Slingshot, a customer engagement and sales service platform for pest control and home services providers, announced its 1 millionth customer interaction for 2020 and presented its product automation strategy in a virtual reveal event. The event featured guest speakers from partners and clients, including Voice for Pest, PestPac, PestRoutes, Briostack, Aptive Environmental and Certus Pest.

To meet the needs of an on-demand economy and the growth of its digital channels, Slingshot has launched an interactive voice response (IVR)-to-text and chatbot service to automate and speed up consumer interactions like scheduling and rescheduling services, processing payments, or even creating quotes for new customers.

“While the phone is still 70 percent to 90 percent of interactions for home services providers, text and chat have risen substantially, as more providers begin to incorporate these channels into their mix,” Slingshot CEO Taylor Olson said in a news release.

The announcement was made in a recorded event on Oct. 22 with panel discussions, which can be found here. Aptive Environmental and Certus Pest discussed how automation fits into their respective business strategies, and improves the customer experience. Olson also sat down with product experts from Slingshot’s integration partners at a roundtable to discuss automation in the pest industry.

During the event, Slingshot COO Jon Soldan reported that the Lehi, Utah-based company reached 1 million customer interactions for the year, as well as more than $25 million closed for Slingshot clients.

“What’s most important is that these numbers show that our clients are successful, and that’s what we care about most. As we marry the digital channels and meet customers where they are to provide value, we feel we have a fantastic strategy for 2021 and are so excited to share it with everyone,” Soldan said.

To wrap up the event, John Yates, Slingshot’s head of product, showcased the product growth this year — including a 40 percent decrease in call times when clients have integrated their customer relationship management (CRM) program.

“With a strong foundation based on strategic integrations with partners, we’re heavily investing in new breakthrough technology that will automatically send more conversations to a text-based channel, to drive first-contact resolution without needing to get a human involved. And we’re starting with bots,” he said.