Description
Andy Humphrey: Hey, what's up, my friends? Welcome back to another episode of the Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm your host, Andy Humphrey. Today, I'm going to share with you—how do I describe this?
Andy Humphrey: A question that came into Sprinkler Supply Store for me that turns out to be, I think, some really relevant content to discuss with you guys. And I think probably most of you could relate to this question that the homeowner has. And, I wanted to tie this together in a couple of ways. Number 1, we're having a lot of success, and we have had a lot of success with software on our e-commerce site called LeadFerno. L-E-A-D F-E-R-N-O, LeadFerno, and LeadFerno is a texting tool that acts like web chat.
Andy Humphrey: And so what happens is there's a little pop-up, which obviously can be annoying at times, that, on the website, to reach us, to reach customer service, but instead of chatting there, it redirects through the phone so you can use your phone and the text message feature or messenger to communicate with us. And personally, I wish more sites used this because I would say half the time when I'm on some other website using the chat feature, you know, I'm waiting for someone, let's say, for the chat to get back to me. So I have another tab open, and I don't have my volume up. And then I get distracted, and then 30 minutes go by.
Andy Humphrey: And I think, oh, shoot. I had a live chat going. I forgot about it. I go back to the tab. And then the chat has ended because I didn't respond, and it just seems like web chat is good if the other person is right there and they're chatting with you quickly. But that's not always the case.
Andy Humphrey: Sometimes the chat agents have to go and look something up or tell you to hold, and sometimes you have to leave your desk. You just can't sit there on chat. And so what we have found is that by using the phone as the texting tool, which it's very good at, then people can text wherever they are. You know what? If you gotta get up and get in your car and drive somewhere else, we can still text with you because you have your text device in your pocket instead of having to sit at your computer.
Andy Humphrey: It's been a great way for people to send us pictures. "Hey, I need a replacement diaphragm for this valve. I don't know what valve this is. Okay, great. Send us a picture." And so LeadFerno has been an amazing tool for communicating with our customers because it doesn't require them to be locked to their computer screen. They can text through their phone. They can also save the number and text us any time.
Andy Humphrey: And if you'd like to try this, go to sprinklersupplystore.com. It'll pop right up, send us a message, and that will come into our text service, which you can either manage through a web browser, or you can put the app right on your phone. Then you can text back and forth with your customer. And I think that there are probably some parallels that if you have, you could be a solo entrepreneur in the irrigation industry, and maybe that would work. But there might be some parallels for capturing leads through the website and getting back to people quickly, via LeadFerno. So check it out and, you know, give it a try.
Andy Humphrey: This is not sponsored by LeadFerno. I just thought I would share because the topic for today, which is the question that this homeowner from Houston had—the inquiry came in through LeadFerno. So that's how we actually captured this. And I just thought that it would be a pretty fun way for me, specifically not to have to dream up new content to share with you. So this is a real customer inquiry that I'm going to read to you right now.
Andy Humphrey: Actually, what I'm going to do is have an AI voice read this out loud so that it doesn't sound like me, and then we can talk about the response. So I'm going to roll the intro here, and then we'll get right into this question coming in from Roger in Houston. If you're old or new, who des