The challenge

As an entrepreneur, Phillip Batch, owner of a Mickelberry Ice Cream location (a franchisee of Cold Stone Creamery) in the Greater Seattle area, was always looking for tools to give his growing business an edge. As such, he explored various solutions to facilitate better communication and optimize his team’s schedule.

 

From a communication standpoint, they -- like many small businesses -- relied on SMS as their primary form of communication, but this fell well short of his needs as a business owner. Phillip explained, “At first we were relying on text messages, and that was problematic. I didn’t have any visibility into the conversations that were happening within my organization. It was far too easy for there to be a group text chain that I was left off of, and if things turned negative or if there was griping, I would have no way of knowing.”

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In pursuit of a better solution, Phillip sought a tool that promised to solve both the communication and scheduling needs of his team. Phillip said, “I was looking for a single piece of software that we would use for scheduling and communication. We tried another tool that promised scheduling with integrated communication for a month, but my team wasn’t happy with it. It didn’t work nearly as well from a communication standpoint. And I need the team to be happy -- and actually use it -- and the 'newsfeed' in this product didn’t cut it.”

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The solution

After a continued search for a rich communication tool that could be that single place for all of the team to stay up-to-date, Phillip and his management team ultimately decided to adopt Crew. Immediately, they saw it was the right tool for the business; not only did Phillip have unprecedented visibility, but the team loved using Crew, found it intuitive, and as a result, rapidly got on-board.

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“Crew has really helped me to keep a pulse on the team. It allows me to know what’s going well and allows me to take action if things aren’t going in the right direction or if there is negative sentiment.”

Phillip Batch, Owner

Mickelberry Ice Cream 

 

They take advantage of all of the communication functionality that Crew offers and also use it as a way to recognize the outstanding work of individual employees. Phillip credits Crew’s Gold Stars with increasing employee engagement and keeping everyone on the same page. Phillip said, “The team loves Gold Stars -- that’s been a great tool for us. Overall Crew really helps create cohesion between the team which is critical to any business.”

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Impact

Phillip and team have benefited tremendously from having the entire company connected on Crew. In addition to creating a more cohesive culture, it’s allowed Phillip to have much more insight into the team and what’s happening day-to-day.

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With his communication needs solved, their team went in search of a robust scheduling tool that would complement Crew. They discovered that When I Work was deeply integrated with Crew and adopted that as their scheduling solution. With the schedule from When I Work automatically integrated into Crew, they found they got the “all-in-one” solution they were looking for; team members could get both scheduling and communications in the Crew app -- which they’ve come to rely on as their go-to information source.