To put it lightly, 2020 was a year of new and unique challenges. Slingshot rose to these challenges and finished the year with significant new achievements and accolades under our proverbial belts.
In 2020, Slingshot saw impressive company growth, innovative new product releases, and exciting new partnerships. We even pulled off a thrilling first — our inaugural virtual event, Slingshot Reveal 2020.
Slingshot has helped home service providers deliver their very best to customers since 2014. We work with over 30 of the top 100 pest control and lawn service companies in America — and help them elevate their business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The year 2020 was no different. We reached several milestones we’re pretty darn proud of. Take a look:
Achieving Incredible Return on Investment in Our Partnership with Anticimex
In July 2020, we passed an incredible milestone with pest control management company Anticimex. With our unparalleled round-the-clock virtual sales support, we helped Anticimex across its many brands and in doing so achieved over 500% Return on Investment (ROI).
Anticimex is the 3rd largest pest management provider in the world, and they have only continued to grow throughout the pandemic. This is largely in part to an incredible increase in customers looking for home services, as expressed by a 200% rise in online searches for outdoor home services.
Anticimex and Slingshot rose to the occasion by leveraging strategic resources to meet consumer demand. Slingshot responded by expanding sales calls to ramp up during the changing season. Of the rising consumer demand, CEO Taylor Olson said, “It’s crucial that response is immediate and hold times are short. Anticimex has committed to that, and the result has been phenomenal with over 30,000 customer interactions this year.”
2020 marked Anticimex’s 3rd year with Slingshot, but their utilization and revenue through Slingshot tripled during this unprecedented year.
Teaming Up with Voice for Pest to Provide Integrated Communication
It seems July 2020 proved to be an eventful month for us at Slingshot. Beyond celebrating our success with Anticimex, we also teamed up with Voice for Pest to announce a unique integration solution. Voice for Pest is the leading phone system provider for the pest management industry. Our new partnership created an exciting, fresh camaraderie with this integrated voice and data solutions leader.
The new integration allows pest management professionals to manage, monitor, and analyze their client call data within the Slingshot platform.
Pest Management Providers conduct over half of their customer transactions over the phone, making this integration especially impactful to the pest management community. The new technology allows users to combine inboxes within Slingshot. They can also utilize the “click-to-call” function to efficiently return calls. Beyond this, the technology allows professionals to manage and track all calls.
Tom Welsh, the Voice for Pest CEO, called the solution a “game-changer” and voiced the importance of this new integration. He said, “Many companies are finding they need their phone systems to be more flexible, especially given today’s environment. By combining Voice for Pest calls and voicemails within the Slingshot platform, providers can respond to customer requests quickly.”
This new technology helps the industry ramp-up to meet a quickly growing need. With bed bugs and mosquitos multiplying every year, the industry continues to grow — with home services industry growth projected to reach a value of $27.5 billion by year-end 2025.
Both Slingshot and Voice for Pest are industry leaders, working with many of the top 100 pest control companies in America. Our partnership was an exciting combination of powerful forces for home services solutions in 2020.
Launching an Omni-Channel Customer Engagement Platform
The modern customer has become accustomed to receiving round-the-clock service from businesses. Beyond this new standard, consumers crave assistance via their favorite mode of communication. From texts to web chat and social media, we want to be ready to help the consumer on the platforms they use most. For home services, access to these channels can help build the best customer experience possible.
To meet this need, we proudly released Central Inbox, an innovative omni-channel customer engagement platform that lets our clients interact with customers via web chat, social media, phone, text, and email. This inclusive platform facilitates inbound and outbound communication on one easy-to-use dashboard.
In September 2020, we released this platform enhancement as a free upgrade for all of our existing clients — without raising costs or service minutes. Central Inbox makes it easy to organize disparate communication channels, which can delay response times with the cumbersome need for switching platforms.
Customers at all levels of service can enjoy Central Inbox as a sleek solution for managing communication with customers and never miss another lead due to scattered communication. According to Adam Tolman, Slingshot’s head of product, “Clients were jumping in and out of disparate systems to respond to customers who were reaching out through various channels. Now clients can quickly engage with customers through our centralized inbox without having to jump from one platform to the next.”
Echoing this sentiment, CEO of Slingshot company Taylor Olson said, “It has always been our goal to make sure every lead can be captured, and every customer need can be managed. Central Inbox makes that goal easier for our clients in a very unique platform.”
