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Successful Life Podcast
Self-Improvement Podcast for Contractors that want to learn about how to grow their business through management and marketing. Develop business ideas to improve your business experience and be successful. Real stories from real business owners.
Successful Life Podcast
From Stress to Success: Michelle Myers Talks Remote CSRs and Work-Life Balance
Unlock the secrets to elevating your customer service game with insights from Michelle Myers, founder of Pink Callers. Michelle joins us to discuss her innovative approach to providing remote Customer Service Representatives (CSRs), dispatchers, and call center managers. By offering specialized training and robust community support, Michelle's team ensures that CSRs are well-prepared to improve customer experiences, ultimately allowing business owners to focus on what they do best.
Relinquishing control can be a significant stress reliever, both personally and professionally. In this episode, we explore the importance of establishing effective business processes and share personal stories of overcoming challenges, including my journey to recovery from alcoholism. Michelle and I delve into how aligning employees' strengths with their roles and embracing personal hobbies, like gardening, can lead to substantial growth and well-being in both business and life.
From organizing the largest Christmas parade on the East Coast to navigating the complexities of starting a business during an economic downturn, this episode is packed with valuable lessons on leadership, resilience, and adaptability. Listen as we discuss the entrepreneurial balancing act, the nuances of managing remote CSRs, and the importance of maintaining a strong virtual culture. Don't miss out on these actionable insights for transforming your customer service and leading your business to success.
http://linkedin.com/in/michellelmyers
https://www.audible.com/pd/9-Simple-Steps-to-Sell-More-ht-Audiobook/B0D4SJYD4Q?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow
https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Steps-Sell-More-Stereotypes-ebook/dp/B0BRNSFYG6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OSB7HX6FQMHS&keywords=corey+berrier&qid=1674232549&sprefix=%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1
https://bit.ly/4bFz4yc https://www.housecallpro.com/successullife
https://www.facebook.com/corey.berrier
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreysalescoach/
Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, corey Barrier, and I'm here with Michelle Myers. Hey, michelle, hey there, corey, how are you Good? Good to see you Good.
Speaker 2:Nice to be seen.
Speaker 1:So, Michelle, for those folks that may not know anything about you or the business, could you just give us a quick overview?
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely. I'm Michelle Myers. We are located. Our headquarters are in Virginia, northern Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. I've got a distributed team all over the nation in every time zone, and Pink Collars is my main Monday through Friday gig and it keeps me busy, and we set up companies for success by providing CSRs, dispatchers and call center managers into their business remotely. We work on several CRMs, but Service Titan is the main one that we focus on and we are excited to be here and share a little bit about what we do and how WhoHire may have helped get us on top. I'm just saying I love it.
Speaker 1:So I mean, this is you know, the CSR role, in my opinion, is one of the most overlooked, underpaid roles in the industry as it pertains to in-house CSRs. It drives me insane because you spend thousands, tens of thousands of dollars driving people to the phones and then you have the arguably the lowest person on the totem pole fielding those calls and driving them to the right direction, Whether that be if you've got multiple, if you've got, you know, plumbing or heating or electrical or whatever that might be, and not asking the right questions, which is just mind boggling to me why they would. People would make that decision, but they do all the time.
Speaker 2:Every day and I wouldn't say, if I can correct you, I'm sorry. First sentence out, I would say it's the least supported person in the business, right, it's got the least amount of training, it's got the least amount of community, it's got the least amount of support. And, to be fair, business owners go into business because they're one of two people. They're either a visionary right, they see the future. They're like I'm going to do it my way. They do like I'm going to do it my way. They do it. Then they get out there and they kill it, right, they're out there doing the thing. Or they're tactical and they're technicians. They've worked for somebody their whole life and they're like I'm doing it a different way, I'm going to start my own thing. And they're on the tools from the beginning.
Speaker 2:So, whether you're a visionary or an integrator, a guy that's on the tools, likely the CSR in your business is a complete different than either of those humans.
Speaker 2:Right, they're box checkers, they're list takers, they're active listeners, they've got a really good level of kindness and concern about the customer and so oftentimes, as a business owner, they're almost like a. It's like you two are speaking two different languages you and that customer service person, and so that's where I think a lot of disconnect happens is that we as owners don't really speak that customer service language. We're either, like I said, living in the future or we're out there doing the thing, and so the customer service really falls in a lane that some of us aren't really familiar with. And that's where I think a company like ours can come in and serve, because we know that and we can provide that support and that culture and that training piece that you as a business owner may not have time to do. And that's, I think, where they fall through the cracks, and I don't think it's anybody's fault, I just think it's a function that some people just don't understand to be honest.
Speaker 1:You know you don't know what you don't know. Yeah, and you're right, it's, you know there it does. It for sure falls in one of those two categories a visionary or the guy getting out of the truck starting his own business. But either one, people, if you're CSRs and here's what I love about your business is you take that. You take that all of the guesswork out of that, right, you don't? They don't have to worry about if they're being nice to the CSRs or if the CSRs are doing their job. That's your job.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and we stand in the gap and you know we kind of speak their language right and we do that support and we do that additional training and we do that. You know leadership development and that professional development. We want our people to be better after working with us, just like our clients are better. We want our individuals that work on our team to be better. So we do certifications and webinars and you know a career path and a career ladder and we have a lot of different implemented tools in our toolbox that we can utilize.
