With 31 offices across the U.S. and more than three decades of success, BelFlex is one of the country’s top staffing firms specializing in light industrial work. When BelFlex came on board with Sense, they were looking for an automation solution that could amplify their core values of service and people, while providing a more efficient experience from bottom to top.
“Instead of hiring another administrative employee at a local branch, we needed a way to use technology to reach out to candidates, get them through the onboarding process, and engage them through the entire candidate life cycle,” says Jay Clawson, VP of Technology at BelFlex.
Clawson evaluated all kinds of tech solutions, ultimately deciding that Sense was the best option for their needs. Having worked with other texting and email platforms, Clawson was pleased to find an automation tool that not only improved the experience for their talent, but also their internal teams.
Based on recent data, BelFlex has earned a contractor NPS of 65, an outstanding score in the light industrial space. To get there, they’ve used Sense to build out a sophisticated journey of touchpoints from first touch all the way through redeployment.
Clawson’s team has created a strategic blend of email and SMS to engage talent at just the right times. For example, they send a text the night before a contractor’s first day to remind them of important details, followed by a check-in during their first week to get a pulse on how things are going. At day seven and 14 into their assignment, contractors receive automated surveys to provide structured feedback, so their teams can get ahead of any potential issues early.
BelFlex can also now deploy specific campaigns based on client needs and trends, such as tackling troublesome dropoff rates. Through survey feedback and an interactive, automated approach, they’ve been able to identify the root cause of contractor issues and work with their clients to fix them. Their team has even begun to add Sense into their client presentations, sharing the wealth of data they’re able to collect and analyze on their behalf.
“Having all the products together — our texting, our automation engagement platform — it’s been ideal,” says Clawson. “This technology has definitely helped every single operations person in the company.”
Recruiters are thrilled to have a digital assistant in the Sense platform, and their success is showing through in the numbers. They’re seeing 30% higher responses rates than when they sent communication directly through their ATS, and they’re filling urgent positions faster than ever. In a recent referral push, their team generated an incredible 109 referrals from just three campaigns in two months.
And then there’s that sky-high NPS. Previously, BelFlex had only participated in the ClearlyRated “Best of Staffing” survey, but they now collect and analyze their own NPS data to determine contractor satisfaction — and the results have been fantastic. They’re engaging with contractors before and during their first weeks on the job, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, and checking in on how they can improve along the way.
“When you're consistently communicating with the candidate, they feel that ‘they care about me.’ And we truly do care about people,” says Clawson.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, BelFlex has taken advantage of Sense platforms for new ways of database automation, reaching out to their talent pool differently than they have before. They’re tapping into the vast amount of data in their ATS and layering Sense on top to supercharge their communication.
Clawson and his team have created specialized workflows to share their Covid-19 precautions, provide direct avenues for questions, and keep the lines of communication open in a quickly changing environment. As businesses reopen and orders rapidly return, they’ve used the platform to re-engage dormant candidates, building out simple email and SMS journeys to get in front of people quickly at a high volume.
“We’re running extremely lean right now. So, Sense has been a huge factor in getting in front of candidates during this pandemic,” says Clawson.
During the four months since launching their first re-engagement campaign, BelFlex made an exceptional 1,157 placements attributed to these new communications. In one particularly successful campaign, recruiters sent 2,660 automated emails via Sense, receiving 270 responses — 96 of which were interested in the position. In another recent re-engagement effort, BelFlex used SMS to activate dormant candidates in a handful of markets for which they’d been struggling to fill orders. Working with the Sense team, they strategized on a creative approach to reach 1500 candidates via text — while deftly avoiding carrier filtering — using a simple “Yes or No” prompt to generate incredible response rates. The results? BelFlex successfully placed 50 candidates in just three days — that’s an impressive 3% conversion rate, all thanks to smart automation.
Their recruiting and operations teams are making use of Sense’s myriad opportunities, from carefully layering text and email to strategically reaching out at key points in the talent journey. By skillfully leveraging the robust set of engagement tools alongside their existing data, BelFlex has been able to elevate their operations, even during a remarkably difficult time.
With a fully integrated engagement platform, the team at BelFlex is backed by advanced technology and a focused support team. They’ve started using Sense to accelerate their redeployment outreach, uncovering more cost-effective ways to fill positions from within their existing database.
They’re also excited to continue innovating as a Sense partner. As we evolve and grow our product offering, Clawson and his team at BelFlex are looking forward to the future of chatbots in staffing. Layered with Sense Engage and Messaging platforms, chatbots can act as an automated recruiter to onboard and engage candidates early in the life cycle. Ultimately, BelFlex has benefitted from having Sense as an ally in staffing.
“We want partners, not transactions,” says Clawson. “And I truly look at Sense as a partner.”
Sense partners with staffing firms like BelFlex to automate workflows and improve efficiencies in candidate and contractor communication. To see how Sense can help you, talk to our representative today.
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