In this vlog-style update, Ryan Shank from PhoneWagon explains the company’s new automation and workflow feature that lets businesses create actions triggered by phone events such as missed calls, texts, voicemails, and calls. He contrasts the limited, expensive automation tools available to small businesses with the enterprise‑level solutions larger firms use, highlighting the need for an affordable, off‑the‑shelf option. Ryan walks through a concrete use case: a bankruptcy lawyer in Massachusetts who uses automated missed‑call text messages to capture leads without bothering existing clients. He cites a BIA/Kelsey study showing that phone calls are still a highly qualified conversion channel, and argues that missing a call means losing revenue. The feature is being released this week, initially to a few custom‑configured customers, and Ryan predicts it will boost conversions, increase revenue for clients, and provide a win‑win‑win scenario for businesses, end‑users, and PhoneWagon. He ends with a call‑to‑action for viewers to sign up.
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What up guys, it's Ryan from PhoneWagon. Day 17 morning updates. Today we have Starbucks, no Blue Bottle today, changing things up a bit. Don't be fooled by the whiteboard behind me, that's not anything that I know what it is. I'm just in a conference room here in our headquarters. We're actually based out of a startup incubator called Techstars in New York City, so there's a bunch of different companies here and we rent the conference room. So while it kind of looks cool, it is absolutely not mine. I want to talk about today, today's Tuesday, and I went over this a little bit yesterday, but I was talking about our automation feature, and one of the things that I really want to go over is how small businesses and large businesses, large businesses I think are doing this on a larger scale because they have access to more enterprise-type tools, things that, you know, they pay a lot of money for, they pay a lot of money for configuration and consultants to come in and install them, and they usually have someone on retainer or they have hired, you know, multiple employees just to manage those tools. So while a lot of enterprises have, you know, these complex tools that allow them to, you know, customize their workflows, not a lot of small businesses have tools like this. One, because a lot of these enterprise tools are priced out of their price range, and there's not a lot of tools that are off-the-shelf configurable for someone to just pick up and use. They're often, you know, difficult to navigate and things like that. So one of the things that we did at PhoneWagon, yes, you know, we're call tracking software, we built it to be beautiful, we built it for anyone to be able to use and grab a local number and track campaigns. We like to think of that as kind of the easy stuff, you know, we'll integrate with analytics and AdWords and you'll fire off, you know, conversions based on phone calls, easy stuff, right? What we want to do though is we want to push the envelope, so the first thing that we're already releasing is the ability to automatically set, is to create workflows based on different triggers that are telephone-based, okay, text message, voicemail, phone calls, missed calls, things like that, these are all triggers and then for these triggers you can then send some type of action, okay, so the first thing that we're doing which a lot of people are interested in and are signing up for, is the ability to send text messages for missed calls. And I have a couple clients right now, one of them is a lawyer, right, and he understands, and so for instance, if you're either a bankruptcy lawyer or an accident lawyer, I guess they're personal injury lawyers, right, it's a lead gen game, right? I mean, a lot of these guys, you'll see it if you drive in the South, you'll see like accident 1-800, you know, got hurt, get hurt, whatever it is, you know, after 911 call 411, there's things like that, it's a little gimmicky, it's not gimmicky but it's a lead gen game, right, because they want to get in front of people who have a claim or have a case, right, and it's all like, you know, they're doing all this stuff to generate leads, then what they do is they qualify them, but if you're a lawyer, right, and someone calls you and you don't answer the phone and they go on to the next person, you're really leaving a lot of money on the table, so This one guy, he's a bankruptcy lawyer in Massachusetts, one of the things that he really liked was the ability to send a text message not only to new prospects, 'cause he, you know, what he was saying is his mix of phone calls, he probably only gets 10% of his total phone call volume as prospects or new leads, right, and then the rest of the phone calls are, you know, it's like the court office calling him to tell him a date or something like that, it's an existing client like calling just to get an update or, you know, things like that. So he doesn't want, you know, necessarily to send a text message to every single missed call because that, it wouldn't be natural, right, to send a text message to an existing client that says, hey, I can't answer the phone right now, but tell me a little bit about what you're looking for. They'd be like, what do you mean? You know I'm supposed to call you, you told me to call you, you know. So anyway, the ability to send text messages and to basically just set up rules to help your business increase the number of sales that you're going to get, you know, based on phone, some type of phone event. And a lot of businesses these days, and actually, you know, I kept getting the question of like, you know, who uses the phone to make phone calls anymore? Like, doesn't everyone just like book online and message businesses? But there's actually a study by BIA/Kelsey, which is, you know, a huge kind of data company that studies local businesses and small businesses, and they came out with, you know, with the smartphone, basically everyone has information in the palm of their hand, right? So by the time, and one, what they're searching and they're finding information on is literally a device that they can actually make a phone call with one click. So by the time that they make a phone call, you know, they're actually very, very qualified and they're very far down the conversion funnel because they've already done a bunch of their own diligence, right? They're not making a phone call to ask if you do this. They're making a phone call because they know that you do it and then they have further questions which are buying questions, by the way, okay? So the ability to, you know, and again, if you don't answer the phone after they're calling, after they've done all this research and they're calling you, guess what? They're going to look at the next company and then they're going to call the next company on the list because now they're able to find another company that does pretty much the same product or service as you and they're able to find just as much information. They know that they're in their area and they do the service that they're looking for. So if you don't, one, if you don't answer, it's really, really bad. You're leaving a ton of money on the table, but if you're able to then somehow have a safety net and send a text message to those people that don't answer or that you don't answer the phone, now you're starting to engage them at least and actually they probably want to message with you over a phone call, but if they they do want to call you and they do want to talk to you, which they do because they called you initially, now you're able to at least manage getting an appointment on the calendar or manage, you know, kind of like basically delay them from calling your competitor and you getting them on the phone, which then has a high likelihood of convert— not a high likelihood, has some type of likelihood of converting into a paying customer. So point is, this feature is actually getting released this week. We have it for some customers right now. We had to kind of custom configure it, but we're making it out of the box, so we're super freaking excited. We're really excited for that, and that is gonna, I think, change the game. The customers that are using it are seeing tremendous amount of success. One, it's opening their eyes to the number of phone calls that they're missing, which is huge. By the way, I wrote an article for Capterra. I kind of geared it towards customer service, but you can sort of read it and see how just number of missed calls using your same conversion funnel, you're leaving a ton of money on the table. So anyway, one, having a safety net for that, and then just answering the phone more is actually going to increase the number of conversions as well. So we're excited to just get this into the hands of a ton of customers and just see what the data shows after we have, you know, a bunch of usage and to see what the actual, you know, uptick in real revenue without spending any additional money on marketing is going to be for our clients. And that's where we think it's a win-win. It's a win-win-win. It's a win for our customers because now they're getting more business. It's a win for the end user because they're getting in contact with the customer that, you know, or the business that they were looking to reach initially, and then it's a win for us 'cause it's a game-changing feature. So we think it's huge across the board. We're super excited to see that. So anyway, if you're watching this and for some reason you haven't signed up yet, sign up for PhoneWagon and we will get it into your hands. Have a good one and have a great Tuesday.
