Example shop5 min read
A roofing company trades its clipboards for phones
An example roofing company of 25 moves its time cards and job tickets off the clipboard and onto the phone.
Example shop5 min read
A service company stops texting addresses one by one
An example plumbing and heating company with 8 techs moves the day’s stops, changes, photos and receipts out of the group text.
An example, not a real company: how a company like this runs on Krew Point.
At 6:52 AM the first group text of the day goes out: 312 Pine Ave at 8, then the leak on Station St. A minute later, a tech asks which Station St. This is an example plumbing and heating company with 8 techs in 8 vans and two people in the office. Every morning starts like that: the dispatcher types out each tech’s stops, one tech at a time.
By noon, the group text is a long scroll of addresses, photos, part numbers and thumbs-up replies. Somewhere in there is the one message that mattered.
The day runs on texts
Each text has the address, the time window, what the customer said on the phone and the gate code. The tech reads it at a red light. Then a call runs long, and the whole afternoon moves.
So the dispatcher sends a second round. The 1:00 is now a 3:00. Can someone grab the water heater from the shop? Did anyone see the last message?
Photos go into the same thread. So do receipts from the supply house, snapped on the counter and never seen again. When a customer calls about last month’s repair, nobody can find the photo.
A workday a week of typing
Two minutes a text doesn’t sound like much. Here’s an example of how it adds up. It’s not a measured result, so try it with your own numbers.
Say the office sends each of 8 techs 6 texts a day. Each text takes 2 minutes to look up, type and answer. That’s 96 minutes a day, or 480 minutes over a 5-day week. That’s 8 hours, a full workday, spent copying addresses into texts.
The techs pay for it too. They scroll for an address in a driveway, call in to ask what’s next, and wait on hold while the office looks it up.
Every tech sees today’s stops
In the example, each tech opens the Krew Point app and sees Today: the day’s stops, each with the address and the time. Every stop has Open, Directions and Call. Open shows the job, with its tasks and photos.
- Techs sign in with a cell number and a 6-digit PIN.
- They clock in and switch jobs from the phone, so each stop gets its own hours.
- In a basement with no signal, it saves on the phone and sends later.
The dispatcher stops typing addresses. The address lives on the job, and the job lives on the calendar.
When the day changes, the phone says so
Calls run long and customers cancel. When the office moves a call on the calendar, the tech on it gets an alert that says Your schedule changed. If the move would double-book someone, the office gets a warning before it happens. If it was a mistake, Undo puts it back.
There is no second round of texts to send, and nobody has to ask if the tech saw it.
Photos and receipts go to the job
Before and after photos go to the job from the phone. They’re shrunk on the phone to save data, and there’s a Wi-Fi only setting for techs on small data plans.
At the supply house, the tech snaps the receipt with Add Receipt, and it goes to the job. The office approves it into the job’s costs.
Gas, or a tool bought for the van with no job to put it on? The tech snaps that receipt too. The office approves it and marks it paid, so the tech gets paid back without a shoebox of paper.
Fewer calls to the office
A lot of the calls into the office were never about a job. Who do I ask about the van? Can I take Friday off? The app answers most of them.
- The company phone list has everyone in it. A tech taps to call or text the right person, and anyone can hide their own number.
- Time off gets asked for on the phone. The office approves it in the app, and the tech gets an alert with the answer.
- A question about a job goes on the job, with an @mention, so the answer stays with the job.
The second week
Before the first morning, the techs, the week’s calls and who sees what go into the app, and we set it up with the office. Techs never see prices or pay in the app, and the owner chooses who in the office does.
For the first week, the office keeps a short text going for anything odd. By the second week, the group text goes quiet, and the 6:52 AM text is just the Today tab.
What changed
| What | Before | With Krew Point |
|---|---|---|
| Morning stops | A text to each tech, typed by hand | Today’s stops on the phone, with directions |
| Changes | A second round of texts | Move it on the calendar, and the tech gets an alert |
| Photos | Lost in a group thread | On the job, shrunk to save data |
| Receipts | Snapped on the counter and forgotten | Filed to the job, or paid back |
- Morning stops
- Before: A text to each tech, typed by hand
- With Krew Point: Today’s stops on the phone, with directions
- Changes
- Before: A second round of texts
- With Krew Point: Move it on the calendar, and the tech gets an alert
- Photos
- Before: Lost in a group thread
- With Krew Point: On the job, shrunk to save data
- Receipts
- Before: Snapped on the counter and forgotten
- With Krew Point: Filed to the job, or paid back
Keep reading
Guide5 min read
How to give every crew a checklist that updates the job
Write a checklist your crew checks off on the phone, and see where every job stands without a call.
See Krew Point on your own jobs
Book a demo and we’ll show it with your kind of work. We set it up with you, and every feature is included.