How Green Gardeners swapped voicemail for an hour a day back

Max Jodie 0:00

How did you used to deal with calls and new enquiries? Because it sounds like your service is really needed in the areas that you cover.

Simon 0:08

Yeah, so we've got two websites, because we cover two main big areas, so we've got a website for each. We've got a web developer, a guy who does all the SEO and stuff, and he's very good. In effect, I'd say 90% of our enquiries come off the website and the rest are referrals. In the busy period, between about April and October, I can probably get about six to eight calls a day for new work. That's the average. If I can answer them, I do. If I'm up a ladder or mowing a lawn, I don't, and they just go to voicemail. Some people leave voicemails, some people don't.

Simon 0:45

I'm still on the tools, mainly because I like it. I'm not on the tools every day, but I probably do two to three days a week because I enjoy it. But I can't always hear the phone, I can't always answer the phone, and it gets too much really, so I let it go to voicemail. And before you know it, after three days I've probably got 15 voicemails to go through, which then takes time. One of my big frustrations with trades is they never get back to you. So whether we can do the job or we don't want to quote or don't do the job, we always get back to everyone, or we try to, even if it's a text message saying we can't help you, because then these people know. So yeah, that takes quite a bit of time, and that's what we used to do.

Max Jodie 1:26

So you've gone over some of the frustrations of that, in terms of people not leaving messages or having to get back to them. But how did that affect your working week?

Simon 1:40

Basically, in the day, if I'm working I'll leave at half six, so I'm out of the house working from seven, half six, and probably back about half three. We've got three kids, 16, 13 and 6, with various demands on our time, clubs, going out. So my evenings would be working till 9 or 10 o'clock at night just doing the admin. That was a bit of my choice, but it can get a bit too much sometimes, because obviously you can't sustain that.

Simon 2:07

So the problem we had is, if I want to come off the tools to answer the phones full-time and do all the admin, we've got to find more gardeners. And finding good gardeners is very hard, because it's a low barrier to entry. Anyone can say they're a gardener, and you churn through quite a lot. So I was like, well, if I'm not going to come off the tools, I need someone to take the admin off me, and then I can focus on that. Because I can't do both. I can't do the tools and the admin. My wife helps out a lot, but there's still stuff that I do. So I was looking at virtual receptionists. I was looking at hiring someone two days a week, because that would free up my time.

Max Jodie 2:42

And do you remember a moment using Jodie where your scepticism kind of left, during the free trial?

Simon 2:51

Basically with the test call, really. I don't know if you get a seven-day trial or an initial free trial, don't you? And you get a spoof number which you can use to test. So I tried calling it and I thought, yeah, it's good. You can tell during the conversation it could be AI. Some people wouldn't, but some people would. So then I gave the number to my mum, who's in her 80s. Then I gave it to one of my friends, who's my age. Then I gave it to my son to try. Then I gave it to my wife, and I said, try and fire questions. And pretty much it could answer most questions, or divert the call in a way that it wasn't a stumbling block. So yeah, I thought, well, this does work, but is it going to save me time? That was the key thing for me.

Simon 3:35

And I think the good bit about it is I get a lot of sales calls, and now they come from mobile numbers. I don't answer landlines from Dumfries or far away, because they're just sales calls. But most of the enquiries that come into us are from mobile numbers. So if someone phones me on a mobile, I think that could be an enquiry, and I'll try and answer it. And obviously Jodie weeds out a lot of that, because they don't leave anything. Then I can just look through the email and delete it straight away. So I haven't had any voicemail for probably about three or four weeks now. I don't get any.

Simon 4:09

I think with voicemails, people forget, the first ever one was created in the 70s. You just put them in the too-hard-to-do box. You just think, I'll leave it, I'll leave it, and then after three days I've had up to 35 voicemails, and you think, this is a trudge now. I've got to go through every one of these and listen, and you have to go through some of them three or four times, because people don't speak clearly or they speak too fast. But with the emails that I get, I can just read them.

Max Jodie 4:35

So if you had to quantify it, in terms of when you were looking through all of the voicemails compared to Jodie, how much time a day or a week would you say that Jodie is saving you in admin?

Simon 4:48

I'd say at least an hour a day, so probably saving me seven hours a week, or five working days, five hours a week. So that's 20 hours a month. I've never really looked at it, but I'd say definitely. I don't have to worry about answering the phone. If it's someone I know, like one of the gardeners, their number will come up and I'll try and get to it before Jodie does. But if it's a new enquiry or a sales call, I don't even bother now, I just leave it. I think we're lucky we're at a stage now where we haven't got much capacity, so we don't need to take on much work. So if I lose a few here and there through people not leaving messages, then that's fine. I can definitely wear that. Whereas I think if you're growing, you would answer every call to start with, just because you want the new work.

