Customer Profiles
Matt Payne of ecocard™
Organization Profile: ecocard™ is a family of eco-friendly card products from the Plastic Card Shop®. The result of extensive scientific research and development, ecocard offers a line of eco-friendly plastic cards and Bloomcards™ that grow into wildflowers when planted.
Summary: Matt Payne, managing director of UK-based ecocard and The Plastic Card Shop, providers of a wide-variety of gift cards, hotel key cards, membership cards, and discount cards, had been using FreshBooks online invoicing software for some time and had found that it saved his business a lot of time and money. Following his FreshBooks success, Payne thought that a complementary CRM (customer relationship management) solution could maximize marketing efficiencies and streamline his sales cycle, too. After trying several competitive CRM offerings, Payne standardized his contacts, communications and to-do list management on BatchBook social CRM from BatchBlue Software. He has since realized a competitive advantage from the combined FreshBooks/BatchBook Small Business Web partners’ solution.
Website: eco-card.co.uk
ecocard Better Sells, Services and Saves with BatchBook and FreshBooks
Matt Payne, managing director of UK-based ecocard and The Plastic Card Shop, providers of environmentally-friendly and standard PVC plastic cards, utilizes solutions from BatchBlue Software and FreshBooks to increase sales, maximize marketing efficiencies and provide superior service to his customers.
The result of three years of extensive scientific research and development and demonstrative of the future direction and social responsibility of The Plastic Card Shop, Payne believed that he could make a small difference in the world by offering his customers a line of eco-friendly recycled plastic cards, perfect for hotel key cards, as well as Bloomcards™, ecocard’s latest innovation that grows into wildflowers when planted. “Business was good in the summer of 2008, but I thought it could be better,” said Payne. So, in the spirit of saving, Payne purchased FreshBooks online invoicing software to streamline his sales process, in what is a highly-competitive and response-time-sensitive business.
FreshBooks: refreshing change
Before FreshBooks, a Plastic Card Shop customer would receive a requested quote in a PDF document attached in an e-mail. That quote email was then followed up with an additional email(s). And, all of the communications with the contacts were manually keyed into an Excel spreadsheet for tracking the sale, closing of the sale, and invoicing the customer—an extremely inefficient process that was slowing the sales cycle and impacting ongoing customer service levels.
With FreshBooks, ecocard was able to automatically provide its customers with a quote, gain the insight into knowing instantly that a quote is opened and is accepted, and ship an invoice—resulting in shorter sales cycles and an impressive improvement in customer service. “I was pleased with these improvements, but thought I could still do better,” said Payne.
Recognizing the general value of CRM software, Payne began test-driving a couple of different solutions in the beginning of 2009 including Basecamp and Tactile CRM, amongst others. “One was too chunky and not too user-friendly,” said Payne. “One took too long to ramp up without IT assistance. One started out well enough, but then challenges arose and the UK-based providers’ customer service fell well short of expectations. And, another wasn’t flexible and didn’t flow. I concluded after the three months of testing, that all the time and money I had saved with FreshBooks was now being wasted by my CRM ‘solutions.’”
BatchBlue to the rescue!
Getting more than 3,000 unique visits to his Web site per day from a customer base stretching from New Zealand to the Caribbean, from the UK to Brazil and providing 1.6 million quotes to customers worldwide per year, Payne began to lose hope in finding a more efficient way to run his international, busy business with CRM software—until he found BatchBook social CRM.
Initially, Payne found BatchBlue Software when he learned about the Small Business Web (www.thesmallbusinessweb.com), a group of like-minded, customer-obsessed software companies that integrate their respective products to make life easier for small businesses, which was co-founded by BatchBlue, FreshBooks, MailChimp, Shoeboxed and Outright.
“I surfed and soon landed on BatchBlue, double clicked and almost immediately noticed that BatchBook and FreshBooks had the same look and feel. Things were looking good from the word go,” said Payne. “And, only going to get better over the last six months.”
Payne’s efficient overview (would he have it any other way?) of some of the business benefits of BatchBook
- With BatchBook’s SuperTags, Payne can analyze and recognize sales trends by (“top-secret”) contact qualities and qualifiers and manage multiple relationships from manufacturers to the media.
- When any of the ecocard staff want to know the details of any contacts and communications or any of the deals in the sales pipeline at any time, they simply go BatchBook, the single source of all information.
- BatchBook’s To-Do List enables Payne to schedule and assign tasks quickly and easily. He sorts upcoming tasks, sets email reminders to notify him the day a task is due, and enjoys checking “done” on his virtual To-Do List by using his mouse or mobile phone—saving a tree from turning into a pencil and paper he’d use otherwise.
- The sales cycle of each ecocard customer before BatchBlue and FreshBooks was three to four weeks. Now it’s only one to two.
- BatchBook saves three to four hours per day per person (which is the equivalent of 21 to 28 hours per week, 84 to 112 hours per month, or 1092 to 1456 hours per year). Across its seven staffers, bottom line: BatchBook saves ecocard a lot of time.
“BatchBook and FreshBooks are a large part of my competitive advantage,” concluded Payne. “They save me time and money, help me better sell to, and service my customers, so I can do my own small part to try to protect and preserve the environment.”