In this episode of Survey Booker Sessions, Rune Sovndahl, the CEO and co-founder of Fantastic Services shares his insights into growing a company from concept to offering services in multiple countries.
We cover:
✅ The importance of focusing on the quality of service
✅ Measuring what matters
✅ Employment versus franchise
✅ The importance of supporting your team
✅ The importance of tech
✅ How culture eats marketing for breakfast
View on Zencastr
Transcript
SPEAKERS
Matt Nally, Rune Sovndahl
Matt Nally 00:14
On today’s episode, we’ve got Rune, who’s the co-founder and CEO of Fantastic Services. So, thanks for coming on today.
Rune Sovndahl 00:36
Thank you very much, Matt. It’s a pleasure to talk to you.
Matt Nally 00:39
You’ve got a very interesting story that I’ve read a lot about—how you started and so on—with Fantastic Services, which you started back in 2009. You were looking to get carpet cleaners or were you having issues with that process?
Rune Sovndahl 00:55
In 2009, it felt like so many years ago now. But I remember that back then, when I was looking at the websites, I was like, typing in carpet cleaners in London or something else on Google. And I got all these websites, and I called some of them, but they didn’t pick up. Nobody answered nobody could really tell me what the price was for carpet cleaning. I was like, this has just got to change. At that stage, I was in the travel industry and had built one of the first things that connected flights with hotels to create a dynamic package. And I was like, this can be solved; is there a carpet cleaner available? And what does it cost? And then, that’s when I met Antem, who was big in the corporate world of this, and then we said, Let’s instantly switch it on; let’s build the first engine that can take a card and actually make the booking. And that’s what we built. That grew from domestic cleaning and carpet cleaning. Then we had end-of-tenancy cleaning that got cancelled quite often because the moving guys hadn’t turned up. So, one of our customers called and said, can you not get me a removals car? And we said, yes, and then we got it and started the removals company inside. And that’s really been the journey; we do 55 Plus services now for everything from pest control to handyman services to plumbers, electricians, furniture assembly, gardening, mowing your lawn from landscaping, and everything else. We do EPC checks for landlords, and we do Airbnb cleaning. So, we really just expanded and expanded every year.
Matt Nally 02:41
One of the bits I was fascinated with was the growth into having about 70 different services now. And what’s the driver for that in terms of how you expand this and keep a consistent message? I know the services are interrelated in terms of real property services. But is there a challenge to keeping a marketing message straightforward as you change the different services?
Rune Sovndahl 03:08
The company was known as fantastic cleaners, and it’s still very well known as fantastic cleaners because that was the biggest domestic cleaning company there was. So expanding into other services meant we adapted the name fantastic services and became fantastic services. So that was a long journey for the customers to understand the other services provided. And that was a longer journey than we had expected because we were so used to oh, well, we’re fantastic cleaners, but kind of assess whether there’s some return. I think there’s a competitor of ours who is called something with plumbers and now trying to do the same with the plumbers and handymen and this stuff here. And it’s still, you know, whether they’re as successful as we were in adopting that we’ll see over time in the multiservice industry. But that was five years ago. And I’d say now, you know, the split is even between cleaning and all the other services. And that means that we are getting customers in new ways, like, okay, also, they also do clean. Right? They’ve used us for removals, and they say, Oh, they also do cleaning. They also do oven cleaners, do carpet cleaners do the other service? No. It depends on the entry where the client comes in, and what kind of service they book first. And then I think the technology but also our very, very, very skilled sales team, along with what we call the conversion side is the people who are talking and making sure that the service happens in the right way really helps with that. Of course, you know, when we went into plumbing and so forth, we wanted to do it completely properly and everything else. So that meant having skilled and trained professionals and that level and so forth. And that’s a different industry from where we are willing now to boil installation and so forth. So that’s a different industry from the say. I wouldn’t say less a skill but just a different aspect of Supply in cleaner who goes out and cleans regularly So it’s a different education. So every single service has its own amazingness and its own difficulties and challenges. And I think that, you know, we split it up very much so that they’re centrally managed in that way and not centrally manage this in because that service does.
