How Lyneer Staffing Consolidated Multiple Products and Boosted Engagement by 12x

12x

Increase in response rates

52%

Reduction in time to fill jobs

1

Single unified communication platform

Overview

Lyneer Staffing, a workforce solution leader with 400 employees in 100 US locations, was challenged by a complex communication process. Their mission to match talent with job opportunities was complicated by the limited functionality of multiple messaging platforms and a transition to a new database system, Airtable.

In this writeup, we examine:

  • The obstacles Aaron Joyce and Matt Robbins, two of Lyneer's top leaders, faced with their previous texting solution and an unsuccessful move to Twilio.
  • How their search eventually led them to Whippy.
  • The benefits a wide range of stakeholders at Lyneer - daily users, operational managers, and IT staff - have experienced with the transition to Whippy.

These benefits have included a 12x increase in response rates and a 52% reduction in job filling time. This paper details Lyneer’s transformative journey towards a more effective way to communicate and grow their business using Whippy.

The Challenge

Initially, Lyneer employed a traditional business texting platform to facilitate their communication. This upgrade from mobile phones and email correspondence did lead to swifter responses, indicating progress.

However, this software still left room for significant improvements:

  • Limitations were placed on the number of daily text messages and they experienced significant deliverability issues when sending bulk messages for urgent job placements. Recent changes with industry regulations, notably 10DLC, compounded the issue and made it even more difficult to get bulk messages delivered quickly.
  • The platform did not integrate with their database, making the process of sending out job notifications cumbersome and requiring intricate knowledge of Excel concatenations.
  • The platform lacked any real automation or actionable data & analytics resulting in critical time being wasted.

While facing these challenges from their legacy texting platform, Lyneer decided to shift their database to Airtable, a widely used cloud-based platform that merges database and spreadsheet functionalities, empowering teams to handle and shape data.


Understanding the need for a compatible, text-based communication system that could interface with Airtable, they opted for Twilio, a cloud communications platform designed to help software developers construct and administer communications within their applications.


While Twilio offered a way to streamline the process, it also presented a fresh challenge, requiring substantial development resources.

“We were basically left to fend for ourselves. We're not developers by trade and managed to cobble something together. However, we lost 2-way messaging with the Twilio Airtable extension. We could dispatch countless messages, but no one on the team could receive responses.”

Due to the complexities of building automation via Twilio Studio for over 100 locations and the lack of two-way texting, the team reverted to their traditional texting platform. Now operating multiple services, unifying their communications tools and processes seemed impossible.


Matt sought help from 3rd party developers, and were quoted $10k just to create a model of the needed Twilio application. Moreover, the solution they proposed was not user-friendly and imposed excessive monthly fees.


It was at this crucial point that Aaron approached the Whippy team to explore possible solutions.

Optimizing for Three Core Needs

1. Daily Users

During the initial consultation with the Whippy team, Aaron and Matt immediately found that Whippy could cater to the first of the three user types they were targeting: the daily power users.

Whippy offered an intuitive, user-friendly interface that empowered those on the ground and provided solutions for the issues they were experiencing with their current texting platforms, such as:

  • Deliverability: The ability to instantly send thousands of messages from their actual landline numbers at each location, directly form Airtable and with full 2-way messaging capabilities.
  • Personalization: The capability to customize each message, including recipient's name, job title, shift time, and location.
  • Transparency: The functionality to track message engagement, assign text conversations, and more.
  • Actionable Data: Whippy’s campaign reporting & analytics allowed the team to see those who started an application, who were interested in a job and who forgot to confirm a shift, etc.

2. Operational Managers

Their initial meeting prompted a follow-up discussion a week later, revealing that Whippy could address the challenge posed by the second set of Lyneer users: operational managers.

“With Whippy, we can create custom workflows for all locations to automate many of the repetitive tasks our team was performing manually. Previously, only a few individuals within the entire organization could create webhooks on Twilio and, consequently, dispatch mass messages from Airtable.”

The operations team could now easily create and test automated workflows within Whippy. Those that worked well could be shared in minutes through out all 100+ locations.

During an initial trial period with a couple of locations, Aaron and Matt noticed immediate and significant improvements. Below is a text message from Aaron to David, the CEO of Whippy.

3. IT Staff

Now that Whippy was working for both the daily power users and the operations managers overseeing the processes, Whippy worked on addressing the third level, mitigating the challenges faced by those developing the technical infrastructure at Lyneer.


The Lyneer team worked closely with Whippy CTO Jack Kennedy to build a customized Airtable integration. This result was an interface that allowed their team to send two-way, personalized mass messages to all those in customized Airtable views.


Additional innovative features were soon added, including the ability to exclude candidates in active conversations or those that have received a mass message in X number of days, all directly from the Airtable extension.

“Everything built has been with Jack thinking about it. That was something that we didn't have before. When we would send Twilio messages, we would send the same message to the same people 50 times and hit every forklift operator. Now we can actually be in control of that.”

The impact of these changes was substantial. The team decided to abandon the other communication platforms altogether and shift entirely to Whippy for all their 100+ locations.

The Impact

After the first several months, the transformation was remarkable:

  • Response rate efficiency improved 12x compared to their previous software (33% vs 2.7%).
  • Time to fill jobs was reduced by 52%.
  • Follow-up tasks that previously took over 3+ hours a day per location were automated, saving recruiters admin work and bringing them closer to the money.
  • A single consolidated communication platform was established that interfaces with their database.

In addition, the time and resources that were freed up around development and support was incredibly meaningful.

“We save hundred of hours of upper management time from having to work with external 3rd parties to continuing to update and manage the integration. The process and overall support has been unlike any other company we have ever worked with.”

Moreover, the Lyneer team found that the company cultures aligned well.

”The biggest thing for us is the company culture- Lyneer is a big company that runs like a small business. No matter the title we roll up our sleeves. That is the relationship Lyneer has with their clients and we were looking for with our technology partner.”

Lyneer's forward-thinking ethos is grounded in embracing challenges and striving for continuous improvement. With plans for automated onboarding sequences, automated reminder sequences, candidate surveys, NPS, job board automations, and more, they aim to optimize efficiency further.

The ultimate goal?

“To steer a candidate through the process within 24 hours without a single phone call. While this might seem ambitious, we believe it is achievable with Whippy as our partner."

With this bold vision, Lyneer looks forward to a future of enhanced efficiency and streamlined communications.

Matt & Aaron of Lyneer hosting David, CEO of Whippy in Philadelphia

Picture above is Matt & Aaron of Lyneer hosting David, CEO of Whippy in Philadelphia