How one simple software solution became this agriculture startup’s secret weapon

When you think about farming, you probably picture people out on the land, using their hands, tools and heavy machinery. Data and analytics may not spring readily to mind, but AgriWebb is working hard to change that.

Read on to find out how, with the help of cloud-based call centre software Aircall, this Aussie tech startup is turning sales and customer support into a fine art. 

Farming by numbers

The agricultural industry was ripe for revolution when AgriWebb swept onto the scene in 2014. In fact, as Director of Sales Josh Collins explains, their main competitors back then were pencil and paper. 

But, as he points out, the world’s population is expected to increase by three billion over the next 30 years, which means we’ll need to up global food production by 50%. And that’s without creating more farmland, since we desperately need to halt and reduce deforestation. 

Over the same time period, if we’re going to meet emissions targets, we also need to slash farming’s carbon footprint by a whopping 70%. That’s a lot to tackle with pencil and paper. 

Enter AgriWebb, the Aussie tech startup that’s giving farmers the insights they need to make more-informed choices.

It’s about helping them reduce their carbon emissions, Collins says, “But at the same time, it’s about helping them run a profitable business, to increase their growing output and our ability to feed a growing population.”

Discover why more and more businesses like AgriWebb are adopting Aircall as their cloud-telephony solution of choice.

A need for transparency

When Collins joined the AgriWebb team back in its early days, one of the first things he did was look to digitise their calling systems with Aircall.

“We came from the world where there was a common mobile phone that got thrown around the office for support staff, and the sales folks all had their own phones, so there was no transparency,” he says. “If someone said they did 30 calls that day in the sales environment, you had to believe them.”

Of course, this was never going to fly in a company whose bread and butter is data and analytics. 

“What we needed to do was solve the gap of transparency,” Collins explains. “How many phone calls did we make, who made them, and how long were we on the phone for?” 

Why Aircall? 

After shopping around, Collins decided Aircall was simply the best VoIP (voice over internet protocol) product in the market for two reasons. 

“One, they have a really sound platform,” he says. “In terms of the call drops, call quality and the basic functionality of a phone that has data behind it we can track, they just do that better than anyone else.”

“And secondly, they have the best ecosystem. So, we’ve integrated our CRM, Salesforce, as well as Intercom, Gong, and a data lake called Snowflake.”

In addition to Aircall’s in-depth analytics capabilities, its open API allows AgriWebb to pull data into Snowflake for even more granular insights. 

“In Snowflake, we can access different analytics around the type of conversations we’re having, who we’re having them with, and how much it costs to have them,” Collins says.

On cloud nine

Being a tech company, AgriWebb was already fully cloud-based by the time the pandemic hit, which made working from home a quick and easy transition. 

“We closed the office on Friday and it was business as usual on Monday, while the whole world was melting down around us,” Collins says.

Their expansion into the US and UK markets was similarly seamless, thanks to their digital-based operations giving them the resilience and agility to adapt and grow, even in challenging times. 

“When we launched in the UK back in 2018, we had a new staff member set up with routing and even an overflow of calls back into our Australian team in less than an hour,” Collins says. “So that was a huge win.

“And same again for the US — it was just really, really seamless. We rolled into the US in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic, which was quite literally amazing. When most businesses were restricting wherever they could, conserving costs and really having to slow down operation, we were speeding right the way through COVID and lockdown because of the fact we could continue to grow.”

Forever fine-tuning

As a startup, every second of call-time counts, Collins says, so being able to analyse their sales team’s dollars-per-minute really helps refine their technique. In fact, thanks to Aircall’s integration with Intercom, they’ve lowered their total costs per call from just under $60 down to less than $8.

Using Aircall also means AgriWebb’s support team can answer calls with the customer’s name and history at their fingertips, creating a real personal connection. This makes all the difference to farmers, who tend to be on friendly and familiar terms with their neighbours and local suppliers. 

As Collins puts it, “Using Aircall has helped us go from managing 12,000-odd customers to making that individual feel like they’re the only customer in the business that we care about.”