Whitlock Building Services (WBS) centralized their customer management and saved 70% on IT spend using low-code.
"Zoho Creator, can really provide anything we want. All it takes is a little bit of time and manpower to sit down and build it. So we really are moving towards having that one- stop solution for our business."
— Deidrea Lax, Customer Care Manager, Whitlock Building Services
Created by : Whitlock Building Services
Use case : Customer management
Industry : Professional services
Employee size : 51-200
View FAQsThe company
Whitlock Building Services, established in 2007, is a family-owned commercial-construction cleaning service provider.
Located in Grapevine, Texas, the company is dedicated to providing commercial building services, post-construction cleaning services, move-in/out, and deep cleans.
They offer cleaning services for the following industries:
- New commercial construction
- Factories
- Restaurants
- Office buildings
- Medical facilities
- Government buildings
- Education institutions
- Contractors
The challenge
"We did a lot of manual analysis, where we created our own spreadsheets and manually entered the issues or complaints that we received. We divided it up by the location of the complaint, who made the complaint, what the complaint was, and how many times the complaint reoccurred."
— Deidrea Lax, Customer Care Manager, Whitlock Building Services
Being a professional cleaning service provider, WBS faces numerous challenges, like maintaining health regulations and standards, being cost-efficient and sustainable, and staying up to date with new technologies.
WBS did a lot of manual analysis, creating spreadsheets, manually entering the issues and complaints they received, dividing them up by different categories, and allocating the right person for a particular issue or account. It was incredibly time-consuming and reduced their productivity.
WBS also encountered the challenge of data scattered across multiple software systems. It was hard for them to find information that was all over the place, resulting in cluttered business processes and inaccurate data management.
Deidrea, the customer care manager, decided to centralize their business processes under a single solution.
"There was a learning curve for me, but with my background in technology, I quickly grasped the platform. Additionally, the tech support was immensely helpful with the challenges I encountered. They responded promptly and provided swift solutions to my questions—and there's a video for almost everything!"
— Deidrea Lax, Customer Care Manager, Whitlock Building Services
The solution
At first, Deidrea planned on developing two solutions separately, for supply chain and inventory management. However, realizing the need for a comprehensive solution for their entire business, they decided to build a single ERP system. This consisted of the following modules:
Account management
Deidrea began developing an account management system on Zoho Creator for commercial-construction buildings. This enabled WBS to have a properly streamlined process where they could keep track of active and inactive accounts, and track retention rates.
Issue tracker
This module tracks customer complaints and assigns cleaners to address the issues. It also integrates with an SMS service to automatically notify the assigned cleaner.
Contract management
WBS developed another module for contract management. It includes information like locations assigned, services offered, employees assigned to each location, and tracking of contractor performance.
Other modules built by WBS include:
- Equipment tracker
- Inventory and asset management
- Compliment tracker
Benefits and ROI
"I would say the most significant benefit is organization. You can use it on your phone; you can use it anywhere. That's crucial, especially when you're not always at the desk—you're out in the field and you get complaints randomly throughout the day. It makes it easier to log that information when you can do it from anywhere."
— Deidrea Lax, Customer Care Manager, Whitlock Building Services
- In one year, Whitlock Building Services was able to increase their retention rate from 92% to 98%.
- Saves significant time across workflows in the organization.
- Saves more than $15,000/- on IT spending.
- Easily tracks issues related to specific accounts, to stay on top of them.
- Streamlined their contractor management. Reports and dashboards now give them transparency and an overview of their contractor's performance, thus enabling WBS to make decisions based on their performance.
"Previously, I would manually have to go through and look at how many complaints I got through multiple avenues, like Gmail, SMS, and calls. If I wanted to do a client review, it would take me anywhere between one and two days to get the information ready. But now, literally within an hour, I can have a full report of everything related to that one account or contractor."
— Deidrea Lax, Customer Care Manager, Whitlock Building Services
Going forward
"I've already built the supply system in Zoho, but now I'm going to start adding dollar values to our equipment, so we can better track our startup costs. "
"Zoho Creator can really provide anything we want. All it takes is a little bit of time and manpower to sit down and build it. So we really are moving towards having that one- stop solution for our business. "
— Deidrea Lax, Customer Care Manager, Whitlock Building Services
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is Zoho Creator?
Zoho Creator is a low-code application development platform that allows users to create custom applications on their own, with minimal coding experience. The intuitive drag-and-drop interface empowers developers and business users to build web and mobile applications that satisfy all their unique requirements with ease.
Are applications built on Zoho Creator scalable?
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