- MEETAxel Baudach
- OCCUPATIONChief Executive Officer
- INDUSTRYWoodland Cemeteries
- Size1-10 employees
Meet Axel Baudach
Hi, I'm Axel Baudach, the chief executive officer and managing director of Klosterwald Verwaltungs GmbH in Austria. Started in 2019, our company runs nature and woodland cemeteries all across Austria.
What does my organization do?
The loss of a loved one can be sudden, heartbreaking, and emotionally difficult to deal with. The family and friends of the departed often struggle to come to terms with the fact that they are no more. Klosterwald helps people honor, remember, and immortalize the demised in a unique and eco-friendly manner: by planting a living memorial for them in the form of trees.
How do we do it?
Klosterwald helps your loved ones continue to nourish nature and live on even after their death. We provide a beautiful, ecologically friendly, and peaceful forest as a resting place for your kith and kin. At Klosterwald, ashes are placed in biodegradable urns and buried at the roots of the pre-selected memorial tree. Over time, the roots will absorb nutrients from the ashes and create a living memorial for friends and family to visit over generations.
The Problem
We have B2C contacts with about 1,000 private individuals annually. We send out lease agreements for the clients' burial space. The contract is 4 x DIN A4 pages long. The client gets two copies and, sometimes, even four copies if a spouse is involved. Managing such volumes of paperwork manually was challenging for us.
To make matters worse, the postal service in Austria is slow, expensive, and unreliable. Two out of 10 pouches sent don't reach the client's post-box. The postage costs were high too, costing us about $10 per deal. After signing, the client has to return the contracts for us to sign. The entire process took 10 to 21 days, sometimes longer when there were typing errors on the documents. Documents were hard to track too, resulting in lots of customer service queries.
We also did not have any control over the process earlier because of third-party involvements. Handling errors such as incorrect contract details and spelling errors also involved significant customer interaction. On the whole, these challenges slowed our document turnaround time and complicated matters for our clientele, who are mostly aged 55 through 70.
The Solution
Zoho Sign was a one-click solution!
Zoho Sign was a huge efficiency step in our company. Before Zoho Sign, we were manually sending tree lease agreements to our customers for signature. Postal services were slow and it took us several days to finalize a sale, excluding the time it took for handling errors. The costs also added up.
Then, we used to email contracts to customers, ask them to print, sign, scan, and resend them to us via email. By doing so, we saved postage and time, but we faced challenges with the quality of the documents turned around. We received stamp-size documents, files larger than 40 MB, only two or three pages of a four-page document, and so on.
Zoho Sign improved everything: quality, traceability, and efficiency. Our clientele is typically between 55 and 70 years old. Zoho Sign is so easy to use that we have had almost no questions raised by our customers. Further, it is easy for us to edit and recall documents with errors without much confusion or lengthy interactions with customers.
With Zoho Sign, we now also offer new service levels to our customers. For instance, after the documents are signed, they are automatically sent to our clients' family members for storage. It also integrates easily with our workflow.
We are proud to tell you that 90% of our contracts are now signed using Zoho Sign. We have used many apps from Zoho. However, to me, Zoho Sign has had the biggest efficiency impact so far in terms of process quality, effectiveness, and transparency to all stakeholders.
Benefits and ROI
Five reasons why Klosterwald loves using Zoho Sign:
- Fully digitized workflow
- Tight integration with Zoho CRM
- Range of services for no extra cost
- Quick tracking
- Easy-to-use for all age groups
Looking Forward
Zoho Sign was a key catalyst in boosting Klosterwald's growth and efficiency. Now, Axel looks forward to using more Zoho Sign features and benefiting from them.
Still unsure? Try our Enterprise-version for free for 14 days to learn why Axel chose Zoho Sign.
Choose secure, swift, simple, and paperless signing.