need a system to help them streamline jobs, Otter South West Limited’s directors gathered information on providers from the internet, called four of them, narrowed it down to two—and chose Commusoft.

“We believed it was going to be the more user-friendly package,’ says Martin Conlon, Director of Otter Services.

“It was visually more understandable—it’s easy enough for non-IT specialists to actually get their head around it and build as they go along—and the mobile package with it was very quick and efficient for the guys to use out in the field.”

Discover Commusoft’s field service engineer app.

Optimising the Day-To-Day

Before Commusoft, Otter South West Limited was using a paper-based system and an Apple diary for managing jobs. It was fine when the company was smaller, but it did create a lot of extra paper—and a lot of extra work.

“We had to produce the job sheet, transport the job sheet manually to somebody who’s then fitting out a job and transporting it back to you manually, put that through the invoicing process, and load it onto the database so people know it’s been done and so it alerts you the next year. Whereas what we have with Commusoft is a single process: Once you put it on the system, everything just follows through.”

Reaching Beyond the Store

Otter South West Limited has a store where engineers can draw most parts from. It’s an easy process, but one that won’t support the company as it grows. So the directors are busy building a spreadsheet of parts they can upload to Commusoft, which will make parts management more efficient when Otter South West Limited is at the point where they need to source parts from external suppliers. Then, Commusoft’s simple parts management feature will let them track, manage, and automatically invoice for parts.

Mastering the Schedule

Scheduling may be the area where Commusoft is handiest for Otter South West Limited. Before Commusoft, says Conlon, the process looked like this:

“First you had to go into one database to find out what to do the next month by filtering them by due date. You’d then produce X number of individual letters, you’d post the letters, and you’d receive the calls and schedule the jobs.”

Otter South West Limited has now gone from slow to fast: They’re using Commusoft’s job scheduling software to quickly choose which engineer to send to which job based on their skill set, manage the engineers’ diaries, and manage their workload. Commusoft also makes it easy to automatically send communications to customers when their service reminders are due, eliminating the need to filter the database manually and send letters individually.

Accounting for Change

Otter South West Limited’s invoicing has also gotten easier. Using the example of a simple boiler service, Conlon says, “The minute we put it into Commusoft, it’s automated for an immediate job—from getting the engineer, through to invoicing and chasing up to make sure everything is paid and settled.” And because it integrates with their Xero app, they know the project is in there, ready for the next year.

Aiming to Grow

Conlon can’t say how many engineers Otter South West Limited will be taking on; how large they’ll grow depends on the workload they get. “And that’s the thing about Commusoft,” says Conlon. “It does give you flexibility for the package to grow with you as a business.”

Join Otter South West and 1,000+ other business using Commusoft’s job management software.

Martin Conlon
Director

"Without Commusoft I would need at least another full-time staff member. Now I can spend time planning targets of our business."

“The main great thing about Commusoft is the fact that everything is in one. What is really important for us, is a software that delivers a great customer service and helps people out. If the software wouldn’t support us with this it would be a catastrophe. Because, imagine someone calls up because they’ve got no heating, no water – and you forget your appointment and they are sitting at home waiting for you. We need a software that’s reliable, keeping all of these things on record and Commusoft does exactly that.

What we love about Commusoft is the job scheduling, the customer database, and interaction with the engineers via the mobile app. The history that we’ve got – we know exactly what we’ve done at every customer’s house and we can see it in the office and engineers can see it on-site.”

“Before Commusoft, life was rather difficult. Keeping an eye on things when you’ve got hundreds of jobs going at the same time was an absolute nightmare. I am the office manager, and without Commusoft I would need at least another full-time staff member. Now I can spend time planning targets of our business and what strategic approach we’re taking for new things, because I don’t have to worry all the time about the on-going management, as a lot of it is done by the software for me.”

Julia Finch
Operations Director

"I feel like I can compete with bigger companies now. If I were to rate Commusoft out of 10, it'd be 11—because it does everything."

Out With the Old

We sat down with Ashley Thaw, owner of Thaw Out Heating & Plumbing Ltd in Surrey, to share his story about working with Commusoft—in his own words.

“We used to do things the old-school way: We used a paper diary for jobs, Microsoft Word to send out invoices, and Microsoft Excel to keep track of money owed in and money owed out. So it was a lot of manually imported data.

In January 2016, we started hiring a business coach to come in once a week and mentor us, and he recommended that I search for workflow management software to handle all these things. On my first search I found one and thought, ‘Well, it’s better than what we had before’. I was about to go for it when I ran across Commusoft’s video. As soon as I watched that video, I phoned my dad and said, ‘Dad, I’ve got some software for us’. I was sold.

