Strategic Sanitation Services needed a way to efficiently access field data for internal and client-facing reporting.
Strategic Sanitation Services can now instantly access submitted forms and data – resulting in faster response times, increased customer satisfaction, cost savings, and a 50% reduction of payroll processing times.
COVID-19 Health Screenings
On-Site Waste Control Form
Customer Surveys
Field Service Reports
Strategic Sanitation Services Inc. provides condominium and apartment communities with comprehensive, on-site waste control and recycling services. They have grown an average of 30% year-over-year and service over 250 residential communities in Southern California for some of the biggest property management companies in the nation.
Strategic Sanitation Services was growing rapidly and needed a more modern and dynamic means of collecting trash management information from client locations. Leveraging paper-based field service reports, forms were often returned to the back-office once a week, resulting in delayed response times to customer needs and limited visibility into their field team’s activity. Knowing a solution to their manual documentation was needed, Strategic’s Vice President, Steven Reyes, hired a consultant to develop a custom, in-house solution, before turning to GoFormz. After realizing he could easily turn his paper-based field service reports into mobile versions that his staff could effortlessly fill out on their devices, Steven knew GoFormz would meet Strategic’s unique data capture needs.
“We found it relatively easy to implement and set up,” Steven explained. “We basically replicated the paper forms the field personnel are already accustomed to so they had no trouble switching.” Within months GoFormz proved to be a powerful solution, optimizing Strategic’s data collection, payroll processing, compensation management, and customer satisfaction.
“We asked our customers what are the top things you appreciate most about Strategic, and they said, ‘You have the processes and technology in place to meet our expectations.’ And one of the significant pieces that they interact with is GoFormz.”
Strategic Sanitation Services’ On-Site Waste Control form is frequently completed from client sites. With GoFormz, Strategic technicians can instantly generate an On-Site Waste Control form from their mobile device when they arrive on-site, which automatically populates their location and a timestamp. The technician will then take a ‘before’ picture of the service area and record details regarding the completed service, for instance, breaking down boxes and sweeping the area. The technician will then document the dumpster levels, take an ‘after’ photo, and enter a final timestamp. This detailed documentation allows Strategic to provide instant proof of services should a dispute regarding their services arise.
GoFormz’s dynamic formatting capabilities have allowed Strategic to further streamline service documentation. “We used to have several pages of pictures, which made the form obnoxiously long,” explained Isaac Garrido, Systems Admin for Strategic Sanitation Services. “But now we utilize conditional formatting to automatically add additional pages for pictures. So now you only see them when you need them.”
Strategic also leverages conditional formatting to efficiently calculate quotes for as needed services. Before leveraging conditional formatting, technicians would frequently need to revisit client locations to gather additional information to generate quotes. Now, when a technician selects which services are being requested, only the appropriate pages of the template appear with the required fields that must be completed, ensuring critical information is captured during a technician’s first visit to a customer site.
One of the most impactful benefits for Strategic is instant access to submitted digital field service reports. Before GoFormz, field service reports were turned in once a week, making it difficult to efficiently address customer needs quickly. “Now with the field personnel using GoFormz, the moment they hit complete we have the data immediately,” Steven explained. “This has increased our accuracy not only with decisions in the office but also with the GPS of our field ServiceTechs. Knowing exactly when and where they were at the time the form was completed is helpful for accountability and scheduling.”
These real-time insights have also helped Strategic develop and test operational assumptions. “One of the things that we do is pick up large items: mattresses, furniture, things that people throw away. Most of that was going to a landfill,” explained Kenneth Reyes, Director of Marketing & Systems for Strategic Sanitation Services. “We had a theory that it would be cost-effective for us to divert the appliances and other metals that we picked up to a metals recycling facility. “I went back and ran a report of a year’s worth of GoFormz data for the large items that we picked up and was able to very quickly determine that it was worth it for us to divert [those items] based on real data from the past year.” This decision has allowed Strategic to divert thousands of pounds of metals to recycling facilities and offset some landfill fees through the sale of the metals. “Within a couple of hours, we were able to determine something that otherwise would have been a guess.”
With more accurate, complete, and timely data, Strategic Sanitation Services can now leverage GoFormz Reporting to run comprehensive reports across the entirety of their data collection. These reports have not only helped Strategic make transformative improvements to their service processes, but also has helped to streamline payroll and more closely track criteria that impacts employee pay and bonuses. “We have about 20 reports that come out on at least a monthly basis, if not more frequently,” explained Kenneth. “A number of them help us with payroll and bonuses for our ServiceTechs.”
These reports have also helped Strategic prove their immense value to their clientele. “For one of our larger customers, we ran a report of every large item we had picked up for their communities,” Kenneth detailed. “We easily could tell them that we had picked up 1,752 large items at their locations, and could calculate how much money they saved. And that was within minutes. It was a super easy report to run.”
The ability to prove their ROI to customers coupled with the ability to respond to customers more efficiently, has resulted in improved customer satisfaction. Now, when a customer contacts Strategic regarding a scheduled service, their team can instantly respond accordingly and attach a report as needed. “Before implementing GoFormz, we would have had to wait hours and sometimes days to respond because we were waiting on the paper reports to be submitted,” Steven explained. “GoFormz has had a direct impact on our customer satisfaction.”
This process has dramatically improved customer relations. “We asked our customers what are the top things you appreciate most about Strategic,” Kenneth explained. “And they said, ‘You have the processes and technology in place to meet our expectations.’ And one of the significant pieces that our customers interact with is GoFormz.”
“Our business philosophy includes implementing as many current technology solutions as we can to improve our efficiencies in high-touch Customer Service, and GoFormz is right in line with that philosophy,” Steven detailed. “We have 3 core values in the company — to be Respectful, Reliable and Responsible-- GoFormz plays a Strategic role in providing highly reliable service that our customers appreciate greatly!”
“GoFormz has had a direct impact on our customer satisfaction.”
When the challenges of COVID-19 emerged, Strategic Sanitation Services immediately implemented health screenings. “We put screenings in place super quickly,” Kenneth recalled. “We borrowed the form from another business, tweaked a couple of things in the document, and within 24 hours had it implemented in the field. Then we put in a conditional event trigger, so if someone doesn’t pass it immediately emails a copy to the entire management team.”
“COVID-19 [screenings] were completely a nonissue for us because we were already on GoFormz. It was solved years before it ever became a problem.”
Strategic Sanitation Services is now working to implement an Automated Workflow for their customer survey forms. “Most of the time we come in with about a 4.5 or higher [out of 5] average,” Kenneth explained. “We are now setting up a trigger where if any customer ranks us 3 or below, an email copy is sent to me, so we can address what the issue is right away.”