Speaker 2:And don't forget, the cool thing about working with a team of a lot of the same people is that you can learn from one another. So there's a lot of cross-functionality in. Okay, I'm working for this plumbing company in Frisco, but those cats in California did something very similar. I'm going to talk to her so I understand how to do that thing, and so you speed up the sort of runway to getting an effective CSR on the phone, because you kind of have that hive mind mentality of the whole group of people working with you on your business, which I just think is really cool.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's your lane and you're only in your lane. It's like it's hard to juggle 14 different things a day, and you certainly can't juggle 14 different things effectively. I don't care who you are.
Speaker 2:And I like to tell business owners we don't have any issue outsourcing our bookkeeping.
Speaker 1:Right, none of us are accountants and we have zero problem outsourcing our marketing. I'm like I don't know how to market right.
Speaker 2:So we do that in other lanes of our business, and I think what I'm really attempting to do with Pink Collars is make customer care feel like a bolt-on service, just like those other two I just mentioned, because if we can get that idea across to business owners that wow, I don't actually have to do this. It can bring a ton of relief to everybody, and then it really does help support the CSR at the end of the day, which is one of my missions as a business owner. I answered the phones, so I know what the role is, I did the work, and so I want that professionalism brought to that group of people, I want support brought to that group of individuals, and so that's really part of my passion is to get that role to be seen as as important as marketing and bookkeeping are.
Speaker 1:So would you say, the biggest obstacle is the owner letting go of control of that particular thing.
Speaker 2:You know it's possible. The messaging that that CSR gives to the consumer is incredibly important, right, the tone is important, the accent is important, the delivery, the speed of calling or talking, all of those things are important. The technical knowledge that the CSR has, can they get in and out of the software effectively, maybe even a technical language that they use about the component parts of whatever issue they're having? Can they write and spell some of the HVAC parts effectively, right, can they put them in the CRM effectively so that technician understands? Really, they're a translator between the homeowner and the technician, right, they kind of stand in the middle and make sure the two people that neither one really knows what the other one does. We stand in the middle and try to do that, you know, effectively.
Speaker 2:And so for me, the business owner often does have control over that, because that'll be the first place he or she will start their business. Right, they'll be on the tools themselves and they'll answer the phones themselves, right, that's generally how a home service business gets going. And so when they do that and they become the face of their own business, it's really hard to separate. Okay, I am not Joe's plumbing, I am actually Joe. Right, it's really hard. It's a hard emotional battle. I mean I've struggled with it myself. In a lot of ways I am the face of pink collars and over the last year and a half I've really had to kind of step back and say that isn't effective, nor is it sustainable. And I think that CSR role can feel like that. It can feel kind of scary to business owners for sure, and I think that CSR role can feel like that.
Speaker 1:It can feel kind of scary to business owners for sure. Yeah, so when you got this thing started I mean nothing that's successful, starts easy and certainly doesn't become you know, it's hard to get into a business and everything just work Right, right. So what are some of the things that you found were maybe obstacles in the beginning, or maybe even now that you've either overcome or yeah, ok.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm a fully people based business. Right, I have no tools, I have no trucks, I have no warehouse, I have no bards, I have people, and so, as in every business, I'm a people focused company, and so the challenge for me was how to effectively cast the vision, lead the people, give them the tools to succeed, and then step back and watch them, maybe drop the baby a couple of times, because that's what happens in all of our businesses, right, the baby gets dropped, the car gets crashed, I mean, something happens, and so that was a really hard thing for me. I struggled in my childhood and young adulthood with perfectionism, and some people that know me, even recently, know that that can still be an issue for me. I really want things to be like ding, ding, ding right, like really good and perfect and dialed in, and that's an incredible skill, but it does not translate well in leadership.
Speaker 2:It's great if you're a technician and doing the thing, but the minute you start to lead and cast the vision for others, that perfectionism just kills you. It rips your guts out at night and it makes you feel like you're not being heard, and it really disempowers the people around you and it makes them feel like they're not being heard, and so that was probably the biggest struggle for business ownership for me was starting to let go of that perfectionism, starting to know that people weren't going to do it exactly like me and that that was okay. And then I got really dialed into the empathy that I felt for my clients now right, because now they, and now I know exactly how they feel because I'm trying to build something with others, just like they're trying to do with me.
Speaker 2:So I think that led to some real neat aha moments in our team and I'm grateful to say that traction and Gina Wickman's process EOS has really helped me unwind a lot of that, that bad mental stuff that I was struggling with.
Speaker 1:How much stress would you say has been lifted from you now that you and I can identify with it, being able to try to control everything? I'm a recovering alcoholic and we're too long for, you know, trying to control everything in our lives. If we're not working a program, we're not sober, sure, and so that's very frustrating and it's very draining and hard to deal with for not only ourselves but the people around us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I get on stage and talk about process. It's one of my kind of key talking points, and so I talk about processes. We as a company wouldn't exist if there weren't processes in place. Right, I have to have the client be able to see fully visibility through the processes that my team is performing on their behalf. They need to have comfort that we know we've got the ball right. And then I have to have processes to learn and teach these people to grow and scale the company. So process is my gig and process can be a perfectionist like best friend. Right, you can write it with a period and a comma and an extra thing and check a box and underline and bold. I mean you can just get wild with that stuff. And check a box and underline and bold. I mean you can just get wild with that stuff.
