Billdr CEO Bertrand Nembot was in college and tried to flip a house. He discovered how difficult the process was to renovate firsthand when he lost money on the flip. After school, he spearheaded Uber’s launch in different cities around the world. Then he returned to his hometown of Montreal to start his own business. These experiences combined inspired the initial concept of Billdr.
Billdr provides a managed home renovation marketplace that matches homeowner customers with vetted contractors. Their team can handle everything from design and architectural plans to quotes and project management. “Our ultimate goal is to make renovation simple and accessible to everyone,” says Raphael Sammut, General Manager at Billdr.
“OpenPhone is an attractive option to get started fast and build incrementally as you scale. It’s a no-brainer for startups.”
Raphael Sammut
Before using OpenPhone, Billdr’s marketplace was available in one city (Montreal). One team member managed all the operations. However, as their team grew, their new operations manager didn’t have visibility into communication between internal and external stakeholders. His teammates used their personal phones to interact with customers and contractors.
“You can imagine how clunky that was,” Raphael says.
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Raphael Sammut
When Raphael joined Billdr in March 2021, he was tasked with launching Billdr’s expansion to the Toronto market. Raphael quickly identified the need to have a business phone system.
“With personal phones, things sometimes get lost and our team had no way to coordinate or collaborate effectively,” Raphael says. “There was no record to know who called who. They also had hundreds of business contacts that had their personal numbers.
”Raphael saw they needed a phone system that allowed them to share numbers and contacts. And as Billdr looked to scale, the use of IVR, call routing, and business hours as well.
“Luckily, I saw OpenPhone when I was looking for a single number that customers can call to reach any of our markets,” Raphael says.
Now, Billdr has a toll-free North American number anyone in the U.S. and Canada can call — and as an added benefit, without paying long-distance fees. The toll-free number includes a phone menu where callers can select their city and get routed to one of Billdr's local operations teams. “This has become indispensable for us,” says Raphael.
When a prospect calls Billdr, one of their representatives qualifies the lead over the phone through a series of questions while also establishing the relationship. From that initial call, Billdr can arrange an onsite visit. Then schedule a follow-up call with their new customer.
Raphael notes, “Now customers have a single number they can use to communicate with us. We have hundreds of leads and current customers right now. There’s no way we could have done that before.”
All their interactions with leads and customers are available in OpenPhone and HubSpot through OpenPhone’s HubSpot integration. “It just makes it so much easier. You don’t have to log calls or take detailed notes. If you want to see the communication history with any client, you can simply review the thread,” says Raphael.
Billdr also uses call recording to keep teammates on the same page as they continue conversations with clients – without having an imperfect overview from the person who took the call. “OpenPhone is the perfect solution to allow us to communicate and collaborate effectively.”
Since adding OpenPhone into their tech stack, Billdr now operates in Chicago. “New market expansion is now straightforward. We add a new number and change a few phone settings and that’s it. It only takes five minutes to be able to scale our phone system,” says Raphael.
Adding team members to a market’s local number is also simple. Anyone at Billdr can call and text using the local number through shared numbers.
“OpenPhone enables us to do so much. I can’t imagine how we would operate without OpenPhone, but it would be less organized and we’d have no visibility on the communication trail,” Raphael says.
As Billdr expands to more markets, OpenPhone will be one of the driving forces in their tech stack. Raphael says, “Take a look at OpenPhone if you want a scalable solution and don’t want to spend thousands of dollars to contract out the creation of an IVR. OpenPhone is an attractive option to get started fast and build incrementally as you scale. It’s a no-brainer for startups.”
OpenPhone enables Billdr to scale and expand its communications to multiple markets easily.
Join thousands of businesses already using OpenPhone to communicate better with their customers.
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OpenPhone was issued a successful SOC 2 report and is actively monitored by Vanta.