Automating New Customer Sign Up

Signs You Need To Automate New Customer Sign Ups

• Are the bulk of your customer sign ups still being handled by customer service staff? 
• Are the majority of new customers still signing up by phone?
• Are the wages for your customer service staff still increasing? 

But the waste industry overall has not moved as quickly as other industries in the automation of customer sign-ups. For the majority of customer transactions today, most are done fully online with no human interaction required. Just look at banks, car insurance and mobile phone companies as a few examples. The waste industry is no different to any other utility company in how it can automate customer signs ups. In fact, for most part, the waste industry is far easier to automate.

So let’s look at the cost of signing up new customers

In our latest quarterly WIS Waste Industry KPI Report, we are seeing average growth in new customer sign ups holding at 2%.  By combining this number with other data points, we were able to look at what waste collection companies are spending (time and money) when signing up new customers.  

For this example, we have used 20,000 residential customers. This gives an average of 400 new customer sign-ups every quarter or approximately 130 new customers per month. 

• Each new customer requires 12 minutes touch time (order taking, payment processing, cart delivery, documents/invoicing, secondary interaction)
• This gives a total of 1596 minutes or 27 hours per month.
• At an average wage of $20 per hour, new customer sign-ups are costing you $540 per month. 

The Good News

Not only is it possible to automate many of the labour-intensive tasks involved, you also have lots of options when it comes to available solutions in the market. The key is addressing the areas that are driving your costs upwards. But basically, to reduce costs, you will need to do two things; 

• Get a good and accurate web sign up systems (like ours)

• Automate the various manual tasks that are costing wages (There are a few companies in this space, we are one)

So, what can you automate?

There are many manual tasks that can be replaced with automation. For example, with our software, clients are automating the following:

• Verification that the customers address is serviced by you + giving them the correct price and service plan.
• Send a welcome email to the customer, with tailored info and their collection calendar.
• Automate cart delivery.
• Automate payment setup.
• Create the customer billing account. 
• Automatically route the customer, highlight it to the driver and build the navigation route to make sure the truck passes their property.

What are your options?

There are many options available to you when it comes to solutions for the above. Some solutions are more generic and not tailored for the waste industry but that does not mean they won’t do a good job for you. You can find such examples at www.pega.com. One piece of advice if you are selecting a generic solution, always ask about integrations. We have heard many horror stories about how waste operators have hit big problems after they bought an ‘off the shelf’ solution. 

Your best bet is always to go with a company that is delivering exclusively for waste companies. We are one of a handful of companies in this space. Our solution is purposefully built for removing staff involvement and we know that results speak for themselves. Our customers are typically getting more than 52% of new sign ups online (based on the above that’s a $260pm saving) 

For more information on the solutions that we have or to get a copy of our Waste Industry KPI Report, send an email to fearghal@wiswm.com or visit our website at www.wiswm.com.