Matt Nally 05:27
But one of the talking about how you grew up as a service is one of the aspects I was interested in was the fact that you use the franchise model, is there a challenge in terms of, you know, that versus employing people was there was a reason you went down that route instead of direct employment?
Rune Sovndahl 05:46
Well, direct employment has its benefits, it also has its disadvantages, one is the supply side of things. What we kind of learned over time, we got many years experiences is that the ownership and the understanding of the client and delivering a better service, and that’s where a franchise thing allows that, because you don’t get repeat customers unless you do good service. So rather than that, I always think of it a little bit like eBay and Amazon. We know eBay, anybody sells anything there on Amazon. It’s a very vetted process. It’s a very controlled process of what goes in there. It’s based on reviews, but it’s also based on other suppliers on time, they do their work on time. And one of the things you know, we didn’t lower our ambition, we call ourselves Fantastic Services. Which we wanted to be the best. We didn’t call it perfect, but we wanted to be the best. And that’s how we kept the customers and we’re able to get to that level. The franchising model allowed us to get the professionals who are doing the job and take more ownership of what quality they’re delivering,
Matt Nally 06:53
I was interested, I thought that might be the case, in terms of they have more motivation, potentially, in terms of the directly responsible for how they’re performing. Is there a challenge from the perspective of consistency of service? Or did that come through what you mentioned earlier about sort of the tech side the training and all that kind of stuff?
Rune Sovndahl 07:17
Well, that’s where training comes in for it’s also the way of monitoring it, and the tech allows us to monitor it, and it allows us to see where’s the next where the pitfalls, what service is not up to the level of what we call fantastic. So it allows us to do that, or, and it’s not just in our systems kind of started as the booking as the primary thing, then it went into performance management, and then went into payment management, then it went to fuel management and optimization of schedule as well. So making sure that we drive, I think we’re down 18% of miles driven because of the way that we can maneuver certain jobs around and so forth. So that means saving co2 and a tonne of other things that we get benefit from it by scale as well. So, yeah, to answer your question about the consistency of service, I think one is understanding the service is different. The other one was setting specific benchmarks for it, and then making sure that you monitor it, and not just monitor practice, and said, like, Okay, well, the repeat customers are the quality feedback isn’t good enough, there’s more customer service and this service and the other service. And then comparing that for what it should benchmark on that service. Because not all services are equal.
Matt Nally 08:34
Appointments, how do you monitor and measure the different providers, and what for you as a flag that you can help them improve?
Rune Sovndahl 08:45
As I wrote them, fantastic businesses about measuring what matters. And one of the things that I highlight in this is the first job delay. If you’re late for the first job, you really don’t have an excuse for being late for the first job, but you’re going to be delayed for the third and the fourth job as well, because you’re late for the first job. So instead of saying, Oh, well, you will delay, which will happen over the day, certain jobs take longer, because you want to complete it. So instead of looking at what actual thing matters on delay, and then the first job delay was more important than the second and the third. Because you’re more likely to get the second and third if the first job was delayed. So those kinds of things, so it monitors when they are arriving or they’re arriving on time for the customer in what time zone they expected. I mean, this is also another promise that we realized is hard to keep, because most things you book in a select will either come Tuesday or Thursday. When is either Tuesday or Thursday. What do you mean by Tuesday, or Thursday? Yeah, maybe we’ll come and then they call Friday. So sorry, we didn’t turn upright. So we always said like, Okay, well, the idea is to get as close to a time limit as my So. So that was one of the things you measure, then we measure feedback rate, the NPS score of Net Promoter Score, will they tell their friends that we’ve done a good service? And there are many other factors inside the service of saying, like, what is the repeat purchase on this one on this one? And based on that, we have an enormous amount of data that allows us to do this.
Matt Nally 10:23
And so those were those repeat sort of customers? Do you push your services to them after they’ve had their first experience? Or do they tend to sort of have such a good experience that they’ve done and are interested in? What might you do? Both?
