AiRE
AiRE helps real estate professionals grow their business in a smarter, more productive way through hyper-personalised conversations. As one of Pinch’s early adopters, AiRE instantly fell in love with the concept two years ago, and have stuck by them ever since.
Why we chose Pinch
A team of self-proclaimed tech-savvy nerds, AiRE is a family that looks after their star child RiTA, an Ai-Powered CRM platform designed to help real estate agents generate and nurture leads. Despite working with one of the world’s biggest global payment platforms, AiRE experienced a lack of support and functionality from their provider. On top of that, the team’s variable business model and broad customer base in Australia and New Zealand added an extra layer of complexity to their payment processes.
After months of frustration, AiRE decided to seek a more tailored approach and, most importantly, a local provider in their own time zone. As a fellow start-up focused on SaaS businesses, Pinch caught AiRE’s eye immediately. With both platforms working in a similar domain and ecosystem, AiRE believed they would find common ground and be able to grow together with Pinch — and they were absolutely right.
Challenges they faced
- circle Customers across the Tasman. AiRE supports real estate agents in both Australia and New Zealand and often had to process international payments. However, their payment provider lacked a presence in the NZ market, which made it challenging to resolve any issues that popped up along the way.
- circle Minimal support. As a start-up, AiRE often found themselves having to jump through hoops or be left out in the dark by their provider. They weren’t big enough for the provider to offer fast or personalised assistance, leaving them to work their own way through any challenges that popped up.
- circle Variability and complexity. AiRE had a recurring revenue product, which meant they had dynamic costs based on consumption and usage. Without access to development tools to build the implementation, the team had to fill in the gaps with manual workload.
"Pinch is an integral partner in our business. Every time I see a Pinch line on our statements, I know that it represents a lot of manual work that we’re just not doing anymore. As well as making our lives easier, it actually makes the customer journey a lot easier as well. They just have to click a button, put their card in once, and then it’s done. We’re also saving time for them in terms of their accounting and processing, because it’s happening automatically for them as well."
Sarah Bell, Co-founder at AiRE and RiTA’s mum
Seamless API integration to the rescue
Pinch’s platform was simple, intuitive, and worked seamlessly with AiRE’s payment model and way of working. What’s more, AiRE’s offices were just up the road — you can’t get more local than that! Together with the help of the Pinch team, AiRE’s engineers were able to access Pinch’s API to deeply integrate the platform into every aspect of their business.
Pinch integrated seamlessly with Xero and RiTA, which allowed AiRE to truly automate the customer journey from start to finish. The platform automatically created an account in Xero and sent a link for customers to enter in their payment details — a process that otherwise would have required monthly manual check-ins. In addition to making automation a breeze, Pinch worked seamlessly with AiRE’s SaaS recurring revenue model, which freed up countless hours from different members of the team.
All up, the integration and automation lifted a huge weight off AiRE’s shoulders. With no finance and accounting to worry about, the team could invest time and resources into product growth and scaling their business.
How Pinch helped
- Took the load off.
AiRE didn’t have a dedicated Finance or Accounts Receivable department, so different team members had to step in to pick up the work. Pinch automated the majority of the payments.
- Support they could count on.
Whether it was setting up the integration with RiTA or assistance with payments, AiRE knew that Pinch had their back. The platform’s open API allowed AiRE to autonomously drive a solution, but the Pinch crew were always ready to lend a helping hand.
- Improving the customer journey.
In addition to improving accounting and payment processes for AiRE, Pinch also saved time for AiRE’s clients as well. With its set and forget features, customers could plug in their payment information then sit back and let the RiTA-Pinch-Xero integration do the rest.
Outcome
Pinch stepped in when AiRE was, simply put, in a pinch. The platform gave AiRE the ability to autonomously drive a solution that was tailored to their business — all while knowing that help was on hand in an instant if they needed it. Since implementing Pinch, the team have had more time and peace of mind knowing that their accounting and payment processes are running like clockwork.