Speaker 2:And what I realized was I was trying to turn a certain group of people into more than they needed or wanted for themselves, and so I needed to revisit who was on my team and what seats they sat in and what longevity they were going to have for my company. And that light going off and saying, wow, I'm trying to force a square peg in a round hole here. It was painful for both of us, but I was able to have those types of conversations with a lot of my team and say you know, you are great on the phones, but if I put you in charge of a team it seems to kind of crumble. Are you feeling that way? And instead of it feeling like an indictment for them, they were like relieved oh, thank God, you see it. Ok, right.
Speaker 2:And then I was able to pivot and now, with the help of WhoHire, I go in the marketplace now and look for people who are preloaded with some of those skills but then also just have that sort of personal, functional like approach to who they are in their career path and I don't have to second guess are they going to be the right fit or not? Because it's more attitude than anything. It's more attitude and ability to be open and be coached. So I'm not trying to shove stuff in anymore. It's just much less painful for everybody Because we can say man, this really does work and your ideas are as important as mine. And that's just a result, I think, of up leveling myself, to be honest, and I hate to say that because everybody goes oh yeah, you're the owner. Blah, blah blah. But it's really true the more you work on yourself, the better your business becomes, you know for sure.
Speaker 1:So what are some of the ways that you do outside of you know work? What are some ways that you grow personally?
Speaker 2:personally. Well, I'm a gardener. I'm an avid gardener and I went for many, many years without a garden. I moved homes and so I used the excuse that I didn't have time and I didn't have this, I didn't have that, and I made all kinds of excuses and over the last two years I've been able to get back into the garden. I am a recovering interior designer, so I worked in art and fashion and architecture for many years, so I'm highly creative.
Speaker 2:And so the process of growing, caring for and nurturing something I was giving all of that to my team, I was giving all of that to my business and then all of that to my family, of course, and it's been really fun to spend that time with plants and in nature and being outside and watching. The same feelings of I don't know the same winds come across when there's a really great tomato as when there's a really great five-star review. Right, and I don't have to always be in business mode. I think being a woman, business owner and leader is also has its own complexity, and so gardening is one of the things that I do that I absolutely love. And then in our local area, my husband and I own a nonprofit that puts on the largest Christmas parade on the.
Speaker 2:East Coast other than the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Day Parade. But we're in charge of that and we have about 15,000 people come to our town for a party once a year and that is my favorite, because when I go, to the coffee shop I get to talk to people about the parade.
Speaker 2:When I go to the coffee shop, I get to talk to people about the parade and I get to kind of be that fun, exciting, let's do it planner for my community's event that is so held, so near and dear to their hearts. So that helps me too. And where is that held? It's in Middleburg, Virginia. It's called Christmas in Middleburg. Wow, yeah, how long have you been doing that? We've been doing that for three. I think this is our fourth year. This will be our fourth year. Yeah, we took it over right as COVID came along and we were helping as volunteers for a couple of years and then the gentleman who was the organizer said you know, it's time to send it down the road to the next people, and he chose my husband and I to take it over.
Speaker 1:Wow, that must be a lot one, a lot of work.
Speaker 2:It is. It is super fun. It's super fun and that working in the remote and digital world right, and the virtual world, those things that are tactile and human and feel really real in my real life actually bring me back down to earth in my business world. So it's helpful.
Speaker 1:You know I think going. You know you mentioned COVID. I think that COVID was harder on people because of the lack of human interaction. Even though we could talk on Zoom, it's just it's not the same thing and I want you know. I wonder how our kids are gonna wind up because of the ones that went through that and they were virtual and not the human connection. I just have to believe that that's not going to turn out, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because the tools like Zoom, like what we're on right now, have helped in that regard be able to have more options for business owners, right.
Speaker 2:So in our case, if there wasn't a Zoom or there wasn't that ability to be remote, the business that I actually have wouldn't exist. So there are some good things to it. I just spoke to a guy yesterday, did a discovery call with him, and they're at the point in their town where they can't afford any more real estate and they physically don't have any more space for CSRs. They don't have any more space for office. They are maxed on, maxed. They need to keep all the room they have for parts and pieces and stuff that generates revenue, and so in that regard, it actually the being remote does help some companies as they kind of look down the barrel of are we going to have some financial challenges in the forefront or are we going to have any recession of any kind? So in looking at, you know, hard brick and mortar buildings, it's really nice to have a little bit of an option that's not just a call center. So there's that. That's a good thing, I think.
Speaker 1:No, I agree with you. I mean, business looks very different than it did four or five years ago, and you know there are companies exist. This podcast wouldn't exist. I wouldn't have the time or the try to get people like. That would be impossible. I think it'd be impossible. It would be good things for sure. I totally agree. But there is part of that human connection that we desire and I think it's something that we've got. I, I have to have it. I have to have it to a degree, um, otherwise I just am not the same person yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:I'm with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you mentioned that you've got people all over the country or all over the world.
