Tortoise Storage: Moved in before the coffee is cool enough to drink
John Holcroft
Director
UK
Company overview
Established in 2019, Tortoise Storage Limited operates two self-storage facilities in the UK. Their Preston location features an indoor facility with 120 storage units, while their Liverpool site offers 250 outdoor container units. With the combined capacity across both locations, Tortoise has built a strong presence in Northwest England’s self-storage market.
How did you come across our self-storage software?
The previous software we were using was quite slow and there were some reliability issues. It was particularly embarrassing when customers were in front of you and you were trying to either move them in or do something simple, like add their phone number to the system. You’d be sat, waiting for the system to load while they were growing increasingly impatient in front of you and wondering what the hold up was! There was also a lack of flexibility in terms of being able to use the software remotely, or on different devices. That’s what prompted us to start looking at other options.
We came to one of the UK trade shows to find a better fit for our needs and spoke to a few different software companies. From there, we took our time to weigh up all our choices and felt that Kinnovis was the best fit for us.
Are there any Kinnovis features that have stood out for you?
The online booking platform, along with the customer portal, have both been big time-savers. Now customers can log on themselves and do things like view their invoices, change their card details, etc., obviously it saves the staff time by not having to send them over manually.
The general speed of the Kinnovis software is also a big plus. It’s incredibly quick, everything loads fast and it’s easy to use too. Despite the live chat support and training options being useful to have, we’ve not really needed to use them! It’s so easy to work out, our team have done a great job of getting set up and working it out for themselves! They’re really happy that we’ve moved over and it’s making their lives much easier.
It’s better for our walk-in customers as well, because before they’d have to sit there for 15-20 minutes while everything was set up. Now, they sit down and before their coffee is even cool enough to drink they’re off out the door because the move-in has been sorted so quickly.
The Site Map is incredibly intuitive and easy to set up. It’s very simple to understand and it’s interactive so it’s a good way of reserving units and seeing what’s available. Being able to use it on your phone or iPad, you can walk around the site while you’re showing somebody around and have a view in real time which units are available and how much they are. There’s no having to go back and forth to the office and say, oh, let me check what sizes we have. It’s quite often we’ll get customers coming in, wanting to look at a certain size and then they’ll say “Oh, that’s too small, have you got a bigger one?”. With the facility map, you can quite easily view it on your phone and work it out in front of them.
The email integration as well is incredibly simple. Having the drag-and-drop email creator, you can quite easily make your own emails and then schedule them, which works well. Especially in combination with the invoicing which is very clear and obvious for both the customers and for us. Being able to filter the invoices by their status, to find those that are outstanding is incredibly simple and makes it easy to chase payments.
How did you find the onboarding and customer support from Kinnovis?
The onboarding experience was good, we were assigned our Project Manager and he helped us to move everything over from our previous software. He was very helpful, whenever we emailed him, he replied almost immediately and we had a link to his calendar to organise video calls and discuss certain topics. He sorted everything for us and made our lives much easier.
Switching over all our existing customers also went really well. It could have been a stressful experience, but you don’t want to make mistakes with hundreds of existing customers and their payments! But we’ve had no resistance from any of our older customers and the set up is better for anyone new.
“It feels as if we’re one team, trying to build the best solution together.”
Now that we’re up and running, having customer support within the dashboard, where you can ask for help and get a quick response, has also been helpful. With our previous software, we had to work around their availability. You’d phone them and there would be long hold times and you’d be passed on from person-to-person. The customer support is much better with Kinnovis.
Additionally, I’ve spoken directly with members of the Kinnovis team about certain features and suggestions which you’ve taken on board and I can see, even in a short period of time, they’ve actually been implemented – which means a lot. It’s really good how easy it is to speak to people in Kinnovis and have your opinions listened to.
Who do you think would benefit the most from using Kinnovis?
It feels like a bit of a cop-out to say anyone, but it’s probably true. I would definitely say, if you’re a family business with a couple of sites, it’s worked extremely well for us. It’s incredibly easy to set up and it’s made our lives so much simpler. The changeover was also a lot less difficult than we thought!
Looking to switch?
Our team can help you along every step of the way. Get in touch to find out how we can make your migration seamless.
