“Texting just speeds up the process and makes it a lot easier for people.”
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66
Franchise Systems across the US and Canada |
68% Franchise Adoption using Sakari API this year |
Full Journey Coverage lead to installation |
101 Mobility is a franchise network of 66 locally owned businesses across the United States and Canada, providing mobility and accessibility solutions like stairlifts, wheelchair ramps, and home elevators. Their customers are often seniors aging in place, veterans, and people living with disabilities. When the corporate team rolled out HubSpot alongside Sakari two years ago, they didn’t just add a texting tool. They built SMS into every stage of the customer journey, from the first lead notification to post-installation follow-up, and embedded it directly into their custom CRM. Today, 68% of their franchise locations are actively texting customers through the Sakari API, and the number keeps climbing.
101 Mobility’s franchise locations range from single-person operations where the owner runs everything to multi-location offices with large teams. But they all shared the same problem. Their customer communication depended almost entirely on email and phone calls, and both channels were falling short.
The company’s customer base skews older. Many are seniors or the adult children of seniors, coordinating stairlifts and ramps for parents who can no longer safely navigate their own homes. These aren’t casual purchases. When someone reaches out to 101 Mobility, there’s usually urgency behind it. And when the company’s email reminders went unread or phone calls went unanswered, that urgency turned into missed appointments, slowed sales cycles, and frustrated franchise teams.
WHAT WASN’T WORKING
Franchise owners had been asking corporate for a texting solution for years. They knew their customers would respond to texts. And when 101 Mobility brought on a new marketing team and began integrating HubSpot, the timing was right to finally make it happen.
“We’d gotten feedback from our franchises that they were having issues with no-shows. People just weren’t seeing the reminders. With our client base, they can be older and aren’t as great with technology. Text messaging was the obvious solution.”
—Becca
Business Systems Analyst, 101 Mobility
When 101 Mobility evaluated SMS platforms, they had a short list of requirements. The solution had to integrate cleanly with HubSpot. It needed a reliable API that could support a custom CRM integration across 66 franchise databases. And it had to be something their development team could build on without running into walls.
Sakari has long been the leading SMS integration on the HubSpot marketplace. The reviews were strong, the API documentation was solid, and the integration worked the way the team needed it to.
“Sakari was extremely highly recommended. It was the most-used SMS integration for HubSpot. We saw a lot of great things, ended up implementing it, and it’s worked great.”
What makes their Sakari implementation unusual is that they didn’t just set up a few HubSpot workflows and call it a day. They built two distinct SMS layers, each serving a different purpose, both powered by Sakari.
The corporate team set up HubSpot workflows that fire automatically at key moments in the customer journey. These include welcome texts when a new lead comes in, appointment scheduling confirmations, reminders before in-home consultations, and rescheduling notifications. All of it runs through Sakari’s HubSpot integration using the send SMS workflow block.
This was an immediate upgrade from email-only notifications. Customers who would have missed an email reminder now get a text, and they actually respond to it. The team has seen it be especially useful during bad weather. When a snowstorm hits in Canada or the northern US, customers can quickly text back to reschedule instead of playing phone tag or letting the appointment silently lapse.
“We’ve done appointment notifications and reminders for years via email. But since implementing SMS, it’s so much more effective. People don’t always check email. They’ll almost always see a text.”
The second layer is where things get really interesting. 101 Mobility’s development team used Sakari’s API to build a full SMS interface directly inside Mobilinq, their custom CRM. Franchise team members can text customers without ever leaving the system they already work in. No extra logins. No switching tabs. Just open a client profile and start texting.
The team also built SMS templates with dynamic personalization. A consultant can send a quote follow-up that automatically pulls in the client’s name, their primary product, the order total, and even the quote document itself. What used to require flipping between screens and manually copying information now takes one click.
And because 101 Mobility’s consultations require seeing the actual space (does the stairlift fit up a narrow corridor? is there room for a ramp?), customers can now text photos directly to their consultant. Those photos get uploaded right into the client profile in the CRM, so the team has everything they need before they even step foot in the home.
“We didn’t want our franchises logging into a bunch of different systems to send a text message. It was important for us to build that directly into our CRM. We actually took some inspiration from the Sakari UI.”
One of the more recent additions is automatic lead status tracking. When a team member texts a customer from Mobilinq, the CRM automatically updates the lead status to “contact attempted.” When the customer replies, it flips to “contact made.” This removes an entire layer of manual admin work. Franchise teams can focus on the actual conversation instead of remembering to update a status field after every interaction.
Here’s how Sakari now fits into the 101 Mobility customer experience, end to end.
Every one of those touchpoints used to depend on email or phone calls. Now, most of them happen over text, and the ones that are automated don’t require any manual effort at all.
The clearest signal that the implementation is working? Franchise teams actually use it. 68% of 101 Mobility’s existing Sakari groups have sent at least one text message via the API this year. For a franchise network where locations range from solo operators to multi-person offices, that kind of adoption doesn’t happen unless the tool is solving a real problem.
| 68% of franchise locations actively using Sakari API |
Every stage of the customer journey now includes SMS |
“As soon as we implemented it, users were really excited about it. We saw that instantly. Not only the HubSpot automation, but just the day-to-day conversations. We’ve heard from our franchises that it’s been extremely helpful.”
While 101 Mobility is still building out formal reporting to quantify specific metrics like no-show reduction, the qualitative feedback from franchise teams has been consistent. Appointment no-shows have dropped noticeably. Lead response times are faster. Quote follow-ups that used to require a phone call now happen in seconds. And the photo-sharing capability means consultants walk into homes already understanding the layout, which speeds up the entire sales process.
The automated lead status tracking has also removed a layer of admin work that franchise teams used to do manually after every interaction. Now, Mobilinq handles it in the background based on SMS activity. Fewer things to remember. Fewer status fields to update. More time spent actually talking to customers.
And from the corporate side, the integration has been clean. Sakari’s API handles the load of 66 franchise databases without significant issues, and the HubSpot integration works exactly as expected. For a team that built an entire custom SMS interface on top of the API, reliability matters.
“We find the UI easy to use and easy to understand. It’s integrated very cleanly with HubSpot. And with our API usage, we haven’t had any significant issues either.”
One benefit the team didn’t fully anticipate was how SMS opened up the early part of the customer relationship. When a lead comes in and gets a welcome text, they tend to share information they didn’t include on the original form. Maybe they clarify what product they actually need, or mention that they’re coordinating care for a parent. That context used to come out during the first phone call, if the customer picked up. Now it surfaces in the first few texts, before a consultation is even scheduled.
For a company that requires in-home consultations to recommend the right solution, that early context saves everyone time.
KEY RESULTS
SAKARI FEATURES USED