When it comes to spreading the word about your company's app, sometimes getting it in as many peoples' hands as possible for free can be an effective way to expand your customer base. That's how Uber first hooked me: with a $20 promo code that freed up my designated driving responsibilities for my wife's birthday. I've been using it ever since.
"It’s really to get Repsly distributed through a grassroots perspective."
Now Repsly, a Boston-based startup, is using a similar strategy to promote its cloud-based field management system for companies that manage teams of field representatives. Field reps can serve as an integral part of a company's customer service team, and they're heavily used in the retail, service and real estate industries, doing anything from field marketing to sampling. One of Repsly's more notable customers is Nike Golf, which uses the field management system to help field reps make sure its golf products are being prominently displayed, among other responsibilities, at partner retail locations.
The startup has been finding that a lot of customer referrals are coming from field reps who already use Repsly, so in an effort to bolster that grassroots campaign, its launching a free Android and iPhone app for individual field reps who want a better way of collecting on-site information and sending reports to their managers.
"It’s really to get Repsly distributed through a grassroots perspective," Matthew Brogie, COO of Repsly, told me. "We’re putting it in the hands of individual reps for free and rep-to-rep referral."
Since 2010 Repsly has been providing its field management system as a solution both for field reps who don't want to juggle paperwork while visiting customers and checking on things like product inventory and for managers who want to keep better track of their field reps and make sure they're doing their jobs in a timely fashion. With the mobile app, field reps are able to take photos, take notes and send reports in real time to their managers, instead of having to wait to get back to the office to compile everything.
In all, it's supposed to help companies with field reps be more efficient — and, ideally, save some money. Since launching the field rep management system, Repsly has gained about 425 companies as customers, representing about 4,500 field reps in 48 different countries.
The free mobile app comes with less functionality than the enterprise version, Brogie said, but it still has everything individual field reps to do their jobs. Here's what's included in the free app:
- Client Information Management: organize client information in a personalized way with an unlimited number of customizable fields, and classify clients using tags and statuses.
- Visit Scheduling: Manage schedules, document visits and access summary reports by client to assess visit productivity.
- Mobile Forms: completely customize forms for collecting any kind of data about clients, including photos, signatures, structured and free-form data, and share that data with managers, clients and co-workers.
- Photo Capture: share, tag and analyze pictures from site visits while capturing other relevant data including time, date and GPS location.
- Reporting: generate summary reports to share data collected, and analyze how effectively time was spent.
"Field teams today have a unique opportunity to leverage mobile technology to redefine the workflow of their day-to-day activity," Brogie said, "and we've seen our platform drive incredible results across organizations – from small groups to large, global companies – and now we’re offering that power to individuals as well."
The hope, he said, is that more field reps will start using the free app and spread the word about the usefulness of Repsly. And that doesn't just include word of mouth, either. Brogie said the startup hopes that field rep managers who aren't aware of Repsly will be impressed by the reports filed using the free app and the productivity of his or her field reps who use it.
Brogie said the next step for Repsly is to improve the system's user experience. He said the startup feels great about its user interface already but wants to bring it to the same level as consumer apps like Instagram and Twitter.
"The expectation from users transformed from, 'oh, it’s business software, it’s going to be [a little clunky]' to 'oh, it’s business software, it’s going to be easy to use,'" he said. "We have a couple of things up our sleeves to transform the user interface and make it on par with the leading consumer apps out there."
Images provided.
