How To Run Your Home Service Business From Your Smartphone

What’s the most frustrating part of running your home service business? Do you struggle to find enough time in the day to schedule customer visits, manage payments and attract new customers?

Whether you’re an HVAC contractor, carpet cleaner, interior decorator, caterer, roofing contractor, offer garage door repairs, or have any career where you offer services and are on the road all day, this article is for you. You will discover an easy way to simplify your life. Earn back all the time you lose every day going around in circles trying to fill your order book or replying to customer communications.

Whatever system you currently use to manage your business, you should be able to learn a few new things by reading this article. This may be the solution you’ve been searching for.

What Makes Running A Home Service Business Such a Challenge?

As a business owner, finding the time to fine tune your business, while working on the job daily, is one of the most significant challenges you will face. Making customer visits, whether it’s carpet cleaning or landscaping etc., while prospecting and securing new business, is not easy. Add the headaches of invoicing and scheduling to it all, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. So, what’s the way forward?

Disadvantages Of Traditional Ways Of Running A Home Services Business

Let’s talk about the difficulties of running your business the conventional way. My friend is an HVAC contractor, and he swears by his planner, and he takes it everywhere. However, he loses a lot of time when he misplaces it because he just can’t recall his next appointment or a prospect’s contact number. Try writing down all the materials you need for a job on a piece of paper, only to lose it, and you’ll know exactly how he feels.

Disadvantages of this method of working include:

• It’s inconvenient. You are stuck should you lose your planner or diary.
• It’s inefficient. There are faster and better ways to keep appointments and customer contact details making them accessible at the tap of a few buttons.
• It’s laborious. Preparing your invoices by hand takes too much time, especially when you’re busy. Often, this leads to missed payments, lost invoices and a massive headache at tax time.
• It can be expensive. If you have to employ a full-time assistant to manage your appointments, then the costs can stack up. However, if your business is growing, then this may be a natural step to take.

The Advantages of Mobile-Based Business Tools

If you’re like the typical landscape architect, interior decorator or caterer etc. you do your business on the move. You complete a scheduled visit at one client’s home, and while sitting in your car ready to drive to the next appointment, you try to squeeze in a phone call to chase a payment or close another customer. You probably have your appointments diary open on your lap, a Social Media app running on your phone to post your latest result and the bank on hold, all at the same time.

You’re juggling so many roles sometimes you just lose the plot and don’t know what’s going on. It’s exhausting, isn’t it? Well, what if you could do all this in one single place – wouldn’t that be a lifesaver?

Here are some of the benefits of investing in smartphone-based business tools:

1. They save you time. Forget chasing your tail while trying to remember whether you’ve written down an appointment time correctly.
2. Offers clearer business performance snapshot. Some invoicing tools provide clarity on how your business is doing financially. Getting your finances in order is the best way to prepare for tax season, after all.
3. Avoid scheduling conflicts. When you have a software tool assisting with client scheduling, there is less room for double-booking appointments.
4. Manage your reputation with online reviews. Social Media and Online Reviews matter. Whether it’s Facebook or Yelp, having a crowd of raving fans singing your praise is excellent for business.
5. Keep in touch with your happy customers and get repeat business. Loyal customers are the lifeblood of every successful business. Getting reviews and displaying them on your website or Social Platforms is the new word of mouth. You need a convenient and accessible place where you can engage with your customers.
6. Manage multiple jobs and staff without the need of constant phone calls and driving around to different sites. If you want to start taking the role of business owner seriously and not just work in your business, you need a reliable way of assigning tasks and keeping in touch with your staff on location. Knowing who is working on which jobs make it easier for you to accept new work and assign the job to an employee who is free.

So far, we have discussed the daily frustrations you currently face in running your business, be it with billing or acquiring new customers. We have also touched on the benefits you can start to enjoy by bringing business aspects into one place.

Concluding Thoughts

The pressures of running a business are real. As a business owner, growing your business while performing client service duties can be a bit too much to handle all at once. Invoicing and billing, accounting, finding new customers and ensuring your existing customers are happy will often take its toll. The result being you feel overworked, demotivated and perhaps even consider throwing in the towel.

With online software you can perform all the ancillary aspects of your business on the move, right from your smartphone or tablet. Invoicing will be simple, customer retention will be natural and appointment setting will be a breeze. Imagine how much more enjoyable your business and personal life will be. No more late nights, missed appointments, double-booking or exasperation. Isn’t that the life you dreamt of when you set your business up?

Well, the good thing is, you can have that life. Online invoicing software, such as Housecall Pro or Freshbooks will give you the freedom you desire. Check out online invoicing software, and it may just be the answer you’ve been searching for!