CompanyCam is a field service app for people and teams who need to photo-document their jobs and share them with the office, their crew, and their customers. Used widely across the construction and repair industries, the Lincoln, Nebraska startup has grown rapidly, with more than 400 employees, serving one-person shops to 500-person operations.
New customers are signing up every day, and that’s where CompanyCam’s onboarding team comes in.
Automatic updates to templates for the entire team
The onboarding team owns each customer’s first 90 days with CompanyCam. They’re getting them up to speed, teaching them how to use the app, and troubleshooting over text, email, and phone.
Alex Williams, a customer onboarding manager and the team’s TextExpander librarian, explained that TextExpander quickly scaled from a tool used by the sales team for answering emails quickly to a knowledge base used across onboarding and several other departments.
With a product that’s always evolving, it’s easy for inaccurate information to end up in the hands of customer-facing teams. Instead, Alex updates TextExpander Snippets, and everyone on the team has them immediately across every platform where they type.
I can update a TextExpander Snippet, and the team has access to the most up-to-date content immediately. They no longer need to search through playlists on YouTube or files in a Google Drive folder.
Alex Williams, Customer Onboarding Manager, CompanyCam
“When we get a new how-to video added to our YouTube channel, or new instructions for the product, we need a way to get that in the hands of the entire team. I can update a TextExpander Snippet, and the team has access to the most up-to-date content immediately. They no longer need to search through playlists on YouTube or files in a Google Drive folder,” he said.
Multiple tools, thousands of customers, one source of truth
Each customer onboarding manager serves approximately 2,000 customers each week, managing kickoff Zoom calls, recap emails, and mid-call instruction sharing. And, like most tech companies, CompanyCam runs on a lot of software: Intercom for customer conversations, Vitally for status updates, Slack for team chat, and Salesforce as its CRM.
TextExpander is the layer underneath it all: A single source of truth that works everywhere.
Those tools have macros of their own, but updating each system individually would not be sustainable or yield the most accurate content.
No matter which software we use, which platform we’re on, we’re always going to have a form of consistency.
Alex Williams, Customer Onboarding Manager, CompanyCam
“Having [TextExpander] work everywhere was kind of one of the initial appeals,” said Williams. “It allowed us to build [our knowledge base] from the ground up. No matter which software we use or which platform we’re on, we’re always going to have a form of consistency.”
Onboarding for a growing team
The onboarding team grew from five to eleven in about a year. Robert Leslie Jr. joined as the sixth. He described using TextExpander as a true way to learn on the job.
“The onboarding process with TextExpander was amazing, because I didn’t have to ask as many questions,” said Leslie. “I would just go to TextExpander, find the Snippet, and be able to give my customers the information that they needed, especially in my first three months.”
Robert Leslie Jr., Customer Onboarding Manager, CompanyCam
The onboarding process with TextExpander was amazing, because I didn’t have to ask as many questions. I would just go to TextExpander, find the Snippet, and be able to give my customers the information that they needed.
“Not only has it kept things consistent, so we’re getting customers the right resources, but we’re able to get it to them faster,” Williams said. “It takes away the worry of, did I say the right thing, did I keep it on brand, because it’s just all right there, and I don’t have to double check.”
The results after 12 months
CompanyCam has been using TextExpander since 2020, and continues to scale its time savings. In the last year, CompanyCam achieved:
- 583,124 Snippets expanded across 8 teams: Onboarding, CSM, sales, RevOps, support, and more
- 3,913 hours saved: The equivalent of two full-time employees’ annual time returned to the business
- 122 active users: All pulling from one library, in every tool they type in
- 5 → 11 onboarding managers: With all new hires using TextExpander to talk with customers in their first week