“We delayed moving CRM for about six months, and it held our journey back. I wish I'd pulled the trigger sooner.”
Harland Guscott
Founder, Guscott Heating Services
Background
Guscott Heating Services is a boiler and air source heat pump business in Kent and the South East, and more recently a solar one too. The work is high-efficiency systems, and the business puts customer service first: every customer dealt with individually. Having built the operational groundwork, the focus now is sales, marketing and scaling into much larger volumes of work.
The challenge
Guscott had been on Surefire, and Harland rates it: it was good, it just wasn't built for renewables. As the business moved into heat pumps and then solar, they needed DNO applications, heat pump forms and integrations that a heating CRM didn't have. They also wanted reporting, scheduling and sales in one place rather than spread across separate systems. Having switched systems several times before, Harland was wary of another migration, and that worry cost them six months.
Why Payaca
Harland wanted a system that matched where the business was going: renewables first, with AI built in, and a supplier that keeps improving rather than standing still. He also wanted one place for the things they'd always had to pull from different sources, from sales to scheduling to reporting.
Six months of holding back
The decision took Harland a long time. Guscott had changed systems several times as the business grew, and each migration had been painful. Jack in the team pushed for the switch while Harland held off.
Looking back, he puts a number on it. Six months earlier and they'd have been six months further on.
“Jack was really intent on pushing and changing and I held it back, and I realised actually I'm holding the whole company back.”
On putting off the switch
A migration without the usual headaches
Moving the data took a month or two. The team helped with the automations along the way and kept answering Harland's calls while he worked through his worries about the move.
Day to day, the AI help widget answered most questions straight away. When it didn't, the support team followed up and checked the answer was right.
“It's always difficult to migrate your data, but Payaca was always there when we needed help. From previous experiences, the best experience we've had in migrating data so far.”
On the migration
Quotes, pipelines and follow-ups
Quoting is what Harland rates most. Templates are standard, quotes look good and carry optional extras, and they go out quickly. The pipelines show where every job is, and when the office can't reach someone, the follow-up goes out automatically.
Scheduling is simple enough that the team rearranges and books work themselves without asking for help.
“The pipelines are really good. The visibility over everything is well organised, so I can jump in and I know where things are at.”
On running the business day to day
Built for the renewables work
DNO applications, heat pump forms and the Spruce integration cover the parts of a heat pump job a heating CRM never did. Reporting was the thing Guscott pushed hardest for, and Harland has watched it improve through successive updates.
Purchase orders can now be added after the fact, so the team can go back through finished jobs and see the profit on each one.
“Now we can go back on these jobs and look at the profit.”
On purchase orders and margins
The results
Harland calls it the best data migration the business has been through, and the team was seeing the real benefits a couple of months after go-live.
Quotes go out quickly from standard templates, every job sits in a pipeline Harland can check at a glance, and follow-ups chase themselves. Sales, scheduling and reporting now come from one system instead of several.
What they use in Payaca
- Quotes from standard templates, with optional extras
- Sales pipelines and automated follow-ups
- Scheduling
- DNO applications
- Heat pump forms
- Spruce integration
- Reporting
- Purchase orders and job profit
- AI help widget
Looking ahead
Harland's advice to anyone choosing a CRM is to pick a supplier that shares where you want to go, hold them to account, and then make the decision. Hesitation, he says, costs money. He thinks Payaca suits businesses with a few people in the office who can spend time setting it up and feeding back, especially for standardising suppliers, purchase orders and reporting.
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