Customer Story
A-TECH APPRAISALS
“How can you give a client good service if you don’t have the right information? With ANOW I’m no longer guessing about what’s going on in my business… I finally feel in control.”
A-TECH
Who
Advanced Technology Appraisal (A-Tech)
is a growing Rhode Island-based residential appraisal company with just over 10 staff serving Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Over the last 17 years, President Bill Furney built his company on the idea of providing good customer service. William (Bill) Furney has been appraising for almost 20 years. His company was founded in 2000 and grown to over 10 people. Look him up at www.a-techappraisal.com
WHY CHANGE
From eTrac
to ANOW?
I’ve been a big believer in technology for a long time.
Without it, you’re just not organized, you can’t be responsive, and people can’t do their job. I ran my business on eTrac for years, but let me tell you how that worked – everything was actually done by email because my guys absolutely refused to use that system. All the email would come to me and everything was a 3 or 4-step process. If I got a call, I’d have to go to Staff eTrac (not my eTrac), use a special log in, search order, see if Rachel had updated it… and you just never knew; it was crazy when I think back. How can you give a client good service when you don’t have the right information?
WHY
ANOW?
I have been watching ANOW for years
I have been watching Anow for years, and they have been really great about me coming back from time to time to check it out. Frankly, the switch scared me, but I saw ANOW was doing something no one else had done yet. I had this concern about maps and how I was using them. It felt like they read my mind because 6 months later, I checked back and Wow- it’s there. ANOW knows appraisers and I knew they were on the right track. Then iPhone mobile app comes out. Then I see Total integration comes out, and I knew. I was ready for ANOW.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE OTHERS
doing a conversion to Anow?
Frankly, the whole conversion was way simpler than I thought: I just needed to jump in with both feet. The actual adopting was so easy. I was on the stationary bike at the gym and thought – let’s just do this. I entered three orders, I added an appraiser and assigned the order to him. I wanted to figure out if this thing worked, so I texted my appraiser and said, “Hey – did you get something from me?” From that second onward, you could not get my guy from ANOW.
So here’s my advice:
1) You need to convince yourself of how easy it is.
2) You need to do a few orders yourself to show yourself over and over how stupid easy this is and how fast it is to add new orders.
3) Give it to your your appraisers. They will love it and USE it. That’s what changes your business.
Some stuff is harder for the Office Managers. Invoicing for us is a really big deal. We setup a support call to walk it through… 40 minutes together. I mean, tell me what software company does that! These guys are like me…
they treat every customer like they are someone special.
I was so scared, I budgeted a month. It took me 2-weeks. Stop stalling and just get on with it!