Feature

Utility Connect — refer your clients for utility setup, and earn on it

What’s New

Utility Connect is live. Your clients get a concierge who sets up their
utilities at their new home, and your account earns referral revenue on every
one that converts. It has its own Utility Connect tab in the side
navigation, directly below Connect, for account owners and admins.

Nothing Utility Connect–related appears anywhere in the product until an
account opts in.

Opting in

  • One opt-in for the whole account — turning on Utility Connect enables the
    Concierge Service for every team and agent under your account. Your
    connection is verified with Utility Connect as you opt in, so a configuration
    problem surfaces there and then instead of on your first referral — nothing
    is turned on if that check does not pass.
  • Enterprise rollout — enterprise admins who own or administer a branch can
    push the opt-in to every branch at once (including branches added later), and
    choose how referral revenue is routed: each branch earns and withdraws its
    own balance, or all earnings accrue at the enterprise level. Branches always
    see their own referral performance either way.

Four ways to refer

  • From a contact record — the Refer to Utility Connect button asks for
    your client’s new home address. The modal lists the addresses already on the
    contact so you can pick one instead of retyping it: each option shows the
    full address, whether it is the contact’s Primary, and its type, and
    picking one fills the street, city, state and ZIP as editable fields. A
    second line (“Suite 100”, “Apt 4B”) is folded into the street line, because
    a unit number left behind sends the concierge team to the wrong door of the
    right building. Nothing is preselected, on purpose — Utility Connect
    needs the address your client is moving to, and a contact record usually
    holds where they live now. A prefilled field is a field nobody re-reads.
  • In bulk from any list — filter your contact list, select the contacts you
    want, and choose Refer to Utility Connect from the bulk actions menu.
    Before you confirm, the modal shows how many will be sent and which will be
    skipped, one confirmation covers the batch (recorded on every referral), an
    optional internal note is saved on each, and a live progress bar resolves
    into a summary of sent / already referred / incomplete / failed.
  • From your inbox — mark one inbox as your Utility Connect inbound
    inbox
    in its General settings, assign the dedicated number and email alias
    on the usual tabs, and a lead who calls, texts or emails about utilities can
    be added and referred without leaving the conversation. The referral is
    attributed as a SureSend inbox lead.
  • Automatically — on the Automatic enrollment tab, set a standing rule
    that refers a contact the moment your CRM data says they’re moving: when a
    chosen tag is added, when a contact enters a chosen stage, when a
    contract reaches a chosen contract stage, or when a chosen contract
    milestone
    is marked complete (the milestone trigger covers teams who track
    clear-to-close as a milestone that never moves the stage; both contract
    triggers refer every contact on the contract). Enabling a rule records one
    standing enrollment confirmation in your name that every referral it fires
    cites. An enterprise-level rule applies to every branch, and any branch can
    save its own rule to override it.

Referrals are never double-sent: a contact referred in the last 30 days is
skipped, whichever route you use. The tab also shows how many automatic matches
were triggered but not sent in the last 30 days and why — missing phone,
address or name — and filling that field in within 30 days sends the referral
automatically, so your highest-intent contacts aren’t permanently dropped over
an incomplete record.

Following a referral

  • Status on the contact record — referred contacts show a Concierge status
    row in the left panel, tracking the referral from Referred — pending
    contact
    through Contacted, In progress, and on to Converted or
    Closed — no conversion. A referral Utility Connect didn’t accept is shown
    in place of the journey status, so nothing fails silently.
  • “Updated … ago” freshness — status arrives from Utility Connect on a
    polling cadence, so the badge says when it was last confirmed rather than
    implying a live feed. Opening a contact nudges a fresh check. Until Utility
    Connect has the referral on file, the row says “Status set … ago” instead,
    because there’s nothing to check yet.
  • Timeline entries for every step — enrollment, submission, and each status
    change land on the contact’s activity timeline. If Utility Connect ever
    reports a state behind the one on record — a reversed conversion, say — the
    timeline records that report even though the badge holds its ground.

The attribution dashboard

From your first referral onward, the Overview tab becomes a full
attribution dashboard for owners and admins:

  • Referral counters — sent, contacted and converted, scoped to today, this
    week, or this month.
  • Referral funnel — sent → contacted → in progress → converted over the
    last 30 days, with stage-to-stage conversion percentages.
  • Source breakdown — the contact-record button, mass tag, inbox, or
    automatic enrollment.
  • Agent leaderboard — who sends and converts the most, over the last 30
    days.
  • Recent referrals — the latest referrals with their status, linked to the
    contact record.
  • Observed time to leave initial state — median, average and a wall-clock
    distribution for how long it takes us to first see an application leave New.
    This is an observation from our status poll, not a contact SLA: Partners API
    v1.5 sends no contact time, so the card says so rather than dressing the
    figure up as one.
  • All branches, for enterprise admins — a scope toggle rolls the funnel,
    sources and leaderboard up across every branch. The rollup is aggregate only;
    each branch’s referred contacts stay with the branch.

Every figure comes from Utility Connect status syncs, so the dashboard shows
“data as of” and warns if syncing falls behind rather than implying live
numbers.

Earnings and deposits

  • A running earnings balance — converted referrals add referral revenue to
    your account as Utility Connect marks services paid. The Earnings &
    withdrawals
    tab shows the true balance, including chargebacks if they land
    after a deposit.
  • Request a deposit any time — any amount above $0, up to the current
    balance. There is a 7-day wait between accepted requests, and the next
    eligible time is shown on the button while you wait.
  • Enterprise routing still applies — when revenue is collected at the
    enterprise, branches keep seeing referral performance but only enterprise
    admins see the dollar balance and can request deposits.

Payout setup is completed by SureSend operations before the first deposit can
be requested.

Notes

  • Agents can refer contacts and see referral status — never dollars. Opting in,
    automatic enrollment rules, the dashboard and earnings are owner/admin only.
  • One named agent per account. Every referral your account sends — whoever
    pressed the button, and including the automatic ones — tells Utility Connect
    the same person’s name, email and phone, so their concierge team has a single
    point of contact for you. It’s the account owner unless the owner names
    somebody else under the gear icon on the Utility Connect tab; only the owner
    can change it. Who actually referred each contact is still recorded in
    SureSend and still drives the agent leaderboard.
  • What’s sent is fixed at the moment of referral, so changing the setting later
    doesn’t rewrite past referrals. If that person’s profile has no phone number,
    settings says so — Utility Connect gets their email address alone rather than
    the referral failing.
  • Bulk and automatic referrals send each contact’s own address on file as their
    move-in address, since there’s no address to type; a contract’s scheduled
    closing date is sent as the expected move-in date when a contract trigger
    fires. If a contact’s record still shows the home they’re leaving, update it
    before referring them.
  • Referrals are delivered to Utility Connect one at a time in the background at
    a deliberate pace, so large batches keep flowing without overwhelming the
    partner. You can close the window — the batch keeps going.