Rune Sovndahl 10:37
It’s both ways. I can’t make you buy a pest control if you don’t have any pests. And I can’t make you move your house, and you don’t need to move. Alright, So, it depends on which services are needed at what stage. So, there’s a lifecycle of services of, well, first, you need this, then you need this, then you need this, then you need this, then we know the likelihood of you needing a cup of tea, and after that time, we know the likelihood of you needing gardening again. So, because I can’t sell you a garden, if you don’t have a garden? I can’t sell you a pool if you don’t have a pool. So, it is about what are your needs? And then it is about the awareness of it?
Matt Nally 11:16
Definitely. I think one of the things that interested me as well, around that growth aspect was, I think I read in a sort of first-year turnover was 800,000, or something like that. So, it was quite a quick growth. trajectory. What was the key to doing that, when I imagined it were very small budgets to begin with? On that, and I think you mentioned frugality was key to that side of things. But yeah, well, how do you go with a small budget to such quick growth?
Rune Sovndahl 11:49
I mean, it was down to the whole, every business in this stuff is supply and demand. Do you have the people to do the job? And do you have people who want to have the job done? That’s supply and demand, that’s the business and that’s where a few unfair advantages. I had 10 to 15 years’ experience in marketing of consumer products beforehand. So, we have got inundated with demand, it was actually supply that was harder in the beginning and it varies based on times with Brexit varies based on what’s going on job market, in demand, the business will always be supply and demand. So that’s the side of things. The secret sauce was very simple as we knew what we had to do in advertising and marketing. And that’s what we also, in our franchises, we are providing as a service. It is what we know how to do. And we know how to do that, at a very high level. I worked in some big corporates beforehand, you know, I had million pounds, weekly budgets. I had enormous amounts of this. And one thing was that they were overspending most of these things, I’ve worked for advertising on the side of the agency side of things I’ve worked on the side of the client, and so forth. When you marry those two things, you get frugality. So, it’s one thing if you outsource your advertising to a company. The other thing is that you learn, and you know how to do it. And you do it for the company, there are different things in charging a 10% fee on your advertising spot and then saying I need to make 10% profit on your advertising budget. That’s two different things. So that helps a lot. And that’s why he could continue with that growth.
Matt Nally 13:40
But what was it about the size of the messages that you were putting out? Was it the way you were doing it? Or was it the type of message because in terms of other suppliers that were in the industry?
Rune Sovndahl 13:50
No, I don’t think that was the case. In the beginning, we had more jobs than everybody else had said, like we have the jobs, you know, you can get four jobs a day, five jobs a day, and they’re high paying jobs versus, you can go and scrape together two or three jobs, maybe Tuesday, then you’re going to get some, maybe three Thursday, you can go in that way became more regular for them. So, I think that was a very simple thing. There’s something in Inside Fantastic, which is called the 360. It’s like we look at the founders and the company, the staff, look at the franchisees are pros and partners in that way. And then we look at the customers, and then we look at the planet, so it’s about how do that? I think that alone attracts a lot of people. We haven’t always got it right. And it’s always a work in progress. But it is kind of what makes us slightly different from just buying a lead and being ready, you have no idea whether it’s a real lead, or not a real lead. So that makes a difference. So and when there are things you can actually talk to us we’re approachable. I think that makes a big difference. Because when you’re out there doing the jobs, it can be alone. It can be quite lonely. And it’s like you’re doing 20 jobs 30 jobs a week. And you’re like what? Am I growing? Am I learning? Am I doing well? Am I doing this stuff here? And there’s a team behind you that’s helping you with that growth? And also seeing what’s the next level. How do you get to save enough money to buy to events and start hiring people yourself? That kind of career, I suppose. Because before that, there wasn’t you were just always going to be alone. So I think that was what attracted them, I don’t think was a specific message. He was more who we are. That made that happen.