Speaker 2:Just in the country? Yeah. Just US based on the phones yeah.
Speaker 1:So what made you start this?
Speaker 2:Well, I started originally. It was renamed something else and it was called my Virtual Page. I had made a mess of my personal life. I was in the middle of a divorce and a custody dispute. I had to move out of my home quickly and I lost my job, kind of all in the same round robin fashion. Everything happened at once and I realized that if I was going to get my, everything happened at once. And I realized that if I was going to get my head out of my backside, I was going to need to build a business for my daughter. So I named it after her and it was called my Virtual Page and we just did office work.
Speaker 2:Like I said, I was a designer and that work was all but dried up in 2008, 2009. So I went out into the marketplace and found people that needed work from home stuff done, filing done, garage organizing. I did a little bit. I just did a little bit of everything. Just a hustle to try to keep food on the table.
Speaker 2:And in 2010, I had a tree service that answered an ad of mine and they said you know, we're a husband and wife. I want to be in the tree as much as he is. I don't want to sit in the truck and answer the phone. Here's a clamshell phone and here's a laptop and here's a Google calendar Can you help us run our business? And so that's how this whole idea started.
Speaker 2:It was far before the cloud. It was far before CRMs on the cloud. It was way before any of that. It was way before any of that. It was a phone number and a Google calendar and an idea. And we fast forward to 2013, when I met and married my husband and he said this isn't just a side job, this is like a business, this could be something. And so at that time, we rebranded, we started serving the home service businesses, not just the green industry, and we came out of the shadows of some of the other folks and said we could do this a different way. It doesn't just have to be an offshore call center, it doesn't just have to be a call center, it doesn't just have to be someone in your office. There could be some hybrid of both. And so that's how we started.
Speaker 1:But that's fascinating, and so you've been rocking and rolling under this brand since 2013.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we rebranded and did that in 2017. So it's a couple more years before we did that. Yeah, wow, that's pretty fast, but I've been doing it for a while. Does your?
Speaker 1:husband also work in the business or no?
Speaker 2:He does not. He's in the trades. He has a floor coatings company so he does polyaspartic floor coatings during the day. He worked at Pink Collars at the beginning and he was our salesperson, did a lot of the infrastructure of the business from the beginning and once it got up on its feet he's like I'm off to better pastures, greener pastures, different pastures, and he wanted to run his own business and I was like well, we know a lot about the trades, why don't you get into something service related? And he really liked coatings. It was fun, it's creative, it's fast and he's enjoying that. So that's what he does all the time. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, out of just, can you ballpark about how many companies, which I guess would equal how many CSRs, because one CSR per company, right.
Speaker 2:It typically is. Now sometimes it's fractional because of volume, right. So if you've got a smaller plumbing shop or a smaller HVAC shop that has a CSR dispatcher, that's just on a red line, right, they just need help. We will come in and do fractional services for them, meaning we will do all the incoming traffic, all the lead traffic. We won't do the dispatch, we'll hand that over to their in-house person. But if the volume is low enough, I can utilize that CSR's time for another small business. So I can make it affordable to the smaller guy and I can make it effective for the CSR to keep them fully busy and engaged throughout the day.
Speaker 2:Angie Snow, a friend of mine and a business partner, says that if a CSR is doing between zero and 80 calls per day, that's really about the max that they can accomplish. So an eight hour shift the most you want to give them is about 10 calls per hour. And so we find that there are a lot of companies that fall well below that threshold and we still want to serve them. So we say, okay, this hourly rate will cover you for those 40 hours, but your CSR is going to work for you and Joe's plumbing shop up in Milwaukee, and usually everybody's like, okay, great, that makes sense to me, and so that's what we discover when we talk on the phone what kind of level of service your company needs, and we customize it for you.
Speaker 1:Okay, so just for those that may not know exactly what fractional means, so fractional you know in an hour, like how many hours would a fractional person work and how many hours would you have a full-time person? If I'm looking to hire one, Sure?
Speaker 2:Well, it's fractional, but it's actually. They're available all eight hours of the day, so it's actually fractionally priced, but they're still working all 40 hours of the week. Well, the last thing we want to do is have you know, mary on my team, come in from eight to noon. Nothing really happens, and then all of a sudden, at 1.30, the phones just blow up and you just feel like we haven't done our jobs right. And that's the way of customer service. You never know when the phone's going to ring. It rings in waves or it's really quiet. It's very unpredictable, and so to be available all eight hours is really the key to our success. But then to charge you for a lesser amount so that you feel like you can afford it, is better for everybody. So it works out for both people.
Speaker 1:Okay, so then if you wanted someone for. So it's really based on volume.
Speaker 2:It's based on volume, a hundred percent, and if you fully eat up all that volume and you're at those, you know, 50 to 80 tasks per day, then we call that person a dedicated CSR. So it's either fractional or dedicated. Okay, both of them are 40 hours.
Speaker 1:So where do most folks fall into?
