America Sober CRM Case Study

The AmericaSober SaaS project has started in 2020 as a solution for a relatively small network of sober houses as a simple CRM system for the management of guests in several houses. A sober house is a facility, where people striving for a sober life could live for some time to stay away from any temptation of theirs. Strict rules, proper medication, regular drug tests. Every guest makes a deliberate decision to stay there, to pay for housing, and to stay for some time.

At the start, our task, along with developing a modern and convenient website, was to create a simple though efficient CRM system to manage everything that goes in and out of the sober houses. Guests come and go, and the facilities need efficient tracking and logging of all visitors, their balances, personal preferences, and so on.

 

We set all the necessary processes, payment, and application automation. But in general, CRM has limited functionality – only the necessary sections for settlement. But then, step by step, additional functions were added. Some for more clarity, some for convenience, and some for integration of side services.

As a result, as one of our colleagues put it:

“We were building a raft for swimming in a pond, and we ended building up an ocean liner to cross the Atlantic”

Our goal was to create a comprehensive and highly detailed CRM not only for company managers but also for customers. A sober house is a narrow niche, so, the system we’ve built is oriented toward this specific type of business. Our goal was to create a product, that will meet all the needs of sober housing. 

 

Challenges

Rebuild and adapt existing functionality
The already created system was tailored for the network of sober houses in Greater Boston and Cape Cod. Some functionality was naturally unscalable for a bigger system.

Create additional functions the large business might need
The initial version of CRM had limited functionality, gathering only general information about guests of sober houses – names, mail, phone numbers, general health and habit info, etc.

Combine everything, make every element work perfectly, and share information correctly with other elements.
In such a big system with a lot of variables, important, when one change will be correctly displayed in all the respective sections.

 

Solutions

As we already had a foundation of the system, there was no need to reinvent the main conception. We defined a full list of necessary functions, that sober houses require for their job.

Easy to compare, how much we’ve changed since the original America Sober case, just to look at the picture on the left.

Here is the side menu from the first product’s version and the side menu we have now. Since 2020, we have doubled the number of features in our CRM.

 

 

  • Adding and editing the locations:

    In the original CRM, there were only 4 locations of 4 sober houses in Boston. Now there is a convenient form for creating a new (or editing the existed) location, where you can specify the number of rooms, prices, amenities, managers, and so on.

  • Detailed application forms:

    We improved and expanded the application form, where the guest can type in more than just basic personal information (name, date of birth, personal and emergency contacts) but also the guest’s individual characteristics (employment, drug-related info, medications taken). Later, this application form will display all the changes, drug tests, medication use, the guest’s payments, comments, and possible incidents.

  • Flexible payment system:

    CRM has plenty of payment method options. You can adjust the payment registration to the guest’s personal situation. Online payments, cash, checks, state subsidy, credit – various payment methods are available. Various options of billable terms – manual, weekly, monthly, or partial – choose the relevant option for your guest.
    Also, all the data about the last payments of certain guests will be stored and automatically reattached to the guest’s profile in case of returning or after a long delay.

  • Automated invoice generation:

    We designed a convenient feature for the automated sending of the necessary invoices to guests or partners, scheduled payments, referral payout, or refunds.

  • All info on one dashboard:

    All the financial information of all your guests is summarized and displayed on the CRM’s main screen dashboard. Total income, total outcome, debts, and balance activity of each of your locations are displayed in the general report on the dashboard.

  • Medical logs

    We designed a section for medical records – a section for storing the prescription documents and for logging every case of medication usage.

  • Drug-related info and tests

    As we are talking about a sober lifestyle, every guest has a unique predisposition, which can be specified in the application form. While staying in the sober house, each guest should strictly follow the rules – e.g., avoid temptations, do not provoke others, and get tested regularly. In AS CRM, you can add the regular drug test results to the guest’s personal card, and attach the document.

  • Incidents registration

    We are all living people, and we all make mistakes. From a broken window to a loud quarrel or even a fight – each incident can be registered, described, and certified with the personal signatures of staff and witnesses in the system. All the participants will get a note on their personal cards and could suffer disciplinary or monetary penalties.

  • Red list

    Those, who can’t learn from their mistakes, could be added to the red list in the relevant section. The record could be accompanied by public and non-public comments. Banned guests won’t be allowed to stay in any of the sober houses, registered in our system. Because the notes about red-listed ones are available for every user of the AS CRM. Identification of the banned person is carried out according to one of four parameters – full name, date of birth, phone, or email.

  • Referrals and partners

    A sober house is a business, hence every possibility to attract the potential client is good for business, though such type of. People who struggle for a sober life do not always decide to stay in a sober house by themselves. Friends, relatives, or group meeting organizers could recommend a certain sober house to a person and get some revenue as a reward. For such occasions, we designed a feature for registration and logging all the partners’ activities and accounting bonus payments.

  • Promo codes

    You can always provide some discounts to attract the customers – the promo code section allows for creating custom discounts for special occasions.

  • Donation

    As a referral, you can easily donate your revenue to any sober house, sober living association, or certain guest deposit account in a sober house.

  • Newsletters

    Feature for sending pre-designed letters to different customizable selections of recipients. Holiday greetings, information notices, warnings, etc.

Technologies

We created a product on technologies that allow us to achieve high speed and availability of support

 

Implementation

We created a full-fledged system, that is an easy way to manage all the business activity of your sober house in one centralized system. All the aspects of a guest’s stay in your establishment will be carefully collected with the minimum time spent and will always be available in the relevant sections with a convenient and understandable interface. General information about balance status, recent guests, and other essential reports you will get from a single dashboard. 

Sober housing is a narrow niche, that combines a lot of different types of business and services. So, usually, sober living homes should use several pieces of software for logging all business activity. America Sober CRM is designed and developed as a ready-to-use solution for any sober living business. All the functionality of AS CRM suits any size company, perfectly calibrated for all its needs. America Sober CRM is a tool for express and comprehensive digitalization of your business. Convenient and well-adjusted system for adding, editing, and analyzing data about each customer of your sober house(s). If you want to take a test drive of our system and see how the system suits your company. Just set up a call, and we will arrange everything.

Prospects

America Sober CRM is a ready-to-use product, and it’s already a fully-functional system you can begin to work with right now. But it doesn’t mean, that we stopped developing it. We plan to add a lot of additional tools in the nearest time, and even more useful functions, that we don’t even think about yet.

First and foremost, we plan to connect America Sober CRM with National Sober Living Association (NSLA) system. NSLA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting excellence, support, certification, inspection, operation/management, and training for 12 Steps, abstinence-based sober living homes, and Recovery Centers in the USA. So, the communication with such a US-wide association obviously will ease the life of sober houses. 

We plan to add the group meeting section for logs and notes because regular group meetings are an essential part of a sober lifestyle and rehabilitation. For the most effective physical and psychological rehab, such records could be useful.

In addition, we plan to add some small useful tools. For example, an interactive map with GPS locations of sober houses in our system, and business invoices generating section for CRM users in case they are working with some intermediary or contractors.