Matt Nally 15:41
And yeah, I think it’s interesting from a software perspective, because it’s the same challenge, you’re out doing a lot of jobs. But then you’re alone when you’re doing them. Most of the time, you’re not often back in an office or have a team to call up, particularly for sole traders. So I can see the appeal there definitely. Does the marketing to the consumer, how did you get those jobs in? So the diaries are full. So in terms of the message that you were putting out to consumers, to us fantastic services are fantastic leaning over. Anyone else that they might go up?
Rune Sovndahl 16:18
I think one thing was that we had availability, like, the secret sauce in consumer, number one is entering the calls or take the booking, give them a good price. Number two is turning up. Number three is to do a good job. I think there are a couple of other things. But that’s pretty much it. They’re the best. Everybody can see they’ve got the best things. You can look at our reviews, you’re going to get our ratings, and so forth. And it shows we are the best and always, like we’re always above four in that. So it’s about that trust and that’s where it comes from, I mean, specific messaging. I’ve looked at ads for 10, or almost 20 years now in that industry, and it was like, everybody can write anything on it, it is about the fundamentals is turning up answer the calls, give them an accurate price that works and turn up on the time that they agreed and then do a good job. That’s it. It seems more simple, it seems more advanced than others. But it’s like, if you’re a sole trader, you got your little telephone with you. And you know, you can’t use the mobile phone while you’re in the car, you can’t go into the app and buy leads while you’re in the car, and so forth. And all that stuff is taken care of you in the back end. So those kinds of things. I think there’s a lot of perspective of always getting back to that. But at the end of the day, it’s a mix of the back office and the help you have. So messaging-wise, it’s what it is, it’s like, I also don’t want to give all the secret sauce from it, but then people can look it up. And it’s it isn’t that magic word that does it. I mean, fantastic is a good name, you know. And it’s what we are.
Matt Nally 18:07
I think there’s an interesting, or great choice to name in terms of it’s a reminder every day are the values you’re working towards. You can’t drop the ball, because you’ve got that focus there, it sits in front of the customer the whole time, not hidden away.
Rune Sovndahl 18:24
It also puts unrelenting pressure on us at times. It’s like, we’re not the cheapest, but we’re also not the highest end of pricing. But I think it’s very easy to run a team of five that does an incredible job like, the level of where everything is this stuff here is like, I wonder how those businesses run. And so you have to find a good place where it is just above good enough. I think that’s what people will put very high standards to us and say like, the demand is quite high on. You’re calling yourself that said, Yeah, we do. Because when I look at the industry standards and when we started in the industry, what we looked at was like a complaint rate on a normal service on other companies, and we bought a couple of companies as well, was about 12% and it was like, that’s insane. It was like 12%. And then after two, three years, we got it down to four, then we got down to three. And when you think about the amount of job, I mean, I still get annoyed, you know that there’s even one job that goes wrong. But this people car breaks down, and something else happens. There are people that one was sick, then they replaced it with someone from the team who didn’t know, but when you look at the overall stuff, you this is like 100% isn’t possible, but near 100% is incredible. And that’s what fantastic is.
Matt Nally 19:47
I’m guessing what the difference between 12 and 4% was just going back to the basics you mentioned a minute ago in terms of, turning time doing a good job,
Rune Sovndahl 19:57
Measuring and then having good incentives to go above that. So like understanding, because if you do 40 jobs, right, and the feedback comes two or three weeks later and say, Oh, you’re not good enough and this stuff, like, I don’t know which of the 40 jobs I didn’t do well. So the closer you can get to getting feedback on the actual job on the actual performance, and seeing and mostly money understanding what went wrong, there’s some customers will never be happy, actually, let’s just put it that way. They’ll not be happy even if we were free. And we spent the 12 hours extra on the job, they’re not going to be happy, it’s like, it’s sorry, but your carpet is not fixable. Or, it is what it’s like, you have three more rooms, and you said, you had to remove removals. So yes, the price is going to go up, it’s going to be a few more. These are unrelenting standards. But the measuring and the closer you can get to the feedback, the more accurate the training becomes. It’s not blanket training, it’s individual.
Matt Nally 21:08
The measuring of that, and the in terms of customer and net promoter scores and stuff like that, is that a little bit part of what you’ve developed in terms of your tech? because any one of the things you mentioned is like tech with a heart, I think I read somewhere Is that where that all gets fed in from?
