September 25, 2023

LASSO Crew - The crew management platform that actually works.

Leah McVeigh

Operations Manager

IMCD Lighting (Events Services, 51-200 employees)

Score 9 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use LASSO Crew to onboard, schedule, and manage our teams for events in NYC and across the city. During the registration process crew members complete a skills survey where they articulate their skill set and proficiency in various positions and departments. When crewing a job we can filter our crew list based on there answers to those skill questions.

Pros and Cons

Organize schedule information
Clearly communicate the staffing status of each event
Email and text employees important information about their upcoming calls.

Some of the page layouts are clunky, especially the crew list page
LASSO Crew has a calendar feed that can link to gcal, iCal, etc but it’s very limited and doesn’t reliably update the calendar when the schedule changes.
I would like it to push automated clock-in/clock out alerts to my team. I can set these up manually by scheduling messages but it is a very cumbersome process.

Likelihood to Recommend

Transition to LASSO Crew was a real bear, but once we had all the pieces and parts in place and staff new how to use it, it solved the majority of our staffing headaches. We work on events across NYC and often have several events going on at the same time. Prior to LASSO Crew it was not uncommon for a supervisor to show up to a call with only a limited understanding of who was booked on the job, or for an employee to not be sure who or where they needed to report to that day. LASSO Crew-facing app and supervisor-facing website have entirely eliminated these headaches. Our staffing process is more streamlined than before, our rates and scheduling more transparent. Once you get past the initial hurdles of crew/team buy-in and implementation, the upsides are enormous.

Most Important Features

Crew communication through Text, Email, and In-App notifications
Clear call time information communicated to the crew
Integration with timekeeping software so that supervisors can clock folks in and out from their phone and we can see any schedule deviations clearly.
The ability to search and filter crew by skill set, location, and rating
The ability to rate crew members at the conclusion of a job so we have clear data on who are the rockstars and who are just rocks.

Return on Investment

We've had some complaints from crew members that the communications they receive through the LASSO Crew system feel less personal than when we used to handle everything through direct emails and text messages.
LASSO Crew branding is super prominent on every communication we send from the platform, I wish they would center the client/employer a bit more and not make the LASSO Crew logo and color scheme the most identifiable thing on the page/email/message.

Alternatives Considered

We explored using IntelliEvent for crew management but their platform just wasn't as robust and they didn't seem to have timekeeping and payroll partners in place to support the back end. Other than that, I haven't found another platform or software that does what LASSO Crew does, it was built for the event industry, by the event industry, and that focus on audience really shows through.

Users and Roles

250

EVERYONE in our organization uses LASSO Crew in some regard. Regular crew members use it to book work, manage their schedule, and clock in/out. Supervisors and Labor Coordinators use it to book the crew and manage an event schedule. Project managers and designers use it to estimate labor costs. The executive team reviews summary reports to evaluate labor costs vs. labor estimates.

Support Headcount Required

There's some basic user access tasks that need to get done to help employees with bad passwords or change the status of an account, but it's all very straight forward, one person in our office handles that for less than an hour a week. Every event must be set up in the system correctly, that takes a bit more focus to ensure that all the various systems we employe integrate with one another. One person in our office does that, it usually takes them 15-30 minutes to set up a job initially, and after that a few minutes a day managing adjustments to schedules and crews.

Business Processes Supported

booking crew for events
finding new crew to add to our over-hire roster
managing event schedules
keeping a clear eye on spiraling labor costs

Likelihood to Renew

While there are certainly a few things I'd like to see improvement on, we have no intention of leaving LASSO Crew anytime soon.

Support Rating

LASSO Crew takes customer support very seriously. My dedicated account rep responds to any issues directly, usually within one business day. When a crew member has an in-app problem they can't resolve the technical support team responds very quickly to any issue, usually with clear instructions about how to resolve the issue.

Premium Support

Premium support isn't an option, everyone gets the same support and I think it's fantastic.

Bug Resolution

Yes

We've had a few bugs with out timesheet integration along the way, all have been taken seriously from the first reporting and all have been resolved in a reasonable amount of time. Usually just a day or two if they can solve it in-house, sometimes up to a week if they have to coordinate with the time-keeping vendor.

Exceptional Examples of LASSO Crew Support

This question is tricky because post-implementation I can't think of a time that they haven't done just that. Just last week I had a 3 employees whose profiles just would not show up on their supervisor's screen. Everything appeared to set up correctly so I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Our regular account rep was OOO so I emailed another person at LASSO Crew who I knew could help out. She got back to me by the next morning with a clear acknowledgment of the problem and spent the next few hours trying to recreate it on her end. That's the amazing thing about the LASSO Crew team, I never have to waste my time convincing them that the problem I'm having is a "real" problem. The answer is never "have you cleared your cookies" or "I don't know, that's how it works." These people take every issue you bring to them seriously, they treat everyone like they know what they're talking about, and they get back to you with an update or a check-in, or a "hey, how's it going."

Usability

The app is perfectly useable, if a bit limited in its functionality. The website, which functions as the "back end" of the app, takes awhile to learn. I carve out at least an hour of training on it for every new supervisor and fully expect to spend the first several weeks they use it to send them little reminders about how and when to do things. I have a few (older) supervisors who just out-and-out refuse to engage with LASSO Crew, but I think that has more to do with their aversion to change than it does the overall usability of the website.

Easy Tasks

Adding crew to a scheduled call is very easy if you've already booked them through text/email
Creating a crew contact list with emails and phone numbers.
rating the individual crew member's performance after a job.

Difficult Tasks

clocking folks in/out on the app. It's ok once you've found the correct screen, but getting there is a challenge for many.
Scheduling messages to send later / repeating messages like a clock-in reminder.
Communicating more detailed information about the call to the crew prior to booking them.
Accessing a clear, printable schedule matrix. Again, the option is there, but if you don't know where to look for it, it's very hard to find.

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes

The mobile interface is what the crew-level employees will interact with. It's a bit limited in its functionality but it does the basics well.

Operating Systems	Unspecified
Mobile Application	No

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