Becoming the 7th Utah Company on Deloitte’s 2020 Technology Fast 500
In November, we became the 7th-ranked Utah-based company on the esteemed Deloitte’s 2020 Technology Fast 500™ list. We also ranked among the top 300 companies in the country.
Slingshot Utah was celebrated for our contributions to driving growth in the economy during a difficult year. By helping pest, snow, HVAC, lawn, and a diversity of other home service businesses meet the rising demand of stay-at-home customers, we gained Deloitte’s attention with another milestone — reaching 1 million customer interactions and earning $25 million in closing for our clients.
Of the accomplishment, our COO Jon Soldan said, “Our agents know how to close when it comes to home services. We’ve taken that knowledge and applied it to other areas where our clients are looking for support: customer success, emergency response, accounts receivable (AR), and more.”
This accolade is a testament to the company’s ability to maintain consistently rapid response times and quality service through our top-notch hiring standards and prioritization of new technology.
Being named to the prestigious Deloitte list affirms that Slingshot is creating meaningful change in the home service industry. CEO Taylor Olson said, “Home services companies understand more than ever that limited or lack of technology creates a substandard customer experience that will lose out to competitors time and time again … The growth and innovation in technology we’ve been a part of this year wouldn’t be possible without our incredible team members, partners, and clients.”
Reaching 500,000 Customer Interactions in Our Partnership with Aptive
In November, Slingshot celebrated reaching over 500,000 customer interactions in our dynamic partnership with Aptive Environmental. Aptive is ranked 7 among Pest Control Technology Magazine’s Top 100. They have achieved incredible growth since partnering with us in 2016 and are one of the fastest-growing pest control firms in America. Aptive services customers in 3,700 cities with 43 branches across the nation.
We reached this incredible milestone with Aptive with over 100 dedicated Slingshot agents who were committed to supporting Aptive’s sales, accounts, retention, and customer service initiatives. These efforts included 24/7 omni-channel sales, receivables, customer service, and retention campaigns.
We continue to cover up to 75,000 customer interactions per month for Aptive and have sold up to $7.5 million in annual revenue for the company. Our partnership with Aptive has scaled Slingshot’s standard of excellence to reach an incredible number of customers.
Part of Aptive’s initiative includes unique task forces, like their “Win Back” team and “Customer Loyalty Specialists.” Slingshot agents contribute to these campaigns and others, which focus on bringing in new and former customers. Much of Slingshot’s success with Aptive can be attributed to our flexibility, which has allowed Aptive to easily scale for projects without needing to onboard new fleets of employees.
Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer of Aptive Edmund Mackey raved, “Slingshot got us up and running in under a month, and the results literally blew us away. While it started small, we’ve added customer calls, retention, sales, and AR, which all improved year-over-year. It was one of the best business decisions we made in 2019.”
He added, “I don’t think there’s a more essential partnership to us than Slingshot.”
Launching Our First Virtual Event: Slingshot Reveal 2020
One of the proudest moments of 2020 was the launch of our first virtual event, Slingshot Reveal 2020. We held this event in tandem with PestWorld 2020 with the aim of revealing our highly anticipated product strategy, which allows providers to automate their scheduling, billing, and customer service needs.
Slingshot Reveal featured dynamic roundtable discussions with industry leaders from Certus Pest, Aptive Environmental, Briostack, PestRoutes, PestPac, and Voice for Pest. Some of the highlights included:
- An intimate chat focused on the customer experience, retention, and pest automation with our CEO, Taylor Olson, who was accompanied by Slingshot clients, Edmund Mackey from Aptive Environmental, and Mike Givlin from Certus
- A deeper discussion that welcomed our integration partners to discuss automation in pest control. Our guests included Kirsten Lester, CPO at PestRoutes, Thomas Welsh, president at Voice for Pest, Brandon Grover, CEO at Briostack, and Rick Agajanian, director of product at PestPac
- A sneak peek at the innovations in automation — like chatbots — by our head of product, John Yates
Slingshot Reveal 2020 was also a celebration of the milestone wins we earned during 2020. Of reaching 1 million interactions and surpassing $25 million in closing revenue, our COO Jon Soldan said, “What’s most important is that these numbers show our clients are successful. As we marry the digital channels and meet customers where they are to provide value, we feel we have a fantastic strategy for 2021 and are so excited to share it with everyone.”
We are excited to carry our accomplishments into a new year that is sure to bring continued growth and successful partnership with our valued customers.
