Quality has always been a top priority at Empire. And safety is a huge priority too, followed by employee retention and training. However, one of the things I’ve never been consistently quick at was getting quotes back to customers. Scheduling to meet with people was a little bit of the problem, but most of it was just environment. I would get back to the office and have 3-7 quotes with measurements and information, set them on my desk, and get inundated with other stuff. Other customers, employees, office staff with questions, and on and on it goes. A few days would go by, and I didn’t get those quotes out.
Well, we think we solved that issue with the mobile office. Now I can meet with a customer, measure the house, take 15 minutes in the truck running the numbers, and give them the quote. With my mobile hotspot I can email it right to them, as well as look up product information they may want. With my printer I am able to print them out the estimate if they don’t have an email.
The quotes will take me a little bit longer (30-60 minutes as opposed to 15-30 minutes before) but will result in on the spot estimates in most cases. Some bigger jobs or more complicated jobs will still require that I take a day or two to gather more information or prices. But this will help about 80% of our jobs to get their estimates much faster.