How to Run Your Business Remotely During COVID-19

With everything happening in the world right now, you’re probably at home wondering… How am I supposed to run my business from home without seeing my employees?

And the answer is quite simple: Service Autopilot.

With Service Autopilot, you can maintain social distancing by completely running your business from remotely from home!

• No more collecting payments in person
• No more “losing touch” with your clients
• No more meeting clients on-site for estimates
• No more wondering where your employees are at

NO MORE! You deserve software that works both FOR you and WITH you.

Here’s how Service Autopilot is essential for your business right now… 

Instantly Invoice All of Your Clients At Once

It’s impossible to practice social distancing when you have to go door-to-door collecting payments.

Now more than ever, it’s important for you to have ALL of your clients paying by credit card.

If you’re still accepting cash and checks, you’re likely experiencing two core problems… 

1. Your clients don’t want to pay (and their accounts are overdue).
2. You can’t send anyone to your clients’ houses to collect payments.

But credit card processing can solve all these problems (and more):

• Quickly charge all of your clients in a couple of clicks.
• Collect credit card payments online or by phone (without ever seeing your clients!).
• Set up automations to email your overdue clients (you can set up automations in Service Autopilot).
• BONUS: With SA Payments, all of your clients’ expired credit card information will automatically update. Don’t chase a new expiration date and security code!

Credit card processing ensures you get paid immediately - rather than 30, 60, or even 90 days from now.

And did you know that studies show clients are willing to spend up to 83% more when they’re paying by credit card?

Credit card processing just makes sense. And with our SA Payments, it makes even more sense.

SA Payments are built directly within Service Autopilot, and they allow you to auto-update credit cards, charge invoices, and run payments - all in one software.

Complete Estimates By Phone… Without Missing Another Follow-Up

Right now, it’s important for you and your clients to maintain social distancing with only virtual communication.

In order to do that, you’ll need to start completing your estimates over the phone and email.

Once you’ve determined the house is within your service area, you can look at what you’re charging your other clients with similar properties in that same area.

Based on this information, you should be able to give your potential client a realistic estimate of how much the job will cost.

As long as you make it clear to your potential client that the price may change based on unexpected obstacles, this estimate is good enough for you to send out!

Despite what most business owners might think, your estimate doesn’t stop here.

You should be following up with every single estimate you send out.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking to yourself, “That’s way too time-consuming”.

And you’d be right if it weren’t for the fact that Service Autopilot can do this automatically for you!

Most business owners miss the mark because they forget to follow up on their estimates.

In Service Autopilot, you can set up an Automation that will automatically follow-up on your estimates via email and/or text.

This Automation will help you to:

• Respond faster
• Eliminate repeat tasks
• Never forget another follow-up

Think about how many estimates you’ve forgotten? And as a result, think of how much money you’ve lost by losing those potential clients?

Automatic estimate follow-ups will fix that for you, while also saving you time, making you more money, and increasing your conversion rates.

Marketing to Your Clients to Win Upsells

If you’re not already using software, marketing to your clients and leads probably consists of the occasional email or text and some Facebook Ads here and there.

But there are two problems with using this “strategy”:

1. It’s not consistent.
2. There’s no way to truly track it.

In order to effectively upsell your clients, you’ll need software that can solve those problems - even if you don’t have the bandwidth to complete those tasks.

First off, with Service Autopilot, you won’t have to worry about being consistent, because you can set up Automations with multiple paths.

For instance, you can create an email campaign with two paths.

The first path is the group of clients that haven’t converted, and the second path is the group of clients that have converted. Your clients will be sent down to different email paths based on the actions they take.

Secondly, Service Autopilot tracks all of your data for you!

With a few, quick clicks, you’ll be able to view things like:

• Open rates
• Conversions
• Bounce rates

This data helps you to decide what’s working and not working in your marketing strategies, so you can perfect your campaigns.

Touch Base with Your Clients

The Coronavirus crisis has taught many business owners the importance of staying in contact with your clients.

If you haven’t already, you should be sending texts and emails to your clients to:

• Check in on them
• Explain any new procedures you’re implementing
• Explain the precautions your business is taking for the safety of your team and clients
• Tell them about any considerations you might be offering to those affected by COVID-19

While you’ve most likely made a post like this on social media, you should also send this to them via text and/or email.

In order to maintain as many of your clients as possible, you have to let your clients know what’s going on to ease their fears.

Even though this might be a time-consuming task if you don’t have software, with Service Autopilot you can instantly implement email and two-way texting campaigns!

With a few quick clicks, you can send out the same emails and texts to all of your clients at once. So there’s no need to waste hours of your time sending everything individually.

Bottom line: The key to keeping your clients throughout this pandemic is quite simply consistent communication.

Stay in Touch with Your Teams

Since you’re (hopefully) practicing social distancing with your teams to limit potential exposure, you probably haven’t seen your team in a while.

Due to this, if you don’t have a way to track your teams, you’re probably finding yourself wondering if they are where they say they are.

… Which brings us to GPS tracking and timesheets.

You should be using an app that not only checks your employees’ timesheets, but you should also be checking their GPS tracking.

Using the Service Autopilot Team App, we not only track their current location, but we also track their GPS footprints from where they’ve been (and at what time)... So you never have to wonder again if your employees are using this time to slack off or fake their clock-in/clock-out times.

On top of this, you can also add notes and make changes to your team’s route or jobs throughout the day! And since the notes are two-way, your crews in the field can provide remote office staff with notes from the property.

Even though you can’t see your team for your morning meetings, that doesn’t mean the communication has to stop there.

Running Your Business from Anywhere

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could operate your business from anywhere?

With Service Autopilot, you can!

While your team is out servicing properties, you and your office staff can still perform your daily job functions from the comforts of your homes.

It’s easy to maintain social distancing when you’re a Service Autopilot Member.

Plus, with our marketing features, you’ll be able to set up campaigns to keep your clients (and even upsell them).

Click here to watch a free tour of Service Autopilot!

Related: Top 7 Service Industry Resources for COVID-19