Speaker 2:It's interesting, almost to a fault, everybody starts out fractionally and they either start out fractionally at kind of our entry level, low level or level two, and then they very quickly build trust and rapport with our team members and then they say, man, we could have your help doing this, let's add email or let's add texting or let's add this in. So then we just kind of load that person up to the point where they're at that 80. And then that's where we say, okay, it's time to add another person or another fractional individual to help support that person. So we've built several call centers, remote call centers, for people for their business portfolio. We have a lot of people that do acquisition in our lineup right now and so they'll acquire something and it's relatively small. They'll tuck it in and they'll bring in somebody fractionally to help support that particular business or brand.
Speaker 2:And that's really fun to see how we can kind of scale and then retract if the business needs require that. And that's been really fun to watch because there's a lot of movement and even if we do go through any sort of downturn, there's going to be a lot of opportunities for people to purchase businesses. And that's another place where we shine, because we're already trained and fully loaded. We can come in and just answer the phones for that company while you're doing all of that back-end movement of training the technicians, again rebranding, doing a website. You've got a lot to handle. We can just handle the traffic while you redo that location, which is also really fun. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that makes total sense. So would you say that you built part of this business? Also, you know, I'm sure you you mentioned marketing. Obviously you have some sort of marketing campaign, but have you found that referrals, like people you know collaborating with other businesses and then recommending you guys has that been a pretty big source of how you built the business as well?
Speaker 2:It has been.
Speaker 2:It really has been and that's been the key to our success.
Speaker 2:To be very fair, and we have CSRs that have been with us five, six, seven years, like the entire time, and that's been really nice to see those people stay and have that long a duration with the client that they support.
Speaker 2:So it's really a lot of fun to watch a business grow and change with us, and part of that success is also the marketing of the company. So it's one of the questions I ask when people come and do a discovery call with us, I say what's your marketing plan? Because there won't be anything more disheartening if you pay us to sit there and then the phones aren't ringing like something's not happening. It's almost like you got to do the marketing and us kind of at the same time so that we can pay for ourselves. Right, we can earn our keep with the marketing dollars that you've spent coming in. We can capture them all and then translate that into closed business. And that's really a part of the conversation that I think business owners forget sometimes that those two things have to go in concert and oftentimes your P&L kind of can reflect either your lack of customer service or your lack of marketing or both, and that relationship is really intrinsic. So you got to get those two connected.
Speaker 1:So you got to, you got to get those two connected. Yeah, that makes sense. So is how do you keep? You know how? What is your method of keeping?
Speaker 2:you know, I guess you call it a virtual culture.
Speaker 1:There has to be some sort of culture. If you've got people around five to seven years, that's a long time in this industry to stick around in one spot, so you must be doing something interesting to keep these folks around Well, we have all kinds of cool stuff for culture.
Speaker 2:We have an entire Zoom environment. We have breakout rooms that everybody's in all day long. You can pop in and out with your team leader, your manager, your team success person, and so our CSRs are constantly connecting with one another. We have daily standups every morning where everybody just kind of checks in on camera, says, hey, how's it going? Everybody feeling good, anybody got anything going on that we need to know about? And then we just have digital boards.
Speaker 2:We talk on Slack all day long. So Slack is the texting platform that we connect not only with all of our customers and clients on, but with each other, and that visual and auditory delight between Slack and Zoom. I think we've got it covered. We do a monthly meeting every month. In fact, we just did it and off my shoulder here you see my wheel of fortune spinning wheel here, and I actually spin for prizes. Everybody that's had high booking rates, high call answer rates, perfect attendance, all that kind of stuff. We give them the opportunity to earn additional money every month based on the wheel spins, and so that kind of stuff is where that culture part comes in, and the business owner doesn't need to provide any of those pieces, so that makes sense yeah, um, yeah, that makes that makes total sense.
Speaker 1:Just, you know, managing human beings, you know, if I think I'm not sure who said this, but they said if, um, managing people it worked for the people, something along the lines of managing people is really hard.
Speaker 2:If it worked for the people, I'd have an easy job or if it weren't for the people and the customers, this business would be easy something like that, something like that yeah, boy is that?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's, that's fascinating. So do you okay? So, let's say, abc Plumbing HVAC, whatever company hires you, and they've got let's say they've got a full-time CSR. What is your? How do you guys communicate with either? Well, I guess there's. There may not be a CSR manager, if, in the case of you being there is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes there isn't. So if we come into a company like that, the first thing we do is get with that CSR on Zoom. We talk to them and say here's what we're going to do. You have earned the trust and loyalty of that business owner because you're sitting there in Oklahoma City and we're not okay. So here's how we're going to help you shine. We're going to take all the incoming traffic off of you and we're going to take all the incoming phone calls so that you can focus on dispatching effectively and efficiently.
Speaker 2:You can do callbacks and happy calls, which is another thing that falls down in customer service. Nobody has time, we're all too busy. But if now, if the phone's not ringing at you, you can actually ring the phone at others, right, so you can get out of the way of that traffic. And then we're also just going to help you with anything that's escalated customer service, right? Somebody's upset, somebody's angry. We're going to talk to them, calm them down. We're going to make the appropriate notes so that you're prepared with your answer when you call them back to discuss the escalated issue.
