In PART FOUR of this week’s episode, we are speaking with James Warren from UK Drainage Professionals about the importance of customer experience and setting expectations.
Across the three parts of this episode, we are discussing everything off-mains drainage, the basics, the legislation, and the key things to look out for.
James is incredibly passionate about off-mains drainage, its impact on the environment, and helping people to really understand a quite complicated and less common topic. James has an enthusiasm that you can’t help get but energised by.
James’s experience has been gained in both the insurance and drainage industries. He started his career working in claims management for the UK’s largest insurer, before moving into the drainage industry in which he had the opportunity to combine both skills. James is our expert on anything from repair scopes to assessing insurance cover.
In Part 4 of this episode, we discuss:
🤓 Benefits of easy to read guides for customers who don’t deal with the service you provide all the time
📣 The key to good communication
👂 Setting customer expectations to achieve a great outcome
🤝 Understanding all your customer touch points and when the experience starts
🔍 The importance of transparency
💬 The benefits of a pre-works walk and talk meeting
💻 The importance of technology in the process and when to use it
Transcript
The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.
Matt Nally
Our final topic then, with James is customer experience and the importance of it. And it’s something we’ve talked about another podcast too. But I suppose to start off with the context, what is customer experience for you? What’s it mean to you and your customers?
James Warren
Without sounding too cheesy, it means everything. A lot of our customers will refer us to their neighbours, friends, colleagues, in addition to just wanting to do the right thing anyway, I know it sounds a bit OTT and a bit Hollywood. But unless you do something, well, then what’s the point in doing it, it’s like the old school values, isn’t it? You know, anyone could do a half decent job. But it’s no point in that customer experience. Because we do so many different things. I know we’re talking about off mains drainage, but the first job of the day might be a pre purchase survey. And then we’re doing a seller survey. So it’s the same task but a different dynamic, then we might be looking, we might be an expert witness on the on the next situation, then we’re looking at an insurance claim. There’s there’s so many different things we do. But it doesn’t matter whether the customer is a surveyor, a property owner, an estate manager, a solicitor, it doesn’t matter. The fact is, they’ve entrusted us to carry out a task. We’re extremely appreciative, we’ve been given that task. And we will have our very, very experienced knowledgeable engineers going out and representing us beautifully on site, the report is then triple check before it goes out. Because we are ridiculously on point with things like that. And we hope and we believe from feedback we’ve got that the customer experience is really positive and really strong. No one’s perfect. Sometimes we perhaps we take a little bit too long to get a report out if we want to double check a few points ourselves. But going back to the question, Customer Experience is everything is the customer, making sure they feel as if they’ve made the right decision in the first place. And that means good, excellent communication, verbally and in writing. And being satisfied with the work we do the work might be a piece of advice on a phone call, it might be a written report, it might be a technical explanation. It might be an expert witness report. It could be an installation in their in their back garden, whatever it is, it’s irrelevant. They’ve picked us, we’re very glad that we’re very appreciative when we’re gonna give them a one service every single time. As like I said, otherwise, what’s the point? You want to strive to be the best? We’re not the cheapest? I don’t think we’re the most expensive, we’re not the cheapest, but we like to think we deliver the best service. And that’s what we’re striving for. And yeah, we’ve had some fantastic feedback, I’m sure others will say that they’re just as good as us. And that’s great and good for them, that selfishly, we can only concentrate on ourselves, and we just try and do the best every single time.
