Customer Success | Pacific Boating

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Phillip Pitt

Managing Director

The waters around Sydney on Australia’s east coast are perfect for boating and a mecca for sailors. But life on the ocean wave doesn’t come cheap.

If you’re the owner of a luxury vessel, for instance, the annual upkeep can be 15% of its initial purchase price, which can easily be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. That can mean your expensive investment is left bobbing on its mooring for more time than you would like, if personal and business commitments keep you away from your boat.

So Pacific Boating’s membership scheme, which lets you book a boat just when you need it, is a very attractive proposition for anyone wanting to get out on the water without breaking the bank. But members still demand a quality experience and Act! is the key to that.

Pacific Boating’s business has been built on delivering the highest levels of customer service, something they can only do with the right CRM system in place. “If we weren’t running Act!,” says managing director Phillip Pitt, “we wouldn’t be able to manage a database as extensive as ours.”

Another tremendous benefit of having every communication detailed in Act! is the way it helps us to recover overdue debts, because we have a complete history of each conversation with a customer, even if they try, no one can dispute the fees for long.

High customer service levels

Having started the company with just a couple of boats and no customers, Pacific Boating now has a fleet of 19 luxury sports cruisers and around 800 members. All are given an allowance of 300 points that they draw against each time they take a boat out. That means they can spend at least 20 days out on the water at a fraction of the cost of owning their own boat.

While managing bookings and points is done through a dedicated system that Phillip calls ‘The Bridge’, all interactions with staff, suppliers and, of course, existing and prospective members, are recorded in Act!.

So, along with all contact information, there’s also a record of every call, email or SMS message received or made by any of the team. In total, that amounts to a database of about 20,000 records.

A complete contact history

Having such a detailed history is something Phillip values greatly. “I’m always going into Act! to make sure we’re consistently following up everyone we should be, and at the right times. Act! certainly allows us to be much more efficient in the way we follow up on leads and potential members,” he says.

“Another tremendous benefit of having every communication detailed in Act! is the way it helps us to recover overdue debts,” says Phillip. “Because we have a complete history of each conversation with a customer, even if they try, no one can dispute the fees for long.”

“Another big thing for us is the way Act! lets us plan tasks, so we can be sure we do what we said we would for our customers. That means we’re able to consistently deliver the highest levels of customer service.”

If we weren’t running Act!, we wouldn’t be able to manage a database as extensive as ours.

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Perfect for membership businesses

Currently, 19 staff use Act!. Mostly they are in the sales and customer relations teams, though others in finance and management also make use of the system.

While Phillip had used Salesforce at another company, he’s found Act! much less complicated and far easier to use. Phillip and his sales manager now know the system so well that they can tweak the system or introduce new staff to it as needed.

Pacific Boating’s walk on, walk off business model is a perfect example of how Act! has the power and flexibility to help businesses thrive in an increasingly subscription-focused membership economy.

Key Takeaways

Pacific Boating uses Act! to capture and detail every relationship with existing and would-be members, as well as suppliers and staff. In all, Act! comfortably handles over 20,000 records.
Because they have a complete history of every conversation with customers, should there be any dispute over fees it can be quickly resolved. That enables the company to keep bad debts under control.
Pacific Boating’s success is based on delivering great customer service, so they need a CRM that provides them with a clear picture of what they need to do for each member. Act! gives them that.
Because it’s so easy to use, Act! is a great fit for a smaller, growing business like Pacific Boating that needs a cost-effective yet powerful CRM solution that does the job without complication and fuss.

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About Act!

With proven CRM and powerful Marketing Automation, the possibilities are limitless. Act! provides the ultimate toolset to build relationships, maximise engagement, and drive business growth.

Act! helps keep business buoyant for boat firm