[ryanchan001]

Sure! So here's the most common use case

Employee A notices that there's a broken piece of equipment and wants to submit a work request. This is typically someone who is not involved in the day to day maintenance of the facility. Instead this is normally a employee, cashier, executive, marketing, operator, etc.

For companies that have a lot of employees, we provide them with a dedicated URL, what we call their "Company Request Portal", to submit work requests. So, like you said, they don't need to create an UpKeep account for every single user which would be super prohibitive. Instead they take this link and either embed that web-page in their company website, or have that link saved somewhere all employees know where they can submit a work request.

Regardless of whether the request was made via the "portal" or through the application, the tickets get funneled into UpKeep. It sends a notification to the "Admin" of the group which then has the option to "Approve" or "Reject" the request. When they approve it, they are typically assigning the work order to one of the their maintenance technicians. When the maintenance technician updates a work order, both the admin and the requester are notified about the new status of the request :)

[alberth]

Follow-ups questions:

1. How do companies educate their employee base on where this portal is? I imagine this is something that many employees will never use in their entire lifetime at a company.

1b. Isnt is more intuitive for an employee to simply call their helpdesk and report a maintenance issue. Shouldnt the focus of your product be to have help desk employees submit the work request on behalf of Employee A? Since I imagine most employees are just conditioned to call their help desk for any type of issue they have. In which case, now you'll have to compete against competitors like ServiceNow who dominates in help desk software.

Edit:

Please don't take this as me hating on your product. I don't. Quite the opposite. I'm just really fascinated by what your created. Hope you succeed and interested in reading your response.

[ryanchan001]

Thanks and don't worry 1 bit! I love this conversation and the insightful questions you are asking.

1 - Email blast! And it depends on the type of company. If you are a property management company with lots of employees you're right a lot of people won't use it. Then UpKeep becomes a more internally facing tool for admins to enter in requests and dispatch jobs out. BUT if you are a maintenance heavy company (industrial, manufacturing, etc) you are used to submitting work requests and tickets in every single day.

1b - Yes! So basically the requester normally has the most information. If they can take a picture and send it in with the work order, it is soooo much more descriptive and helpful to the admin user. They can also call it in, and UpKeep works in both ways. But it adds additional overhead to the admin users to be manning the phones at all times.

At the end of the day, UpKeep works in both scenarios and it really depends on the workflow of the company! :)

[WhiteOwlLion]

If someone calls, you can pretend to be a requestor submit a service request on the caller's behalf using his/her e-mail and phone you ask over the phone.

The confirmation e-mail can reinforce:

1) check request status online 2) create new requests online

Customers that prefer to call will continue to call, but those that prefer the portal will save you time and submit online.

When the business is closed, customer can submit non-emergencies online as well.