Below: Q&A with Gary Tripp, President of Inside Hospitality, about how his team uses Highrise.
What does your company/business do?
Inside Hospitality works with restaurant & hospitality organizations in all 50 states and in 30+ countries helping them deliver a better guest experience through focused mystery shopping, online reputation management, coaching, and other experience measurement solutions.
Why do you need Highrise?
At Inside Hospitality we talk to a lot of restaurant, hotels and bars on a daily basis and have been on a mission (obsession actually) of sorts for the last few years to find the perfect CRM. Every business needs to keep track of contacts, leads, deals, and who said what to whom. The problem is most CRM programs just don’t work. Well, they don’t work in the way we need them to. We have used everything on the market from Salesforce to Goldmine and other fly by night CRM solutions that have popped up on our radar over the years.
Most are over bloated with features that may be useful for Boeing or some other Fortune 500 company, but they are totally over kill for us.
What happened when we used the before mentioned solutions? They simply weren’t used. Complicated applications don’t get used. Simple solutions that just “work” will always be our choice and are embraced by everyone within our company.
We have employees in 6 states and 4 countries. We need something that just “works” the way we need it to. No more, no less.
We found Highrise about 6 months ago and never looked back. Finally, a CRM that just works the way we do and totally fits our needs. It’s like 37Signals tailor designed this application for us. What luck!
How do you use Highrise and why do you like it?
Highrise is our daily life line and keeps everyone in the company on the same page. It lets everyone know instantly what was said last, to whom and what needs to happen next.
We also love how all the company’s information as well as all contacts are all on the same page. Seriously, how could things be easier?

Which features do you use most?
We use the contact search constantly. How many times do you remember the first name of someone but draw a blank on the last?
What did you use before and why did you switch?
We have tried everything. Most of them are good programs, but are way too over thought on the feature side. We just needed something that meets our needs, with our unique business.
How do you use Highrise?
As soon as a call (or lead) comes in, we immediately create a Highrise contact and use the “Tag” feature to assign it to the appropriate department/ person for follow up. The dashboard brings it all together in a simple to use way and in understandable terms. It allows everyone to get a snapshot of what’s happening with each and every client touch point.

Any tips or tricks for other customers?
Managing your client relationships shouldn’t be difficult. Business is all about fostering and building relationships. Don’t make it difficult with over complicated software.
Our primary goal is to build relationships with each and every one of our client partners, and Highrise helps us do just that.
Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting way? Let us know.
