TUFF SHED improves quality of service with ProntoForms

Shedding paper and going mobile

In its drive to be the biggest and best manufacturer of storage buildings and garages in the country, TUFF SHED, Inc. has made innovation a central focus throughout its 30+ years in business. That focus on innovation has allowed TUFF SHED to be an industry leader in product quality, customer service, and business approach.

This innovative approach to business has also allowed TUFF SHED to grow from the humble beginnings since starting in a Rexburg, Idaho garage in 1981, to a nearly national footprint that now includes 42 factories servicing customers throughout the country through factory-direct retail, and wholesale sales locations.

TUFF SHED's largest single customer is Home improvement powerhouse The Home Depot, where TUFF SHED offers an exclusive line of products through more than 1,100 Home Depot stores. The large number of stores, plus the fact that purchasing a TUFF SHED product isn't quite as simple as picking up an item off the shelf, requires Denver-based TUFF SHED to equip its sales force of around 75 Area Sales Managers (ASMs) with the right tools to be able to train thousands of store associates, and interact with customers, all while maintaining displays.

As it relates to capturing customer leads at Home Depot stores, TUFF SHED recently deployed ProntoForms, a mobile form application and platform for smartphones and tablets. Before the implementation of ProntoForms, when ASMs would talk to interested customers and discuss TUFF SHED products, pricing and options, their efforts weren't always easy to track.

"It used to be a challenge to capture and track customer leads, and then to produce quotes for storage buildings and garages. ASMs would also bring back a handwritten stack of paper to the office and manually enter leads," explains Adam Cooney, TUFF SHED Call Centers Manager and GSA Administrator.

TUFF SHED had things well covered when a customer contacted its Call Center, saved an online quote or interacted with a Home Depot associate. However, there was an opportunity for improvement in how TUFF SHED captured and entered data for potential customers that were interacting with ASMs, but weren't quite ready to buy. Cooney realized that something had to change, and with the help of AT&T, he developed a plan to use ProntoForms mobile forms as a business process for managing sales leads and providing customers with written quotes.

Mobile forms from ProntoForms include dynamic features such as signature, photo and barcode captures, as well as GPS and time stamps. Workers in the field easily fill out mobile forms on their smartphones or tablets and instantly submit them back to the office. ProntoForms can be integrated with any back office system and connects with multiple data destinations, including FTP and SharePoint - two destinations used by TUFF SHED.

Cooney and his team deployed ProntoForms with its ASM mobile workforce and its regional sales management team.

"The deployment to our sales force was fairly smooth. We're big fans of the ProntoForms Support Team. Things were so smooth that we received very little pushback from adopting ASMs in the field,"

As a result, TUFF SHED now has a complete and trackable handle on all of its lead generating activities.

Moreover, using ProntoForms, TUFF SHED ASMs can use the form's calculations capabilities to offer a quick and accurate quote, and even snap a picture of the customer's preferred storage building and include it in the mobile form quote.

"ProntoForms helps our ASMs better engage and make inroads in customer conversations," concludes Cooney. "It's the fastest way to build a complete quote and best way to capture lead data."