Rune Sovndahl 21:25
Yes, that gets fed in there, and it gets measured and monitored, and then it gets fed back immediately. And this also, we all don’t tip and customers can do provide tips. And at the end of the day, like, if you come back with 100 pounds more a month, or 200 pounds more a month and tips, then, you’re doing good. What became a problem with it and I’ll tell you what was like, once you met, measured, everything is like there’s a very big company. And actually, it’s one of my own bosses, who’s the CEO of the company, very big company in the UK, who’s in a lot of trouble, because of the monitors, and all this other stuff. I think it’s very important with tech, is that it’s not just the stick. Right? And I think that we got that wrong for a couple of years, so that became more and more like, oh, yeah, you need to train that you need to rain that you need to train that. And then we find more things that improve the service, I think it’s very important to understand both of the side of things, that tech is what it is. So that can be used that way. So, I think that was one of the keys to success here.
Matt Nally 22:26
Where’s tech important to implement? Why should it?
Rune Sovndahl 22:31
Well, number one thing my seat CTO, we have a lot of discussion, because we also provide the software. And it’s not fantastic anymore. It’s a completely separate company. Now. We also provide the software to other companies, and the CTO and CEO of that company are like, always saying like, well, if people think that they have to automate 100% of something, in order to benefit from it, and it’s like, oh, but there’s one thing we can’t automate. So that means we can only do 90% or 80%. And then automate the rest. And that’s, I think, it is a big mistake. It’s like, if you can automate 80% of it, do it if you can automate 30% of it, do it. That’s what I think is important. And I think that’s, that’s a big lesson for companies to say, like, you need to get on the tech. wagon, because it’s there. And even if you can’t optimize 100%, or automate 100%, then the 30 40% allows you to slowly chip away at the rest. But a lot of them are going to oh, well, we can’t do that. That will always be someone that’s okay. But that’s part of the business, right, and accept that and then go with, well, I can optimize 80%, I can get 60% of the bookings online, you know, but I can’t get 100% Okay, well, you know, what, take the 60% I’ll take the 30% 10%. If that’s the case, take it. And that’s I think is the lesson for all service companies out there is to not aim for, oh, I can’t solve it all with it, then I won’t do it. Start. It’s a bit like, who wouldn’t use the internet?
Matt Nally 24:06
Yeah, Or emails or anything like that. It’s an interesting discussion, I have sometimes because it’s almost the opposite, not where it is. I can’t automate any or all of it. So, I won’t try. But almost, I don’t want to automate any of it. Because that takes away personal service. And I say it’s the opposite in terms of the more you can automate, the more free time you get to then be able to speak to customers and stuff.
Rune Sovndahl 24:32
But that’s a big discussion. Because it’s like, we can’t do 100% of its online. Okay. There are people who would like to have the call, we in fantastic, I think, and that’s one of the reasons we are there. We have both. And there are people who never want to talk to a person, they just want to see what time is available and what the cost and click the button. So I think that it’s a very strong mistake to say, Oh, well, it does this stuff. fear we measure it is like, and the work that they’re doing now with the new online booking system, which is incredible. It’s based on how the flight industry work in some cases, it can increase the service versus a person. It can use the opposite, like increase the reliability, it can really increase a lot of things. And I think that it’s not one or the other, it’s what’s the best of each?
Matt Nally 25:30
Yeah, how can they complement each other? Rather than it’s a battle between the two?
