CRM

[iteles]

We need a system to be able to track all of our incoming requests, visits and conversions as well as the status of each person and the next action. This also helps us with follow-up like requesting Google reviews, post-wedding photos for social media, making sure everyone knows what's going on at all times without having to ask, etc.

I'm also keen to get a system in place that somewhat forces compliance. Because currently no one has to enter any information anywhere, it's all just in someone's head because 'it's in the emails' and things easily get missed, especially following up with potential clients.

It's an unnecessary cognitive load when you can just have a system that tells you what needs to be done next.

I'm looking for help on researching what is available out there!
Not averse to paying a moderate sum for the right system that will keep us on track

Non-functional requirements

• Ease of use: This is absolutely key as we are dealing with non technical people using this system
  • Ease of data entry without many mandatory fields (otherwise people just won't use it)
  • At-a-glance status checks for those (like tia Sofia) who just need to know where everything is at - the journey is long and not really linear so having a column for each status is not entirely feasible for example
• Accessible from any device
• Accessible online from anywhere
• Somewhat printable as we have some people who like to print things out to write on them

Functional requirements

• Follow email/phone contacts through a somewhat stable but not always fixed customer journey and has a lot of times when things are just 'on hold' pending decision:
  • First contact
  • Basic info receipts
  • Basic questions
  • In-person visit
    • Contacting Saiotes for decorations budget
      • There are multiple stages here which need to be immediately apparent with : Awaiting to make contact (which requires follow up from us), awaiting budget (action sits with Saiotes), awaiting decision on budget (follow up required)
    • Possible follow-up questions
    • Follow up email if no further contact has been made - move to pre-reservation or drop altogether
  • Potential interest shown in a date, noted by us
    • Follow up required if no further contact is made
  • Pre-reservation
    • These need relatively regular follow-up so that they don't linger and so we know WHY this is not converting
  • Conversion to a reservation
    • Invoice
    • Follow up for proof of payment
    • Confirm against bank statement
    • Update accounts
    • Confirmation emails
  • On day of wedding, ensure we have technical information of all involved for social media coverage
  • Follow up for photos six months later
• Fields:
• Type of client: Bride/groom, airbnb guest, partner supplier, etc
• Names of people getting married
  • Which one is point of contact
• Contact email address (potentially multiple)
• Contact telephone number (potentially multiple)
• Source of interest - how they heard about us
• Date of first contact
• Date of latest contact
• Required follow up date (essentially if we want to schedule a follow-up action)
• Date of visit to Landim
  • Person visit was with
• Notes field so we can include as much as we know about the couple post-visit (rather than sending post-visit emails to Sofia as I do now)
• Date of wedding
  • Status of this date: just interest, pre-reservation, reservation awaiting invoice details, reservation awaiting invoice, reservation awaiting payment, paid for reservation
  • Flag if there is a double-booking
• Number of wedding guests
• Address for invoicing
• Who owned the process/visit/closed the sale
• Further notes on ongoing conversations
• Amount awaiting payment (we have different weddings in the same year charged at different rates at the moment depending on when they originally got in touch with us, so we need to know how much is owed on the day)
• 'Ficha tecnica' - everyone who is going to participate in the wedding (photographers, videographers, lights, music, flowers, etc)
  • Ideally these individuals will be contacts themselves so we can pull reports on how often we work with them
• Quantifiable feedback fields
• Checkbox on whether we have photos from wedding or not
• Allow us to pull reports or at least figures that we can compile on things like bounce rates, conversion rates, conversion rates by source/time of year/country, etc

[nelsonic]

@iteles is your idea to research the existing CRM systems and pick a (relatively) low-cost one and start using it ASAP? 💭

[iteles]

Yes. But for that I need time.

[iteles]

This is an increasingly higher priority as it would free up a lot of my time currently spent reviewing the same info and most importantly free up headspace.

Need to review the original research doc and see if any of them are going to work!

[nelsonic]

@iteles 100% having a system would save you a ton of time. ⏳
Is the list of features in the OP ordered in terms of priority? 🔝
Feels like you're looking for a pretty niche product here ... 💭
My re-reading of the research doc and your feature list is that there isn't an obvious/immediate choice. 🔍
Want to sit down and go through the list and prioritise it (either solo or with me)? (T25M) 📝
(I'd be very happy to help you with this. I've studied CRM UI/UX & features a lot over the years. 🤓 )

[iteles]

The list of requirements is really a list of the journey that the person goes through from first contact.
I'll sit down and try to prioritise this a little better on Saturday when my head is in the Landim game.

[nelsonic]

Sounds good. Great to focus on the "journey" from the perspective of the prospective couple 💍
and correlate that to what needs to happen in our "back office" to streamline the process. 📥

I feel that we should take a look at how the established weddings sites do this 👩‍💻
and see if there are any "gaps" in their flow. 🔍
As you say, Saturday. 📆 👍

[iteles]

I have actually been speaking to a few photographers (rather than venues) who I have more rapport with and they seem to predominantly fall into two camps: very manual (like Excel spreadsheets) or Notion.

My problem here is mostly that the part I'm most keen on is the end of year analysis and most CRMs either don't do this or don't talk about it much!

[nelsonic]

Notion indeed ... 💭

Analysis/insights should be real-time to be useful. 📈
Otherwise the the org is not data-driven it's data retrospective. i.e. rear-view-mirror. 🪞

Happy for you to take a closer look at the features/requirements you need/want and prioritise.

But if you want to build something simple that gives you:

1. Basic data capture including email address & other contact details
2. Sending scheduled reminder/follow-up emails
3. Calendar events + at-a-glance overview
4. Real-time chat on the Landim Website direct to the "on duty" person's mobile device
5. Quick lookup of people and conversation history
6. Status of people in the pipeline [ just add the :statuses you need to: dwyl/statuses
7. Time-tracking for the people doing the work (replying to inquiries, doing in-person tours/visits & event planning)
8. Stats/analysis with beautiful + customisable charts
9. Invoicing and payment collection
10. Customer feedback including guest feedback

These are all features we will be building into the dwyl App and we will be building in the next 6 months.
We will have APIs for everything, so creating a custom UI/UX that is "Weddings Focussed" will be comparatively simple.
So if you want to Product-Own this from the events panning & management perspective/use-case; join the party! 🎉

[iteles]

Great! I'll be SURE to use the dwyl app APIs for this, it'll be a great test.
In the meantime, I need something I can use just to keep data. in a useable way 😕