Curate

An owner of a 1-year-old private chef platform that connects chefs with guests seeking a unique culinary experience at home.

Originally the Client approached us because one of them users told them that they need to build a mobile app. And that’s how we connected, – the Client came to us looking to build a mobile app to make their business more streamlined. So our CEO, Lena had a one-hour strategy session to hear about the Client’s business, understand the pain points and what they have been trying to achieve. It appeared that all the Client wanted was to streamline the processes and make them more scalable. We also discovered that down the line the Client was looking to bring more Chefs, more team members to handle the events so to make it more hands-off and more scalable so that way the Client can run it properly.

So that’s where Lena advised the Client to not invest lots of time and money into a mobile app, because what they needed was the current processes’ automation.

The most painful weaknesses that Forcoda needed to address were as follows:
– Reliant on people
– Availability constraints
– Training & ops experience
– Sole entrepreneurship
– Manual communication

That’s when we suggested the CRM system integration so that way they can streamline the customers and members onboarding, training processes as they had to explain the same stuff over and over again. So that’s where the suggestion to automate everything came in place.

The client had already well-established processes that they developed to accommodate the following activities:
– Hiring a new chef
– Hiring a new event coordinator
– Making a lead convert into a Customer
– Getting a customer book an event: select a chef, cuisine, dishes, sign a contract and make a deposit
– Getting a customer through step-by-step onboarding process before an event

These processes were done manually by the Client, and the Client had an experience and tried to use one of the automation tools, but it didn’t prove itself useful at that time due to lack of automated processes set up.

Forcoda identified an opportunity with automation that would help the client to achieve and implement that they were looking for that is much more cost and time effective and helped them to get ready for the busy summer season. The automation created using its features and abilities at full capacity was able to take the repetitive work off the Client’s plate with automated workflows, recurring payments, invoices, automated emails and forms, payment reminders and many more.

We started with the most used processes that can be possibly automated with automation tool. The client came well-prepared and shared all the needed information with Forcoda team, so altogether we were able to outline the common tasks of all active steps and bundle them into logical processes called workflows.

List of different actions that we set up within an automation tool:

– Roles Tags
– Event Stages
– Smart fields to make it personal for the Customers
– Internal (Client) notifications and ToDo tasks
– External (Customer) automatic emails and templates
– Forms
– Call Schedulers
– Integrations with 3rd party tools
– Food Packages
– Contracts for all parties (Customer, Chef, Coordinator, Vendor)
– Invoices and Payments Schedulers
– Triggers
And packing up those items into Workflows per Process.

Initially, we came up with 9 workflows that increased into 14 workflows during development.

There were some complications that prevented using the automation as planned due to automation tool features limitations, however Forcoda came up with several workarounds that were able to fulfill the initial requirements.

Example of the workflow that saved at least 3–5 hours of manual work for the client:
1. AUTO-SCHEDULER Send a call scheduler link to the client’s email
2. NOTIFICATION You got a call scheduled with the client
3. NOTIFICATION Why the client didn’t fill in the initial form?
4. EMAIL Reminder for the client about the upcoming call
5. FORM First round intake questions about the event
6. PACKAGE Menu samples packages with pricing – to be picked from ready list of packages
7. EMAIL Share pricing with the client
8. REMINDER TASK Ping the client if form has not been filled in within 3 days
9. STATUS Update the client’s status to In Progress AFTER The form is filled.

Forcoda created smooth automated integration covering main areas to autopilot Client’s business processes and automate the day-to-day “office work” without lifting a finger saving the client up to $75,000 in development costs and 15 hours in manual labor. The automated workflows take a new lead to a paying Customer on its own: Customers make their selections and decision, sign a contract, and pay an invoice in one place – all automated. So the Client could invest valuable time where it matters the most – on providing an outstanding customer experience and scaling the business.

And a lot of reusable elements, such as ready templates, forms, contracts and canned emails gave the Client freedom to proceed creating new workflows easily for the new potential processes.