Rune Sovndahl 25:35
It is not one or the other. It’s how can they work together on the software, the personal service, you can add that, and you can add that later? It really depends. As I said, the service comes down to the customers. I know customers would never want to talk to anyone. It’s like, did you know like getting a phone or doing something else? Like the texting? You know, WhatsApp is what, 11 billion messages a day? Right, on WhatsApp? There are 20 billion text messages sent that list of here a day; it’s like, there is a percentage of people who just don’t want to grab the phone, and then there’s a percentage who do and who want that. So, you know, I said, like you’re doing the customers who want to not grab the phone, and just wants to book you’re doing them a disservice. And you’re actually not offering them customer service by not having it. Yes, very good point. I mean, like, if I go on, and I remember my journey back then, it is like, I call 10 of them. And only three of them picked it up. Out of those three that I got through, only two of them actually turned up. And then that was there to do a quote. How can you run a business like that? That was my view, man. How can you run a business like that? Three of them went through. So okay, none of them, I could check the prices, none of them. I could do this stuff here. And it’s like everything else in the world. But services. I can go in and see how much it costs to book a hotel and a flight to Paris. And what does the theatre here? And I can actually see or don’t have tickets for that opera? Or is the museum open? And what does it cost? Right? But I can’t see what carpet cleaning of a two bedroom flat is going to cost me. I just couldn’t understand that. I have been in the online industry since 1999. So, I couldn’t understand that just frustrated me. None of them could say it was that up. And then, you know, I had to take two days off to get a quote for a carpet cleaner. I was, like, starting to work. And I was like, that was not to do the carpet cleaning. It was to do with a quotation for yes, he’s just on the job for a day. But he didn’t turn up on the day, as he came the day after, because I don’t have time for this. So I don’t know; to me, it was just a no brainer.
Matt Nally 27:44
Yeah, definitely is the way that the from the story you had. And I think there are quite a lot of businesses that don’t necessarily value the value of their leads. If we did a study a couple of years ago, just as the pandemic had hit, the surveyors would be able to go back out again. And I think we emailed about 130 odd companies, and the majority did send an initial response back, but then no one ever followed up with that; again, it was just left and ignored. And, to pass on the prices we have in front of them, you know, let’s nurture those leads as well. But I was always amazed by the fact that there’s no value placed on that lead is we’ll make one contact, we’ve sort of ticked a box, I suppose. And then it gets left. Again, that’s also bad customer service. Just sort of leaving it there, I think.
Rune Sovndahl 28:31
Yeah, I mean, like even the unreleased calls of those 10 of them, you lose like, to me, that was a competitive advantage.
Matt Nally 28:40
Definitely. How, as you as you’ve grown. Obviously, you’ve taken lots of stuff, and you’ve gone to other countries as well on different services. How do you balance your time in terms of how you spend time working in the business working on the business? And yeah, taking time out to sort of work on strategy, is that quite a hard balance to get?
Rune Sovndahl 29:03
That’s a hard balance to get, like, even after 14 years, Sometimes I think I got it right, then COVID happens, and you suddenly have to rethink the whole book. It’s like half our services couldn’t be supplied by it and one service is going to go up and this stuff here and one service isn’t going to go up and balancing that. We’ve got very good managers in the company, we got some incredible help, and we’ve got some incredible people, I think without that there would be no company. And that aspect of it, it doesn’t matter how many good strategies you have, and so forth. It is an operations company.
Matt Nally 29:39
And getting the right team and for the right roles, and, yeah, empowering people.
Rune Sovndahl 29:44
And then, I mean. it’s like, there’s so much striking to be done, and, you know, there’s more strategy to be done. And so, there’s a lot more to achieve. It’s mixing that operation versus the strategy and you’ve got two partners instead of one which helps. So, it’s not just me. Different people are thinking about strategy, about different things in the strategy, which allows you to do it. I mean you’ve got to look at each department at what the strategy for them should be, and then find that out. And then what’s the overall strategy for the company? So there are a number of things to go through. And we’ll see, it’s going to be an interesting journey again, you know, we had to rethink everything. It was a big shift.
Matt Nally 30:25
Yeah, definitely. Consumer interaction changed. And how people work to change a lot. But I suppose one of the other bits I wanted to discuss was how do you keep your passion for what you do over sort of 13-plus years? do you ever find those sorts of times, you need to take time out just to sort of step back again, or if you’ve always been quite consistent.
