New technologies and everything they have to offer are changing the construction industry landscape all over the world. The American roofing industry is not spared.

Smartphones Leading the Way

Smartphones are at the forefronts of the technological advancements we are experiencing today. They revolutionized people’s access to information and technology in practically every business sector today.

For the roofing industry, smartphones helped project managers and crews improve their efficiency through real-time communication, including voice, text and email. This improved communication also led to streamlining of sales and product-ordering procedure.

Improved Customer Relations

One area where smartphones created the biggest impact is in customer relations. Since customers want a prompt response from contractors, smartphones have become indispensable in business. Instead of relying on calls, more customers prefer digital communication because of the ease and convenience it presents.

Smartphones not only provide access and communication with customers, but sales people can use them to customize their sales presentation with pictures and videos for roofing cost estimates. Using this relatively-inexpensive device, roofers can benefit from its rich features such as roof-pitch calculation, aerial measurement reports and fast access to customer information and schedule.

Experts say the potential impact of smartphones on the roofing industry is too large to estimate at this time. Roofers must find the best way and time to use them optimally.

One business organization that adopted smartphones into their system five years ago allowed the company to easily communicate with crews, respond to customers’ queries and generally improved the overall quality of its service. One aspect of business that benefited from the use of smartphones is in training.

Training Sessions Made Easy

Training sessions are recorded using smartphones and uploaded to the company’s private YouTube channel where sales and field personnel could download and view them at their convenience. This helps ease the pressure on having to learn certain techniques or business practices in a short time. In addition, it frees up the trainer to move on to other challenges instead of going over the same training materials for different people.

Closing Sales Through Tablets

Tablets show its strength in allowing the creation of custom contracts that customers can view on the spot, give their comments and conclude the deal with their signatures. They facilitate changes to work orders and product requests too by eliminating trips to the office or jobsite.

Closing sales have become easier through the use of tablets since everything that is needed to finalize a sale could be found on the device. Contracts can be seen and annotated with just a few taps of the tablets. Customers can place their signatures on the screen as well.