Speaker 2:There's nothing worse than a call coming in that's super escalated and on fire and you don't have all the information ready right, the tech's still in the field or something's not on the CRM yet, or you're not sure what's happening, and so to give them that space and time to handle those escalations is also really valuable.
Speaker 2:And then that also gives them the ability to run, you know, their accounts receivable or anything else that they just haven't ever had the time to quite get to. They need to focus on that, because they are now like the elevated person in the business and now we're coming in just to support them. And so when we have those kinds of conversations and I do it on every discovery call who's in your office, what are their names, how many are there, how long have they been there? I want to know all of that walking in so that they don't think we're coming in to take anybody's job or they're changing vendors or something chaotic's happening. I want to put them at ease, saying you're about to get a promotion, let us take all this silly work, and you go on and do the bigger and better things. So that's where we really pivot ourselves is that we come in with a heart of service, and I think when you come in like that, you just you win the hearts and minds of your people. So that's what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. So do you check in? So how often are you checking in with, let's say, the owner, if they're the ones that you're dealing with? What's that process like?
Speaker 2:What's the cadence look like? So we have a management channel in Slack that is only our high-level team, so our customer or client success manager and then the business owner, and that is a one-on-one conversation. That's private in Slack that nobody else in the team gets access to, including our side or their side. So that's where the high-level conversations can happen. The owner can say, hey, I need Mary to do X, or Mary forgot to mention our service programs or our memberships. Please make sure Mary does that. And then at that level we deploy our team to uplevel our staff and make sure we're delivering that correctly. So there's that private channel that they can talk to.
Speaker 2:I actually send out fully automated sequences of text messages and emails at the 30, 60, and 90-day mark so that they can check in with my team. They come for me personally and they say, hey, congratulations, you're at 30 days. I really want you to check in with Kim. Here's her calendar link. I'd like you guys to get together, and so I direct them to communicate with my team so that everybody's happy along the way, and that just over communication, especially being remote, is really critical and we can't feel like we're bugging people. We actually have to say we're here and this is what we're doing.
Speaker 2:We have to constantly be re-earning our job every month, and so those monthly check-ins and the data that we drop in those channels is really important. We drop all the calls that we've taken, all the voicemails, any emails that we've handled, text messages, and so we do that data drop once a week so that the customer can also the business owner, pardon me, can kind of see the heat map of the business, right, is it really busy now? Is it kind of slowing down? And they don't have to pull a bunch of data from their own tools. They can kind of see it in a visual graph from our people, so that makes it easier on them to see where we are.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. Yeah, so all right. So we're coming up on shoulder season, we are, so is that typically? I mean, my guess is they lean on you fairly hard to help it not be such a tough time? I guess they do.
Speaker 2:They do. So we do some outbounding for some of our clients at this time. We'll do rehash campaigns through Service Titan. There's some really good tools out there to do that to retouch customers that didn't close in the high season. That to retouch customers that didn't close in the high season. We can help support the in-house team in doing any actions that we're directed to do. So that's really where we shine.
Speaker 2:And then we find that all the trade shows and all of the activities for the business owner kind of happen at this time and I think you'd be surprised at how few people leave at this time because they don't want to lose that consistency. And so oftentimes they'll say it's going to be quiet, michelle, but we're willing to push through because we've had such a great high season. We don't want to lose that knowledge now from that individual that's on our account. So we're going to push through and we have those tough conversations with people and it's fine. I mean, I understand business ownership better than most, so I have a heart for it and I just go hey, we're going to do our best to keep you here, but they have to make the dollars and cents work for their company as well for their company as well, Are you?
Speaker 1:I'm sure you've had to fire somebody.
Speaker 2:We have Hasn't been a while.
Speaker 2:The cool part about one of the things that we set up was we set up a coaching mechanism for our team and we coach people first and then we give them a written warning or a verbal warning, and then we give them a written warning, so they have lots of chances to know what improvements they can make.
Speaker 2:I think there's a moral obligation as a business owner and as a person in leadership to tell people where they're at. You know, you can't just sideswipe them by saying, yeah, you're out of here. You have to give them the chances and the talks and the documentation to know that they might be a little bit in the gray zone, you know. And so I truly believe that we do that as a company and that's really important to me that people know, man, you're doing really well, but you're missing the mark here, and this is what we need to have done. I think that implementing the Zoom rooms and the breakout rooms and having people on camera more during the day has been really beneficial and that's really helped. So I encourage people to have a remote team member in their organization to have that camera as part of your SOPs. I think it's really smart, it doesn't feel intrusive and it just feels like, hey, we're in this together and we're all working in a remote office.
Speaker 1:That's helped To clarity on that. So you're saying that if ABC whatever company brings on one of your CSRs, that they're on Zoom the whole day?
Speaker 2:They're on Zoom with our team in a breakout sessions in breakout rooms. They don't have to be on camera the entire day, but they have to be in the room working. So, yeah, they're in a breakout room, similar to how your WhoHire support works. It's really nice. You guys have a very similar setup with contact, support or accountability too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's just good for community. I mean, we need to see each other, we need to hear each other's tone. Reading it on slack feels totally different than hearing it on with your voice, right, because our tone is really important. So that really has cleaned up a lot of miscommunication and that's really helped a lot too so um, has there been an op?
