Air Animal Pet Movers Gives Its Business a Boost

Air Animal Pet Movers is accustomed to making the improbable possible, says its founder, Walter Woolf. Two years ago, the company was asked to retrieve a dog left in Tripoli, Libya, after its owner was forced to evacuate during the Arab Spring. "The owner said, 'If you can't do it, I understand,'" recalls Woolf. "Of course it wasn't easy, but we did it."

Air Animal arranged to have the Yorkie taken across the Tunisian border in the middle of the night to be flown from Tunis to London to Orlando, Fla., and delivered to Air Animal's headquarters in Tampa. "The first thing we did was scan the dog's microchip to make sure it was the same dog," says Woolf, a veterinarian, who then flew with the Yorkie to personally deliver it to its family, which had recently moved to Cancun, Mexico.

Taking a pet across state lines, not to mention oceans, is no simple task. Air Animal Pet Movers has been helping owners transport dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, and many other animals since 1977.

The staff, which used a paper-based recordkeeping system, was becoming overwhelmed by a steady increase in requests for prices and other information. "When three of us provided quotes to the same prospect, we knew we had to make a change," according to Woolf.

Four years ago, Air Animal started using GoldMine's CRM solution and upgraded to its Premium Edition software in 2011. The Premium Edition, Woolf notes, lets his staff "easily pull up reports from a dashboard and track every interaction with all of our clients."

It also allows staff members to provide detailed price estimates more quickly.

When prospects click on "I'm Ready for an Estimate" on the Air Animal Web site, they are taken to an online form where they can tell the company about their needs. The form's fields match up with GoldMine's system and immediately create a new contact record in the CRM application. Fields such as the prospect's location, type of move (personal, corporate, or government), and how he or she heard about Air Animal direct the lead to the appropriate team member. GoldMine also provides custom templates so that Air Animal can deliver personalized communications to clients with names and other data populating predefined fields.

Customers would previously have to wait from one to three days to receive a response to their quote request. Air Animal employees can now process three times as many estimates per hour as they had previously been able to, and respond within the same business day, according to Woolf.

"We've ramped up our ability to get out estimates, which is important in a time when many people expect immediate answers from businesses," Woolf says.

GoldMine reduces the chances that data errors will occur by letting employees enter the data once and distribute it to the necessary areas. Air Animal maintains a database of animal entry requirements for more than 165 countries.

GoldMine helps relocation specialists ensure that all the tasks are completed, from scheduling flights to arranging pet boarding to lining up required international documents. The company also sets reminder alerts to ensure the projects are completed on time.

When Woolf is on the road, he keeps track of active jobs with GoldMine Mobile on his iPad. Any updates he makes are synched with the main office. Woolf declined to share exact sales figures, but said that with GoldMine, Air Animal saw its strongest sales rate in more than three decades in 2011. At the time this article was written, it expected to top that rate by 10 percent at the end of 2012.

"GoldMine has given us the tools we need to work in the environment we're working in today," Woolf says.

The Payoff

Since implementing GoldMine’s Premium Edition software, Air Animal Pet Movers:

• has tripled the number of quote estimates processed within an hour;
• has reduced its response time from 3 days to the same day; and
• is on track to top its sales rate by 10 percent at the end of 2012.

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