Rune Sovndahl 30:49
I think it’s important to just step out, I think it’s very important to maintain that. But also, we’ve had our times when it wasn’t that much like, Oh, we’re just going through the grind again, then we shift to the company. And one of the things that we’ve been very passionate about that really led us into the next phase was about the planet. What can we do to our services, to make them more sustainable? What can we do, like use blankets and removals rather than plastic and so forth? And what are we doing with chemicals? What are we doing about this? How do we reduce the number of miles driven? How do you get more electric cars so that we can do things? I think that’s been a huge drive, and getting back into this, like, we are actually the size where it matters, what we do, you know, what we change matters, and it makes an impact. And that gives you back.
Matt Nally 31:42
Yeah, Is that a big sort of focus at the moment in terms of your strategy as well? Or is it just because there’s a company value?
Rune Sovndahl 31:56
It is everything that we do. I mean, like, how do we get and make sure we can supply now that we’re solar with, with a main office, and so forth. So it is a very big part of it. That’s the game you’re playing, it’s we got to that level where we can afford ourselves that luxury of looking at. I mean, the reason why I don’t push it as a marketing thing is that I just want to work. I really got tired of companies really pushing it as marketing., We’re doing this, like, this doesn’t really matter. We’re fantastic services, we’ll do what needs to be done. We’ll make it opt out instead of opt in; it’s like, Do you want eco products? No, it’s opt out, you know, if you really don’t want, you have to opt out of these things. And those kinds of things. And we just, instead of going at it and drumming, beating a louder drum, we just said, what can we do? Each one of us and what we do in the office, and what can we do for ourselves? And that’s what we’ve gone deeper and deeper into
Matt Nally 33:00
Actually, you had an interesting marketing campaign. I think it was two or three years ago. I think it’s one of the London councils where you effectively clean the streets in order to do your marketing. That was a genius idea.
Rune Sovndahl 33:15
Yeah, we’ve done pumps, we’ve done schools. I mean, we did a lot of cleaning up in schools, like one of the things many years ago with the book, I think is either Great by Choice, or I think it’s Great by Choice. It’s one of Jim Collins’s books, and he writes about the mayor in New York who has this broken window concept, right? And you know, Juliano back in those days. He said, like, if there’s a broken window, then graffiti comes in if graffiti comes in and the window remains broken. What happens is that that means that somebody’s not looking after the area. That means that maybe some crimes, they will start dealing drugs, something else may happen, and that’s when it escalates on to gun violence, which is in the US. So he had this idea of taking trains off the track within one hour of them being defeated. And that stopped the graffiti, right? Because it’s like, that means sh*t. Somebody’s watching. Yes. And when we had capacity, we did the same with certain garden places in London. We’ve done quite a number of schools and quite a number of areas around schools where people were fly tipping. Which is one of the worst things there is, but when they start doing that, if people see the three back lying there, and suddenly it’s five, and suddenly it’s 10, then suddenly it’s a rubbish tip and the plants die and everything else dies, and then when that happens, like nobody’s looking after it, graffiti comes in and it’s like the broken window. So we had the same as when people come to us and said, Can you do this for our school or can you do this as many for schools? will do it is restored their gardens or helped them with kitchen garden and so forth. And it’s part of that concept of the broken window. So it’s part of our philosophy of what we are doing, and we do it in the same way with regards to repairing things whether it’s repairing in the office, and one of the things we got to was that because we had a lot of Eastern European handymen. And one thing that, it’s like, from our perspective in the West, we’re always looking at, like, How do I do so and so forth? And it’s just a replacement culture, right? So, the amount of repairs we can do is so incredible, I mean, the things that can be repaired, like what we’re doing on doors, rather than just replacing a door because there’s a scratch in it, and so forth. And that is incredible. Like that, we have this service for hard surface repairs. And that’s incredible. And that is part of the longer term vision, which is like repair don’t replace, it’s this thing about, You can repair a lot more than you think you can, and we’re not used to that. But that’s a whole culture shift. And that’s going to come more and more. So that’s another thing we’re looking at.