Speaker 1:has there been a time in the business where you were at a point where you thought I'm not going to make payroll?
Speaker 2:there hasn't been a time like that, but there's been a time where I emotionally wanted to give up.
Speaker 1:And what was the reason for that or what happened there.
Speaker 2:I had put EOS in the business. We'd been in EOS about 12 months and it was apparent to me that the people that I had in leadership were not the right people. Right, square peg, round hole, great individuals, great people. I'm not saying they were the wrong person People are great, that wasn't it. They just were in the wrong seat right. And so, after discovering this wrong seat and this bad fit, I as a leader didn't have the confidence to make the hard decisions and to have the hard conversations, and so I avoided it and I avoided it and, despite me thinking I was holding them accountable, I was doing nothing but creating friction in my own company that I didn't see. And so I went out on trade show season and I went out to do what I do in the booths and on the stage and on the podcast and on the stuff like selling the business and I came back and 25% of my staff was gone and they had quit over about a three to five week period. So one would leave and I'd go man, it's kind of strange and then another one will leave, and that was kind of weird.
Speaker 2:And when my operations manager left, I knew that I had missed the mark as a leader and so I went on some time off. I took about five days off with my family and I came back thinking that I was going to sell the business, I was going to close it and I was going to sell it. And I had a fractional integrator at the time. He was a consultant and he looked at me and he said well, you can close the business, you can sell the business, you can do whatever you want with the business. The business isn't you. And I remember driving home going what do you mean? The business isn't me. And that was when that thing clicked in my head no, the business isn't me. I'm a good parent and I'm a good human and I'm a good community member. And I'm right.
Speaker 2:I had to go through all those little things in my mind because I fully identified myself with the success or failure of my company and I had to give myself a break for not knowing what I didn't know Right. And so I took about two weeks and I decided in those two weeks, yeah, I think I'm going to fight. And my integrator and I went out to the marketplace to find a general manager and we found her and she's been very successful in the seat and it's been a really wonderful turn of events for the business and for me. So, instead of giving up emotionally, I stood up and said I'm going to do it differently and I'm not the person who should be in this role. I was the wrong person. Therefore, all those other people were in the wrong seats, of course, because I was in the wrong seat and then, once I let myself off the hook of not having to be the one that does everything, it really brought a great deal of relief to me and to my family.
Speaker 1:Sounds like there was not dignity shift.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally, totally, and it was not of my choosing. I was holding on to those people, like like a girlfriend, with the man walking out the door I was like holding onto their pant legs, right. And it was just ridiculous because we were both suffering, on both sides of the relationship. We were all suffering and yet I was the one that was just clenching on and it was just not effective. And so when they left, however they left, but most importantly, that ops person, when she left, I really had to sit back and say where did I go wrong? And instead of being hurt and blaming and doing all that, you know who I got on the phone with.
Speaker 2:I got on the phone with Al Levy and Al Levy looked at me and he about read my mail. Man all the way from Phoenix. He looked in the camera and he goes. But, michelle, what do you think they saw from their perspective? I mean, talk about a gut punch. He literally just read me like that. He said think about it from their perspective. I mean, talk about a gut punch. He literally just read me like that. He said think about it from their perspective. And the minute I did that, I knew I was the one that was wrong the whole time, and so finding someone that could hold me accountable was what was missing, and so that's been. The really fun part is to be put in my own place and said no, visionary, you don't get to do something wild like that, right? And that's been the really fun part is to be put in my own place and said no, visionary, you don't get to do something wild like that, right. And that's been the really cool thing about what's emerged from that difficult time.
Speaker 1:And I bet it's had a tremendous impact on your family. You being you and not being this identity you know, hold on to the identity of being the owner, which is really hard.
Speaker 2:It's impossibly hard yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think we put ourselves through the ringer because we think, okay, well, I started it and I was on the phones and I built the bookkeeping and I built the marketing and I built the sales and I built right. You look back at all the things you've done and, sure, that's great, but what brought you here isn't going to take you there, and so you max yourself out and then you go okay, all of my skills and ability, all of my dancing and singing isn't going to get me there and I had to sit down and go. You're actually wrong, michelle, you're out of it. You're really wrong. You got to figure it out, and finding a comparable individual that could do the operations of the business was the secret sauce. I was not the operator and I was trying to be that with someone, and it just was ineffective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, let me ask you you know, since you know, since you've taken yourself out of you know the whole hiring process. How has that been and what's that been like for you on a day to day basis? It's fair to assume that you probably were handling a lot of that.
Speaker 2:I was. And here's the funny part I was hiring myself because I think we do that. I think we do that. I think we do that, don't we? We look at the camera and we're like, oh, you and I could be buddies, let's go get a beer, like we do. Right, it's a party, and as soon as we find that person that feels and looks and smells like us, we're like I recognize you.