Later, I was in a pub with a friend who owns a competing business. I started trying to tell him about Commusoft and he said, ‘Whoa, let me stop you there. I already use Commusoft!’ I asked, ‘How do you find it?’ and he said, ‘It’s absolutely perfect’.

So in July 2017, we signed on.

Jack, in Commusoft’s office, was incredible. He logged into my computer, and he showed me how to do this, how to do that, and that was it. It just got better and better from there. Our office manager and I went through a week of training, then I called a meeting of all our employees and went through everything with them. Within two hours, the gang were up to date with the system and using it. I thought getting up and running with the system would be a big headache, but the way the Commusoft team broke it down for me, it was smooth and simple.”

Tracking is on Track

“With Commusoft, now I can be driving around, look at where an engineer is right now, and book a job on the go. It’s good for customers as well because we can say, ‘Okay, so you’ve got a Wolseley boiler in the kitchen’. We know what we’re dealing with before we get there. So yes, it’s amazing.”

Discover Commusoft’s job scheduling software.

“Being able to see where the engineers are is also huge, because the bigger you get, the less you can concentrate on your engineers. You can’t possibly watch everyone all the time—you’ve got to allow them to do what they’ve got to do. So if you can see when they’ve arrived at a job, and the route they’ve taken, that’s great.

Our engineers can now do everything on their phones. It used to be, we’d send our engineers an email the evening before with the work details, but sometimes the guys didn’t receive the email so they wouldn’t be able to get to their first job. Now, with Commusoft, they can see what’s lined up, and they can also see what they’ve done for the week and send in their timesheets to get their wages. Really simple.”

Explore the Commusoft field service engineer app.

Making More, Spending (and Stressing) Less

“We’ve got some tangible results from using Commusoft. First, our income is higher, because we’re generating more jobs now. An issue we were having was that we wanted repeat customers. We’d go into a job, we’d fix the boiler or install a new boiler, and that was it—we wouldn’t see that customer again. We were always so busy, we kept getting new customers and doing more work, but we didn’t actually look back at the old customers and keep them going with service reminders. Now we’re able to send customers a reminder and say, ‘Look, your boiler is due for service in a month’s time. Can I book it in?’ Nine times out ten, they did want to book it in, but they just didn’t remember. So not only does Commusoft make us more efficient, it also enables us to get more paid work.”

“Oh, and the gas safety inspections! That’s another massive thing. We used to pay 50p per gas safety inspection online. I’d say we do about 300 in a year, so at 50p a piece that was £150. That’s an expense that’s gone now. The gas inspections look really professional as well, and they’re very easy.

I feel like I can compete with bigger companies now. I’d been doing things the same way since I was on my own, and it didn’t have that professional look. With Commusoft, even confirming an appointment with the client looks professional. We have all the little things that make us look bigger than we actually are, which gives us an advantage.

The biggest surprise, though, was just how much stress it’s taken away from me. Before I had Commusoft, I used to know, in my head, every single job that was going on. I used to think, ‘This job’s been done by the engineers, but that doesn’t mean it’s complete because we’ve still got to invoice, and we’ve still got to get paid’, and so on. Each job was in my head, and I had to remember to get the invoices sent out so we could get paid. Now, the engineers are able to do the invoicing themselves. They go to the job, they fill in the job report, they finish the job, they send the invoice in to the client, they get paid on the spot with the card reader, and it’s done. I don’t need to know about any of the things that are involved because the engineers deal with them. It’s all done in one smooth transaction, and it lowers the stress levels for me.”

“If I were to rate Commusoft out of 10, it’d be 11—because it does everything.”

Discover Commusoft’s field service management software for yourself!

Ashley
Director

"Real-time insight has proved a game changer...it takes us from being a small player, to a big player in the market."

Struggling With a Paper-Based System

Ayrshire Tree Surgeons, established in Kilbirnie, Scotland in 2006, provides a variety of tree services for both domestic and large commercial clients across Scotland.

David Adam, Commercial Director, caught up with us to share how Ayrshire Tree Surgeons transformed their business with Commusoft. He describes their previous paper-based workflows as “a slow and cumbersome process”.

He details,

“There was a lack of flexibility throughout the day. We were using a paper-based system, and were marking the jobs up on a whiteboard. Every morning, the teams would come in, and they would get their jobs allocated to them by bits of paper and sheets. [If there were] any issues within a job, or anybody not on site who’s required to be on site…the job would then stop”.

Pen and paper, and whiteboards weren’t going to cut it; they needed an inclusive solution that would accommodate their steadily growing business. “The extra admin and costs involved”, with a paper-based system, was “substantial. We required the system to streamline that process for us. And as the company grew and expanded, we needed a system that would grow and expand with us, and a process that would enable us to be as efficient”.

