Page 2 - Demo

2|August 2022
Using Technology to Drive
Sales and Efficiency
slippery rock gAzette
Continued from page 1
SRG: One innovation we are very curious about are the stand- alone kiosks. Do you have kiosks available in all of your show- rooms, for when customers walk in?
Nikos: Yes, we do.
Stephen Fiumara: One of the big differences between Enterprise subscription, which Colonial is using, and the rest of the subscriptions is the ability to use the kiosk feature. Shops get a kiosk because they’re using it for full quoting in their showroom.
SRG: How do they work, and can clients use Quote Countertops from their homes to get a feel for what you offer?
Nikos: There are two different ways kiosks can be used in the showroom. One – we have kiosks that have everything all ready built out to our model on the showroom floor, so if customers are waiting, the sales rep can cre- ate the visual encounter right then and there, choosing and select- ing the color cabinetry they have, wallpaper, etcetera. This way, they can establish some sort of visual dialogue through the selec- tions they’ve made. The second, in-showroom opportunity that showcases the technology, is in the slab yard. When they are going through their material selection, sales reps have their tablets and the software, where they can go directly to the link on our website.
They can actually going through the selection process with the cus- tomer, right then. At that point, they’ve gone through the start of the process, identifying what the kitchen essentially looks like, and how these new selections along the process are going to fit into that design.
Prior to that, these customers have had such a strong engage- ment online, and they are already familiar with the tool prior to coming in, because they’ve got- ten to play around with it before even setting foot inside our show- room. So we do experience a lot of customers who have already been through a selection pro- cess. The technology is a big part of why the customers were able to engage with the process and our company, prior to walking through our doors.
SRG: When a customer steps up to the kiosk touchscreen, how easy is it for them to interact with the Quote Countertops software?
Nikos: Very easy. To be com- pletely honest, had they not built a very user-friendly experience, we wouldn’t have seen this success. I think the mobile capabilities of the technology are exceptional. The fact the customer can actu- ally go through the process as eas- ily as they can – that’s the whole beauty of the system. It’s amaz- ing you can have a custom prod- uct where the customer is taken through all the different intrica- cies of fabrication, the installation
ColonialMarbleandGraniteuses theEnterprisesystemofsoftware with includes interactive kiosks offered by Quote Countertops.
and the design. The technology in Quote Countertops really elimi- nated the difficult part of it. The mobile part of this app is a great tool. A mobile experience that gives you visualization and esti- mation so easily speaks volumes as to why we’ve seen the con- versions that we do, and why the customers are so engaged in this quoting process.
SRG: When customers are fin- ished putting in their information, and it comes down to closing the sale, how close is the price at the kiosk or on their mobile device to the final contract price? Is it fairly close?
Nikos: We have a pretty strict model where we want to meet the customer’s price point at least a minimum of 80 percent of the time, and we get very close to that number. There’s a lot of hid- den services fees that wouldn’t be shown, even there. We have a model, and the way we have our pricing packages really elim- inates that part of it. The tool has a square foot calculator inside of it – that part was genius – because customers ask, ‘What does 30 or 45 square feet mean to me?’ They don’t know how to come up with that number. But a square foot calculating tool makes it so simple. They say, ‘we are just going to go to our back wall and
Colonial Marble and Granite showroom. Their 4 showrooms are equipped with a Quote Countertop kiosk.
This kiosk display in a mall setting sends customer information and quote requests back to Colonial Marble and Granite for fol-
we are going to measure this.’ It has all the appliances and every- thing factored into a tool that is very easy to use, so you’re able to get pretty accurate to the final price point. Clearly, how custom the project is adds to that. But for me, when it comes to the feed- back of my sales reps who get the leads that are coming from these quotes, this is where the industry process always was: you would have a customer step in with so many square feet, this is the mate- rial that I’m interested in, and can we get a quote? That pro- cess is completely reversed now. The customer is getting essen- tially a design of what it can look like, they are getting their square footage and their calculations all plugged into the tool, and the sales rep essentially is provided – in the actual quote that was calculated by the system– what the color of the cabinets are, what the colors of the floor are, the paint colors, etcetera. Additionally, they are getting a visual on the design side of it, showing where the custom- ers are going with the project, or
what the customers like, and the feedback we get from our sales reps is, ‘How easy is this!’
The customer has done a lot of the work, but more impor- tantly we get an idea of where they want to go with this proj- ect. And it’s not just numbers that are on a quote or a contact form. Customers essentially have a design center with this app, and they also have someone here (our designer Sandra Phillips) who is a true designer. We know how that process works. We don’t want to take away from having an in-house designer, but we want to put the customer in the front seat to feel like they’re a part of that journey; the technology allows them to do that, and also makes it easy for the sales rep.
At the very front end of the project, our sales reps are receiv- ing price points the customers are familiar with. It’s not like you have anything hidden. It’s all exposed in the middle and the front of the quote. And that’s fantastic!
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