Matt Nally 36:01
It’s interesting, I think there’s a lot of things going full circle, because obviously, years ago, you would only ever dream of repairing rather than throwing away and replacing, and then we’ve had this transition. The washing machine is broken, throw it out, buy a new one. But there’s a lot of things that are becoming more cyclical like that. There are challenges, I think, as a consumer, sometimes not knowing how to get into the back of something, but I suppose it’s partly as well as a consumer, moving away from that laziness. It’s easy just to not think about it because it’s cheaper just to go and buy something else. But it’s interesting that you’re looking down that route as well.
Rune Sovndahl 36:41
Yeah. Well, we’ve always been looking down that route. I think it’s human nature to solve this sort of this way. I mean, I think that we’ve got so complacent as people in that way. And I think there’s so much work to be done, the repairing stuff and also the recycling and so forth. And what we do with waste, like one of our big aims is to get more into the waste of the recycling of this in our waste removed from say, well, if we can sort out more of this stuff here, then we can sort out more, and we can sort it better than others. There’s a lot of technology in that business as well. So we’re looking at that, we’re looking into many areas where we can make a difference.
Matt Nally 37:18
I would like to point out as well about letting one thing slip, like the broken window, and then other things build up, because I think that’s really relevant for absolutely any area of life. So, within a business, if you’re not watching the customer score, for example, and understanding what they’re getting out of it, the standard starts to step on other things in the business, and it’s very hard to then retrain a team to come out of a mentality that they’ve got into. So you have to be watching all of those different touchpoints and making sure you’re providing the best service at every point and not just letting it slip a little bit each day.
Rune Sovndahl 37:54
That’s why, I said to call culture eats marketing for breakfast. You said about, oh, what was the message you sent to the customer? So it’s like, I didn’t really have to send that many messages, we had to do the job. That was one of the things, because you asked about that. And I was like, Okay, well, I didn’t think about it that way. Because, well, doing the job eats marketing for breakfast.
Matt Nally 38:17
Yeah, and that becomes your marketing, I suppose because everyone’s raving about it.
Rune Sovndahl 38:21
I mean, at the moment, we still have a lot of cancellations. I mean, like COVID was a big one, and especially coming out of COVID, both customers were sick, and pros were sick. And we try very hard to approach and saying, like, if there’s any doubt, don’t turn up. cancellations, and so forth, still count for quite a large part, and then we’re working on finding a better way of work-life balance, also for our pros now. So we’re working out that in order to make sure that the availability becomes more fluid. And there was more by Okay, well, you’ve got X number of days more to do your things than before. And then we added some more travel time and a couple of other things to make sure that worked. And that really increased it. It’ll continue to change the behavior of people. and that’s going to be, this is not a software business in that way. It is people doing that, and that’s what I think a lot of tips will help with that as well. And as started, people are starting to tip a lot, like this finally because I always had come back to the surface like, unfortunately, while we were 3% of complaints, unfortunately, there were three complaints fills 90% of our what we get to. That’s why I said like the negativity on that. It’s like, we don’t have 97% of the jobs. Correct. Maybe they’re not perfect, right, but we get 97% of our jobs, right? On the day, but the 3% we hear about, then that’s where all the focus goes. And it’s like, well, you forgot something to look at, we got the 93% or 97%, so we will continue looking after those.
Matt Nally 40:14
Did you say you’ve implemented a tips aspect for that? So, you can get the sort of very positive feedback or the other way?
Awesome. I suppose just finish off, what would be your top tips for success in a business?
Rune Sovndahl 40:31
I think getting the right tech and getting the right tech. But as I said, Culture eats any other thing for breakfast. So, the right tech, right team is the two key corner to success, then the message, you can do what everybody else does, doesn’t have to be over the top. But those two things are in alliance, when those two things align. That’s when you have success. I mean, a company that has talent, or it has money to grow. Most of these companies and we didn’t start with money, we had talent. But when you say like when you get the tech and the talent together, then money comes, that’s how it works.
Matt Nally 41:15
Yeah, it’s really fascinating then. Thank you for coming on and sharing your thoughts.
Rune Sovndahl 41:23
I look forward to hearing more.