Modernising operations with a digital job management software was a huge step for the business. With Commusoft facilitating daily operations and workflows, David and his team were able to hit the ground running.

Getting Started With Commusoft

Moving the entirety of a business’s organisation and structure to a digital system is a tremendous task. David puts it best: “I think any small business moving from a paper-based system onto an online system is quite daunting”.

He details his organisation’s transition: “The implementation for us was seamless. It was very easy, with full support from Commusoft. The training was excellent, and very quickly built confidence within the team…Everybody, from office staff, senior management, and the tree surgeon squads, picked up the process very quickly…It’s an intuitive system, it’s not complicated, things are where they should be”.

This quick transition allowed Ayrshire Tree Surgeons to land on their feet. David told us about how his engineers have reacted to their new digital workflows;

“The utilisation of Commusoft by either a tablet, or a phone, has enabled them to have greater confidence when turning up to a job. All the details and documentation is there. They have full clarity of what’s required for them on that day. It also allows them to manage the diary, should they finish that job quickly, they can then go onto the next job, and the next job, and the next job”.

Commusoft empowers mobile teams to take control of their daily workflows, so they can stay effortlessly organised and up-to-date, ultimately allowing them to take on more jobs.

Estimates

David states, “What we always strive for here at Ayrshire Tree Surgeons is to deliver the highest level of professional service to our customers”. Estimates are the first opportunity for engineers to provide unmatched customer service in-person, on-site.

Commusoft streamlines Ayrshire Tree Surgeons’s estimate and quotes process: “Our surveyor goes out to price the job up. The job is not just priced, but all work that’s agreed to be undertaken is scoped out, marked down, and loaded into Commusoft”.

Digital estimates can be built with custom templates, incorporate unique parts and their costs, include site photos, and can be emailed to customers to accept digitally.

Once a job is won, “the teams are then allocated to the job through the diary in Commusoft. The teams then can have full visibility on their tablets of the full scope of and what’s required on the job. They then go and undertake that job to the requirements of the initial quote”. 

With estimates saved directly to customer records and jobs, unique customer expectations and agreed-upon terms will always be met.

Custom Forms

Safety is the top priority for Ayrshire Tree Surgeons. David explains, “tree surgery work is one of the most dangerous industries to be involved in. A big driver for Ayrshire tree Surgeons is the safety of the staff and general public”.

He elaborates,

“A lot of our jobs are undertaken in remote locations. Commusoft allows us to work offline, this gives the teams full visibility of what the jobs are, and allows us to communicate effectively with them at all times. [With] Commusoft [we] automate and centralise a lot of our checklists. Prior to going out on any site, we are required to undertake a full site [and] health and safety assessment…We now know that every single job and every single assessment has been undertaken prior to the job taking place. This provides confidence to all the senior management teams that we are being as safe as possible…We have a full repository of completed forms, and can refer back to them at any time”.

With custom forms, Ayrshire tree surgeons capture job information that’s valuable to them. Site surveys, and PPE and equipment safety checklists are time-logged, so managers know they’re being completed before the job begins. This system protects both employees, clients, and the public.

David was happy to tell us that “We have now seen a significant reduction in health and safety related incidents”.

Invoicing

Invoicing and keeping track of payments was frustrating for the office team to manage with a paper-based system. Muddled communications between the field and office, and customers with the office resulted in late payments and other oversights. After managing invoicing and finances with Commusoft, there was a massive shift.

David explains,

“We’re also seeing quicker invoicing happening across the business. We’ve seen a significant reduction in outstanding debts, which has seen it drop by over 80% in the last six months…The flexibility of being able to manage the jobs, and manage the internal invoicing and payments due is a perfect mix for us as a business”.

Commusoft’s invoicing software can be built in the office or in the field, and payments can be accepted online, meaning that your team will never forget to send an invoice, and can receive payments faster.

Thriving With Commusoft

With Commusoft’s field service management software supporting all aspects of daily operations, Ayrshire Tree Surgeons now has the confidence to flourish with confidence.

David sums it up perfectly;

“from a management perspective, [Commusoft] allows us to track our aged debt, our win ratios, our sales-to-dates, and a whole range of other business priorities. We use it as a CRM system, we use it as a job management system, and we also use it as a finance system. For us, it’s the perfect one stop shop, all-in-one system, and we would recommend anybody within our industry”.

Ayrshire Tree Surgeons has already “seen an increase in the volume of jobs undertaken”.

David further explains, “Year-on-year, this quarter alone, has seen a 60% increase in the volume of jobs undertaken. This is down to business efficiencies, driving the productivity of the squads out in the field, and identifying areas of improvement within the office”.

Ayrshire Tree Surgeons has big, and attainable, plans: “We’re looking to continue that growth to become one of the largest tree surgeons in Scotland”.

David Adam
Commercial Director