Simon 5:29

And then if I put that into a VA cost at 30 pounds an hour, that's 150 quid a week, isn't it? That's 600 pounds a month. And that's something I avoid. And then there's sickness, holidays, et cetera. I never answer my phone at weekends. I've had a rule that I don't answer at weekends, because that's why I started doing this, to spend more weekends with my family. But now I haven't got to worry that I'm going to come back on a Sunday night to 20 voicemails.

Max Jodie 5:53

So going into the actual process, you touched upon that, you have the option to answer the phone before it goes to Jodie. Can you expand upon that? So, for example, a call comes in, you don't pick up, Jodie takes it, and then what happens from there, in terms of what time of the day you review it, just from beginning to end, so people can see how you're using Jodie so successfully in your week.

Simon 6:20

So when the phone goes, I think it's 15 seconds before Jodie will kick in, so that's fine, and I might be up a ladder or mowing a lawn. We probably do about eight jobs a day, so in between jobs we'll load the van back up and I might have a quick look at my email, because an email comes through within a minute or so of the phone call finishing. I'll look at the email, I can scan it, and if there's three lines which basically say Jodie answered the call and no one left a message, I know it's probably a sales call, and I just delete the email and it's done. So it takes me 10 seconds, if that, to filter out the calls.

Simon 6:58

If I've got a good one, a good lead where someone's left me a message, you can just hold down the phone number they've left you, and that gives you the option to send a message, like it does on your iPhone, or call. And then at the end of the day, I've got a pre-printed text we just send out to new enquiries, so I just send the text off. Again, that takes probably about five, ten seconds.

Max Jodie 7:17

Amazing. And what's in that text?

Simon 7:21

Jodie obviously takes the phone number, then takes the postcode and the address. So if it's a postcode outside of our area, I've just got a pre-printed text which says, thanks for your call, we're not taking any more work at the moment, I don't know any reliable gardeners in your area, because people always ask. And then I just send that text off. That gets rid of that enquiry, but I have got back to them, and I will get texts back saying, thanks for getting back to us, you're the only one who has, although you can't help us. So it is good.

Simon 7:50

I've got another email which I send out if someone's interested in our services, with our pricing structure, how we work, the process of taking us on and what they can expect from us. And again, that's just a cut and paste. So again, that's five, ten seconds, and I've dealt with all the enquiries then.

Max Jodie 8:07

Fantastic. And so if they then respond to how you work, you would then just book them in a slot from the email?

Simon 8:15

Yes, then we get into a bit more of a text conversation, or even a phone call if they want to, and then we would just go down that process. I don't think I can automate that yet, because they'll have questions about how we do stuff, and I think ultimately people do want to speak to a human at some point, especially if they're engaging your service. But I don't have to get involved in that process until a lot later down the line.

Simon 8:37

I'd say she's way better than voicemail, because it is interactive. You can nearly have a conversation. I've tried it quite a bit. I tried it in the first week quite a lot, and I was asking questions about the service: do you take the waste away, what days do you come, can you do hanging baskets, stuff that I would get asked. And she could pretty much answer it, to a degree, satisfactorily at that stage. So it's much more than voicemail, because voicemail is just one-way traffic, whereas this is definitely a two-way street. Possibly when you get further into conversations she might struggle, because they're getting a bit more in-depth. But initially, she can answer a lot of questions.

Simon 9:17

And one of the things I do like about Jodie is she'll email me when she can't answer a question. She emailed me the other day, I had a question, do you do fencing? And we don't. So she says, how do you want me to answer that? And then you type your answer, and I typed an answer saying we don't do fencing, but we use a fencing company, this is their phone number. So now if someone else asks that question, she can answer it with the phone number of a company.

Simon 9:42

I think before Jodie, I was more conscious about having to answer my phone when it rang, and I'd answer it at precarious points in the day when perhaps I shouldn't be answering it, when I'm working or up a ladder or something like that, or in the evenings. And if I didn't answer it, I would just get a load of voicemails which I then had to go through. Now with Jodie I don't have that worry at all. I can concentrate on the business, I can spend more time thinking about the business, and I don't have to worry that I'm going to miss calls or miss enquiries, because I know Jodie's always at work. And that gives me a lot more sanity, if you like. It certainly saves me a lot of time in the day.