Matt Nally
I think that’s the case, you can’t focus on what everyone else is doing not because then you’re not focusing on what you’re doing and getting that right. But I think for me customer experience is it is what it’s what you’ve said, but I think it’s really going into the detail of looking at every touchpoint and that customer has with you because you can you can have the best report, you know, the most technically accurate, brilliant reports at the end of something. But if you haven’t set expectations, right at different points, and it’s been clunky to get ahold of you doesn’t matter things to take take time, you know, you can take two days to get back to someone if you set the expectation that, you know, we’ll get back to you in two to three days. Because then the customer knows they’re expecting to wait. But I think quite often people forget that the you know, the contact form that they’ve submitted, and they’re not knowing what’s gonna happen next is that first experience working with you,
James Warren
right? Yeah, management of expectation is key. If someone comes through, there’s various ways people can get in contact with us if they just come through our website. The guys up in Glasgow, they like to get back to people in like 15 minutes. They and they hate it when they don’t know like if someone has spent time to write down their background details and they’re obviously looking for help. They need help. We like to show them straightaway that we actually care about their inquiry. We’re grateful they’ve gone on our website, they’ve they’ve obviously chosen us and got some element of initial trust to jump to make an inquiry. See, absolutely. We try and help them. We manage their expectations if they want us to come out. We’ll tell them what the current wait time is. We’ll tell them how quickly we get the report back after that. And then we make sure we hit it. And sometimes, if we do a report in the morning, we’ll have a customer come on at lunchtime saying, I know you told me it’d be a few days. But can you can you just give me like the heads up? I’m sometimes nervous about that, because we like to go through every detail before issuing that report. But if if it’s time sensitive, we’ll we’ll do that because we are about customer experience. But I think customer experience has also been realistic and say to them, I can give you some information now. But we did say we needed some time to review everything. So there may be some tweaks when the final report comes out. So once again, sort of manage expectations within the initial expectation. But as long as you’ve got their communication channel open, and you’re transparent, and honest, I don’t think you can do any more.
Matt Nally
Yeah, I think that’s quite a difficult one that because you can appreciate the customers angst, or worry about what the outcome is going to be if they want to get get that indication. And equally, you don’t want to say the wrong thing. Look through your photos and notes and go, Oh, actually, that’s quite bad hands up earlier.
James Warren
And I can hear you going from rush. Yeah, that can happen.
Matt Nally
Yeah, completely. And then suddenly, the customer is going well, why have you gone? Actually, you know, everything’s okay to disaster. It’s
James Warren
exactly, it’s what we tell our guys if a customer is on site, if one of our engineers and they say, okay, so I need new system, can you give me a ballpark figure? In the old days, under the guise of being helpful we would do for all that happens is you give out a range and say, Look, I’m not the estimators. The surveyor speaker, I’m not the estimator, that from my experience, you might be looking at nine to 11,000 pounds plus VAT, all the customer is is 9000 pounds, no 11 plus VAT, not plus VAT, just nine. So suddenly, your estimate comes back at 10 and a half plus about that, oh, goodness me as, yes, 12,000 pounds, give or take. Your guy told me nine grand on site. So we don’t give out any numbers anymore. Because even though we’re probably accurate in our estimation on site, the customer will only hear the most cost effective price. So we don’t do that anymore. 00 chat around prices.
Matt Nally
Yeah, as a consumer, you don’t hear what you hear the the lowest figure. So it always worth saying it with fat just just to not get a 20% shot. Yeah, indeed. One of the things that you do, and we’ve discussed this, briefly off the top of the podcast, which I think is some surveys we probably do. But it’s something they can, I think really look into and, you know, refine for themselves is you do a pre works meeting. And I think surveyors could definitely do a pre survey meeting, some will already do that. But really refining it to answer every question set every expectation, keep the customer really calm and excited about where things are go. How do you handle that? Because it sounds like you’ve got a really good bond, or from some of these posts I’ve seen,
James Warren
yeah, the pre works meeting to us, it just seems like a normal part of the process. We’ve submitted a quotation customer says, Yes, please, you agree a provisional start date for the works. And between us being approved for the piece of work and the job starting our works manager will go out and spend an hour to an hour and a half with the customer. And we like to call it a walk and talk I’m sure there’s a better phrase we could give it. But effectively, the works manager will go out with the specification of works that we’ve already issued to the customer. Hence, they’ve agreed to quote against that spec. And instead of it being on paper and looking at a site plan, a drawn site plan, we’re in the customers garden, we’re explaining on a particular Monday, who the guys are, who our engineers are, when they’re going to turn up, what’s going to happen first and the installation process, where materials are going to be stored when they’re turning up. How noisy it’s going to be how how much of a disruption, it’s going to be where things are going to be installed. customer says Can I move it a couple of metres this way yes or no explanation why. And then it’s all done on a tablet. And only at the point that the customer is 100% comfortable, that they know and are happy with everything that’s been proposed, the works manager and the customer will both