Rightio Chief Commercial Officer Julian Dawes knows a thing or two about business growth. The Oldbury-based Rightio has become one of the UK’s leading home repair specialists. Facilitating emergency household repairs throughout the mainland UK, Rightio prides itself on matching skilled, trustworthy engineers with the households that need them.
| Current yearly processing value through Square | £7 million |
| Square adoption rate | 95% of transactions are processed through Square |
| Productivity uplift due to Square integrations | +30% |
Like many ambitious SMEs, Rightio found that with business growth comes a new set of challenges. Especially against the backdrop of a turbulent economy, where customers are keen to squeeze as much value as possible out of every pound and maintaining cash flow can feel like an uphill struggle. The company’s growth has been contingent on “being able to offer that quality, rapid response at an affordable price”.
Let’s take a look at their journey.
Key challenges and how Square offered solutions
- Cash flow maintenance: Rightio initially accepted payments from customers via cash or cheque which, inevitably, led to cash flow bottlenecks while waiting for cheques to clear or cash deposits to be made. Even the alternative payment partners that the company courted insisted on holding onto customer payments for 3-5 days.
With Square, Rightio is able to enjoy next-business-day payments as standard.
- Chargebacks: Rightio has unfortunately encountered fraudulent activities in the past, e.g. counterfeit chargebacks. Square’s payment solutions and £0 chargeback fees have helped the company to prevent revenue loss through inauthentic chargebacks.
- Customer experience: Amid an economic downturn, cost is a major deciding factor for Rightio’s customers. While they demand a speedy resolution to household emergencies and the reassurance that comes with the presence of a skilled professional, they also want excellent value for money. A frictionless payment experience helps to improve the value proposition in the eyes of the customer, with the ability to break down repair costs into interest-free payments. Furthermore, Rightio is planning to implement a maintenance subscription model to help offset the cost of emergency repairs in a budget-friendly way.
- Building brand trust and loyalty: The team at Rightio are extremely sensitive to the vulnerable nature of their customer base. Being able to earn their trust and loyalty means delivering excellent service at great value for money in a spirit of full transparency. Square has provided the rates to keep prices reasonable without impinging on profit margin while its API has empowered Rightio to build a customer portal that provides greater control and transparency for the customer.
- Engineers accepting payments: Prior to adopting Square, Julian admits that some of Rightio’s subcontracted engineers were uncomfortable discussing payments or handling cash and cheques. Using Square terminals has helped to eliminate this topic on the part of engineers, it is also assisting in the prevention of missed payments through poor mobile reception via Offline Payments.
Implementation and training
Rightio found it easy to make training with Square’s POS solutions an integral part of the onboarding process for subcontracted engineers. Here, engineers come to the West Midlands-based office, meet the team and get to grips with the technology that they will be using, including Square’s POS solutions.
Julian told us that engineers were comfortable and confident enough with Square solutions, to be field-ready in “typically about an hour or so”.
| Square Game Changers |
|---|
| Next-business day payments |
| £0 chargeback fees |
| Split large customer transactions with 0% interest-free payment options through Clearpay |
| API integrations |
Square’s impact on business operations
Rightio has big plans for the future, and working with Square has helped to place them on the right path.
“We put about £7 million through Square a year at the moment… But we plan to grow by 50% in the next three years”.
– Julian Dawes, Chief Commercial Officer, Rightio
Here are some of the ways in which Square has helped propel Rightio along the path to growth despite the challenging economic climate:
30+% boost in productivity
“My background is in manufacturing,” Julian told us. “I come from high value, high volume manufacturing in automotive and aerospace. And one of my principal skill sets is driving waste out. So anything that is non-value added I don’t want in the business”.
Making valuable business decisions and utilising Square’s suite of business solutions has made Rightio’s operations much more efficient. With less processing, admin and time spent on cash payments, storage and deposits, the company has managed to improve its productivity by around a third.
“Tech-based solutions have improved our productivity by at least 30% over the last few years”
– Julian Dawes, Chief Commercial Officer, Rightio
“It’s about how easy we are to do business with, if we can make it so easy for the customers to transact with us, then all of that old-style chasing people up for payments or waiting for the cheque to come in, or having to send somebody around to pick up some cash. All that’s just gone!”
Improved customer experience
Like all savvy SMEs, Rightio understands the relationship between the customer experience and business growth. The nature of their business means that customers tend to approach the team when they are at their most vulnerable, dealing with a home emergency in need of urgent repair. Ensuring a positive result in such circumstances means not only delivering an excellent repair and helping to guide the customer to a “safe” state, but also ensuring that they feel they are paying a fair and transparent price.
Using Square’s payment and reporting solutions have enabled the team to ensure that their prices remain competitive yet profitable. With Square’s API, the team has created an integrated customer portal to ensure transparency, with plans to deliver a repair subscription service to the UK market in the future. In the meantime, however, the team has leveraged Clearpay integration to help customers split the cost of substantial repairs with 0% interest.
Improved cash flow and financial security
Solutions like Clearpay don’t just help Rightio’s customers with their cash flow, they help Rightio with their own, as Clearpay provides Rightio with the full value of a transaction rather than waiting for the customer’s installments. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of improving business cash flow, as Square offers next-business-day payments as standard with competitive transaction rates.
Since the start of their journey with Square six years ago, the company has enjoyed a 95% adoption rate. This has not only improved cash flow but also improved financial security as the company avoids the delay and inherent security risk in storing, transporting and processing cash deposits.
Rightio is one of millions of businesses around the world that trust Square with its payments, reporting and online sales. We can’t wait to show you what our solutions can do for your business. Chat to our sales team to learn more:
