How The Zed Shed got an hour a day back from the phone

Mike 0:00

If they're ringing the landline and I'm choosing not to answer, they get Jodie. If they're ringing my mobile and I'm choosing not to answer, they get Jodie as well. So it's pretty seamless from their point of view. And customers, by and large... at first, a couple of regular customers chose not to speak to her, not to interact, because they wanted to speak to me. When I eventually spoke to them, they said, 'Who's that answering your phone?' And I explained the situation. I said, 'Listen, if you ring me and I don't answer, it goes straight to her now. Leave a message and I'll get a text or an email with the body of the message, so I know what you need when I ring you back.' So it's not just a case of 'we'll take your phone number and we'll call you back'. She goes into detail, she'll ask them what the problem is and they can leave a message. And do you know what the biggest thing is? She empathises with them. Whereas with a normal voicemail, they wouldn't get that.

Mike 0:52

I've had customers flirt with her. They've rung me back and they've said, 'Is that a real person?' And I've gone, 'No, it's not.' And they go, 'Oh, I thought it was a real person.' And when I've listened to the call, you can tell they're quite flirtatious on the calls. That's one of the reasons why we swap and change her name quite regularly, to be fair. I think this week she's got a Scottish accent. We change it just for fun, because it keeps people thinking, 'Ooh, is it a real person or not?'

Mike 1:23

But we also do a lot of routine services and repairs as well, and I think it makes sure that I'm not going to lose them if they're new customers, if that makes sense. Because they've left their information, and when I ring them back and say, 'Oh, you've got a problem with this,' or 'You've got a problem with that,' they can tell that I've listened to the call or I've seen a transcript of the call. So I'm not just ringing them back saying, 'Oh, I've got a missed call.' We'll get people saying, 'What time do you open?' or 'Do you work weekends?' or 'Is there a cafe on site?' or 'Have you got a waiting room?' And because these are questions she's been asked and I've answered, she knows.

Max Jodie 1:52

Amazing, that sounds so good. Sorry, go on.

Mike 1:54

Yeah, she's constantly learning. And obviously, if there's a question she doesn't know the answer to, it'll appear in my dashboard, and I can type an answer into it in the way I want. The classic one is the people ringing up: 'Oh, I'm ringing about the card machine,' or the business energy. I don't even want to speak to them. If someone asks about the card machine, she'll say, 'We're not interested in card machines. We're not interested in that.' Which saves me having to field the call.

Mike 2:23

In the past, prior to this, sometimes I'd get 40 or 50 calls a day, and every time I answered a call I'd stop work. And obviously, when there's only two of us, that has a knock-on effect. If I've spent an hour on the phone, it's an hour that I've not been working, and it's an hour I've not been paid our hourly labour rate. So it saves me that money.

Max Jodie 2:46

Amazing. What was a day or a week looking like for you? You were talking about the distractions and not getting as much done.

Mike 2:53

Yeah. Basically, it obviously has a massive effect on productivity, because if a customer's got a query or wants a price on a job, there's really only me that can price it. And that's one of the reasons why having someone sitting in the office and paying them was no good, because all that would happen is every time the phone rings, the receptionist would have to come out of the office and speak to me and say, 'When can we do this?' Because she doesn't know how long jobs take. So from a diary point of view, I'd have to look at the diary and go, 'Yeah, we can do it here or there.' How much is it going to cost? Well, I've still got to stop what I'm doing and price it. Whereas now, she captures that information, and I can look at it and go, 'Yeah, I know what that is,' or 'I know roughly how much that's going to cost,' and when we can do it.

Mike 3:36

I can have that information to hand before I call the customer back. So that saves me, if you like, double the time: handling the call in the first place, stopping and pricing it up, working out when we can do it, and then speaking to them. I can just go from one to the other with the information that's there in the dashboard.

Mike 3:51

Say, for instance, you've got a four-cylinder diesel or a four-cylinder petrol, a six-cylinder diesel, a six-cylinder petrol. We have pretty much set prices for services on them. I don't know if that would integrate into the system, where they said, 'Oh, I've got a three-litre Z4, I'm after a service.' I don't know if she would be able to quote a price for that.

Max Jodie 4:06

Yeah, she could. It's only if the pricing menus get into the hundreds, but for set services, yes.

Mike 4:17

So, for instance, if a customer rang and said, 'I'd like to book an MOT,' she would be able to say to them, 'Okay, yeah, our MOTs are X pounds, but we'll have to ring you back and get you booked in.'

Max Jodie 4:27

Yeah, she can definitely do that.

Mike 4:30

I think that would be cool. Obviously, when I get a new call, if it's a new customer and I choose not to take the call and she gets it, she's getting the names, she's getting the numbers. And depending on the customer, most customers will elaborate on the problem and say, 'I'm ringing up, I've got this or that, and this isn't working.' If it's something that we deal with a lot, like a roof or MOTs, straight away she'll reassure them and say, 'Yeah, we can do that.'

Mike 4:53

Again, I don't know where she got the information from, but if someone says, 'I've got a Z4 and the roof's not working,' she'll actually say to them, 'Is it an E85 or an E89?', which is the soft top model or the hard top model. And if they say, 'Oh yeah, it's an E89,' she'll go, 'Great, we've repaired hundreds of them. Mike's repaired hundreds of them. He's got loads of experience doing that, and it's something we can certainly sort out for you. Let me get the team to call you back.'

Mike 5:19

So it's quite often reassuring to customers: 'We can sort that for you. Let me get someone to call you back.' Because it's great, obviously, people looking at your reviews and stuff online as well. But I think being told by what they possibly think is a real person, 'We can sort that for you, we've done hundreds of them,' or 'It's something we see all the time, we can certainly deal with that for you, let's call you back,' straight away I think that stops that customer then ringing somewhere else, because they sound like they know what they're doing. And then I'll normally ring back: 'Yeah, you've got a problem with your roof, what's the issue?' And 99% of the time it's, 'Don't worry about it, we can sort that for you.' Straight away, that's my customer then.

Max Jodie 5:57

Okay, amazing.

Mike 5:58

You do get customers who are a nightmare, who want to ring you up every five minutes and discuss everything about the job that you're doing. I don't need to speak to those customers, because it's stopping me from, A, working on their car and, B, working on the car that's waiting to come in behind their car. So I can fend them off, if you like. Even if someone says, 'My car's in, I want an update,' it's, 'Yeah, no problem, what's the car? I'll get the team to give you a call back.' So I haven't had to stop work to deal with that call. It's just making my life easier.

Mike 6:27

And going back to what we said when we first started, which you didn't record, it's just life these days. When I'm phoning companies, banks, the only people I ever get through to straight away now when I ring them is my bank, and that's only because it's First Direct. They don't do anything like that; it's always a person. Any other business you ring, even my local parts suppliers who I ring ten times a day, you get put on hold or you get a menu. So it's the norm. It's the way the world's going.

Max Jodie 6:59

100%. So you feel that this is the new norm. What was it like last year, when you were just considering Jodie for the first time? Did you have some doubts?

Mike 7:10

The reason I went for Jodie... what I didn't want was, say for instance, like at the local BMW dealership: 'Hello, thanks for ringing. If you want to speak to service, press one; for parts, press two.' And then it's, 'If your car's in with us today and you'd like an update, press one.' So you're doing all this before you can ever get through to anyone, and then you go into a queue. The thing I like about it is she's answered the call, she seems human, and you're getting to deal with the customer's query there and then, rather than going through a multitude of menus.

Max Jodie 7:41

Yeah, no. I rang the DVLA yesterday, I can't remember what it was, a vehicle query, but you spend the first five minutes pushing buttons on the phone, and it's infuriating, because I've got other things I want to do. I don't want to be on this call. Obviously, if I rang and it was an AI receptionist, I'd quite happily talk to them, because that's normal to me.

Mike 8:02

I think there's still quite a small minority of people who won't speak to the bot. In my experience, it tends to be the older generation.

Max Jodie 8:09

Yeah, no, it makes complete sense. So you were saying that the general reaction from customers has been that they accept it. If you were talking to a similar kind of company, maybe one that isn't as niche - I know you do servicing as well, but you specialise in Z4 roofs - what would you say to other service businesses that may have some doubts about Jodie?

Mike 8:36

First of all, look at it from a cost point of view, like I did. At the end of the day, what's minimum wage? You're talking 25,000 a year for a receptionist. If you're lucky enough to have a business where that phone rings constantly, one call after another after another, then you probably do need a receptionist. But if you're like me, or the multitude of other small to medium businesses, where you'll take 20 or 30 calls a day, those calls are stopping you from working.

Mike 9:02

If you're self-employed, if you're a plumber, electrician or whatever, you obviously need those leads coming in. We need those leads coming in because they're new customers to us. But you've got to be able to balance the time you spend dealing with those leads with actually doing the work that needs doing for the customers that rang last week. Otherwise it becomes a cycle: you're constantly picking up the phone, but you're not getting anything done. I think that's the biggest thing for me: she frees up my time.

Max Jodie 9:31

Just to summarise, to get a little clip, maybe just say it in one sentence.

Mike 9:38

Before Jodie, I'd spend probably an hour a day answering the phone and dealing with queries. Now, she will collect the information that I need to give a customer a call back, but also an outline of the problem that they're having. She will reassure them that we can deal with the problem, because it's something that we do regularly.

Mike 9:57

And if they've got any queries about when we're open, or whether they can wait, and things like that, or services that we carry out, if they want to know if we do tyres and stuff, she will tell them yes straight away. So straight away the customer knows that we can deal with the problem they're having and we'll get back to them.