sign the tablet and then a PDF copy will be issued. It’s it’s super slick. Don’t get me wrong, there might be little tweaks during the job. There will be made on a PDF. A revised PDF will then be sent out at the end of the job with the warranty certificate and any other documents that need to be issued on that on the completion pack. And we just find that all about management of expectations again, there’s going to be no surprises for that customer. They know that diggers turn up at 9am. They know that all the boards are going to be down that side of the garden to store the excavated material. There’s no surprises. Don’t get me wrong. A lot of people still don’t realise how intrusive the as jobs are, irrespective of how honest and detailed we are, if they if their garden is their pride and joy, and we’re digging it up, understandably that the hearts gonna go a little bit fast. But it’s all to do with keeping them calm, keeping them informed. Putting it back nicely explained to them that when we leave site after a week or two weeks, that’s not the end of the job, we’ll come back in six weeks, because there might be a little bit of settlement, we’ll put a little bit more topsoil in, rake it out, make sure you’re happy. And if we need to, we’ll come back again in six weeks. It’s all about that aftercare and realising that we are there to do a good job, they’ve paid a good price, and they’re gonna get a good job. And that’s what it’s all about. With
Matt Nally
that customer experience bit is training quite important with with the team that you’re working with. It’s easier, I suppose if you’re an individual, you know what you’ve agreed, and you can stick to that, if when you start scaling up, and you’ve got more people involved, or contractors or whoever it might be, how important is training to make sure that what you’ve agreed in, in writing or agreed and verbally, whatever, it actually happens, because it’s very easy to say, we’re going to put that material set of materials here, and actually it ends up somewhere else. So yeah, well, the important aspect.
James Warren
Yeah, it’s absolutely critical. And the continuity is the PDF document that is agreed with the customer in our work manager. Now on the rare occasions that the works manager can’t start the job with the guys, they have got this six page document, in addition to the site plan, and they know exactly what to do. But I actually can’t remember an occasion where we’ve started a project without our works manager being present, he may only be there for the first hour, introduced the two or three man team to the customer, have a cup of coffee made sure everyone’s aware of the situation, make sure everyone’s got the right documents, contact numbers for the excavator delivery company, and so on and so forth. And off they go. And at the end of the job, on the final day, the works manager will come back, just make sure everything’s okay. In, in the interim, there are daily worksheets that the engineers do where they take photographs, it’s all stored digitally. So at any point in time, we can record what they’ve done where they’re up to, that’s great for an audit trail and for transparency, but also it’s great for because every job is done under a building’s notice. So if the building troughs or can’t be there, at a certain point where they said, I need photos of the bedding of the pipework I, I need photos of the thickness of the concrete base for the sewage treatment plant, for example, you got the data, the date stamp photographs, and just pull them up, send them over to building patrol and everyone’s happy. But it just is all about transparency and, and creating an audit trail for our own benefit as well as the customers. But yeah, the the continuity is key. And it’s typically down to the works manager physically starting a job with a repair crew with the installation crew.
Matt Nally
Awesome. And then one one thing you touched on there actually was the the tech side of things. So how important is technology, in your opinion for customer experience, because the reason I asked that is you do hear not from everyone, a lot of people embrace tech and really work with it. But you’ll have others that maybe fear that it detracts from customer experience. And automation removes some sort of dialogue between customer and surveyor
James Warren
I think that would be the case, if we allowed our technology to work as its intended. And let me explain what that means we use. We use a company called big change for to effectively we went paperless about five years ago. And a part of their like the software side that we use on our tablets every day and we use on our laptops is called job watch. This isn’t a promo for them. But it is it is fantastic. It’s increased our efficiency by about 40%. So it does work. We could fire off documents instantly to the customers, if we allow technology to do its thing. And everyone listening to this will go Yeah, that’s great, isn’t it? Because there are so many nuances around what we do we prevent that we put a blocker on that. Yeah, so it’s beautifully techie and efficient up to that point. And then the estimator, Technical Report Writer and myself, we will go through every detail of every report, because if we make a mistake, that could be massively expensive and massively detrimental. So then we just turn the system back on again, then it can fire out the report after it’s out that sort of technical manual input at the most critical phase. And then it just flows again. A lot of our customers, they do love the tech, they love the quick exchanges. They love the PDF documents. They love that electronic instant side of it. But the vast majority would still like a bit of a quick conversation after just to clarify a couple of points just to just to really reinforce that sort of peace of mind label that we like, like going on about especially on LinkedIn. But yeah, If we really wanted to speed things up, the minute the engineer finished that job at midday on a Monday, 10 seconds later, it could be with the customer. Yeah, but then we we, you know, we’ve got to have 100% confidence that nothing has been missed. And there’s no typos that can be misinterpreted, viciously. So we actually pause the efficiency at that point, manually check everything, and then kickstart it again.
Matt Nally
And that’s, I think, the perfect way to do it, it’s having that blend. I think, I think sometimes what can happen is people fear or see that technology is all nothing, it’s full chatbot everything automated instant, or completely manual, speak to the customer about every point and do everything yourself. And actually, it’s about creating a nice blend, you know, just because maybe an initial email has gone out, acknowledging that an inquiry has been received, actually, that’s just about setting expectations being like, here’s, here’s some information, here’s when I’ll be in touch. There’s not, don’t minimal, you’re not going to talk to you. Same for that step later on, you could send out the report straightaway. But actually, sometimes it’s better to sit automated, but have have that gap in so that you’ve got the time to send a check or have a conversation before it goes out or yeah, you’re
James Warren
totally right. And I think some of the guys get annoyed with me because I send out an email to a customer the report. And I always say there’s a lot of information, but in summary, and then I’m repeating the whole process, because then I’m giving them some key bullet points like Well, we’ve already done that in the report, but I can’t help myself. Sometimes I think people they will not read a report thoroughly, they will scan read it and they will pick out the bits that they feel are important whether they’re actually important or not. So what I always do a summary set of bullet points, and well, everything’s important in this report, but you should know X, Y and Zed. So I am duplicating the process, but I don’t think I’m ever going to change.
Matt Nally
Now it’s difficult. And I suppose also, if you know, a particular customer, from the start of the process is given quite a lot of things already, then potentially that’s quite a worthwhile thing to do.
James Warren
Definitely.
Matt Nally
Is there anything else about customer experience things worth mentioning at all, or didn’t like covers it?
James Warren
I think it covers it, it’s just it is that management of expectation. It’s clear and concise communication. And it’s, I saw a post about it the other day is eating that frog. If you’ve got a customer that’s not happy about something, just deal with it as quickly as humanly possible. There will always be there will always be a point where you’re going to agree or disagree, but you can still disagree in a professional, professional, courteous, calm, measured way. Go gonna go under the age of having screaming, you know, matches over a phone or on site. The fact is, there will be differences of opinion, people will think we’re too expensive. People will think they’ve done their own research and they can put in a different system. They think we’ve over scoped something that we are we are ridiculously squeaky clean when it comes to doing the correct job. Including absolutely everything in his scope of works. We don’t like going back and asking for variations halfway through a job. I think that’s sometimes if you if you come across an unexploded wellbore to bomb. Okay, fine, the T’s and C’s have to kick in. But we like to be mega thorough, which also proves that we’ve looked at a site correctly and thoroughly. And hopefully that level of detail will translate to a customer to say okay, then you’ve got 20 lines of spec against Joe Bloggs, with five lines of spec, you’re more expensive, but you seem to have included more thought about more. And I really hope that comes across. And don’t get me wrong, we do not win every job that we quote, where we’ve got a very good conversion rate. And I can only assume that comes down to the level of professionalism, as you say, all the way through that touch point, an initial email, initial phone call, initial site visit quality of reports, speed of report, speed of follow up, etc, etc. So we must be doing something right. There’s always room for improvement. But yeah, if customers happy, then we’re happy. It means we must be doing something right.
Matt Nally
That’s nice. Let’s finish up. Thanks for coming on today. James. I really appreciate all your insight across the different topics. My pleasure. If anyone wants to reach out ask any questions, get some pointers, how do they get in touch? Well,
James Warren
they’re welcome to come through if they come through to generic email there’s four people sitting behind it so it’s info at UK DP solutions dot code at UK and then welcome to come through to me James not worn at UK DP solutions at UK and the website is just UK DP solutions to cote UK. All the guides and blogs are on there completely free to download and peruse. So yeah, please everyone and anyone take a look. download everything and yeah, if you can gain a little bit of knowledge, then it’ll be a good thing.
Matt Nally
Thanks again for coming on. Look forward to catching up again soon.
James Warren
Awesome. Thank you so much. Take care