Speaker 2:You're going to be perfect and you know what. It's almost always a mistake, almost always. So I think the coolest part of some of this other painful stuff is I removed myself from hiring a couple of years ago. So a few years back I was out of hiring. But we were always having challenges and there was a lot of reasons. Why. Was it the remoteness? Was it the different things? Was it the complexity of the business? I mean, I could go and shoot holes in all of it, right, but at the end of the day I didn't have the confidence to say this is actually what is required to be here and it's not just a fun kumbaya, let's all sit at home in our jammies, like it's not that we actually run businesses for people and it's serious. And so once I got that fixed, that was easy.
Speaker 2:And then bringing in new tools and who hire was the one. Right, who hire? Let us put people through a process that was no longer squishy and emotional. Right, it took all the squish out of it because I would get on camera or my people ops person would get on camera and they'd be like oh, I just love this person. We have to find a place, they're just so great, and then, of course, it would implode and we would both look at each other and go I really liked him. I really liked him too. What happened? Right, we'd be just dumbfounded. And so when we employed deployed WhoHire into our business, we said, okay, we're going to take all that nonsense out and the only thing we're going to look at is people that pop out the other end with the right numbers. And then if we want to feel all squishy and nice about it, we can, but we'll at least know there's a baseline of truth to what we're feeling, instead of just all mush and gush. So that has been hugely helpful for our business, because people can be performative on camera. You forget how important it is when you're hiring remotely, how important it is when they walk in the business.
Speaker 2:What are their shoes look like? I can't see that. What does their car look like? I can't see that either. What do they smell like? What are they dressed like? Right Like? I can't see any of that. They can have a totally a suit and tie on up here and they can have shorts on. What is that? Is that Mr Wonderful that does that? He's on CNN all the time.
Speaker 2:He's got like shorts on under his suit, so I could have hired a hundred Mr Wonderfuls that don't have any drawers on and I don't have the benefit of them walking in my business, and so for us it was even more important because we didn't have those other tools in person, and so when we deployed it into our business, it changed everything, and my geeky, mathematical, like design mind just loves the way you all have set it up, the way there's, you know, the ready to launch, like all the stuff, like everybody's just go and I just I'm geeking out, but it's really been beneficial for us. It's also helped us stack a bench so that we don't ever have to feel like we're either being held hostage by an underperforming team member or we're left hanging. If somebody quits quickly, we always know we can pivot fast because we have that bench built, and that really gives us a lot of security.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense and the process is it really takes a lot of the stress out, but I love that you talked about the emotional part of it, because that makes sense. You know, in the process it really takes a lot of the stress out, but I love that you talked about the emotional part of it, because that is true. We like to hire people like us and we're not hiring people like us to do a job. We're not.
Speaker 2:It's so silly how we can't figure that out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree with you and it does for sure helps. And I'll tell you one thing you also mentioned keeping a bench. You know, one thing I think is really cool is that it measures the people that have already come through against the newer people. So if you do have a better person coming in, you have the opportunity to sub that person out if you need to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you absolutely do and you know, in the work that we do, performance is key. I mean, the business owner sees our business as a bolt on, it's a solution and we are not here to cause problems. We are not here to not book calls we for people to say I've had enough, I want to do something different in the business and that's happened. So subbing people out is is critical for anybody in any business, because humans are humans, they just are.
Speaker 1:Now, have you seen a difference in, you know, in revenues? It's sometimes hard to measure, but I'll tell you. I'll give you a quick example. I was talking to a guy not long ago and he said you know, we, through the platform, we, you, we use the platform to hire. I can't remember what position it was let's call them a gm and the first time in eight years they, their revenue, rose from like 20% to 48%. Have you seen any way for you to tie a revenue to how you've hired?
Speaker 2:To how we hire. I have not dived that deep yet, to be honest, because the revenue that's generated for the company as a whole, it can be portions of us, it can be portions of people in the business, it can be portions of the answering service, it can be portions of artificial intelligence, and so to pull us out of that, I have not dived that deep. We have a minimum booking rate that's acceptable and then people get put on performance reviews if they can't meet that minimum. And our clients are super happy with that minimum, and so they're like let's go. And so I haven't seen a connection financially, just because I haven't sat down and done the math, but I know from their retention that it is working, or we wouldn't be working with them. So there's that.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. So the last thing I was going to ask you is what are the ends? We see you at this year.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, you will see me at Pantheon in about three weeks. I'm speaking.
Speaker 1:That's really freaking cool. I'm so excited, I'm super excited.
Speaker 2:I'm speaking. That's really freaking cool.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited I'm super excited.
Speaker 2:I'm super excited. It's a huge honor. I'm going to be on stage with Angie Snow from Service Titan and Erica Lenore from Good Leap, and these are my two business partners. In another thing which we didn't get around to talking to, called the CSR Academy, and I'll make sure and send you a link we didn't get around to talking to called the CSR Academy, and I'll make sure and send you a link. We are going to do a community for CSRs and we're going to teach them soft skills. We're going to talk about scripting and we're going to do an in-person event. We're not going to come to them, we're going to let them fly somewhere. That's the other thing. Business owners go all over God's green creation going to see fun stuff and CSRs get stuck at home all the time.
Speaker 2:So we want to put them on a plane, send them to Las Vegas, send them to us for two days. It's going to be me, erica, angie and the three of us are going to just absolutely wrap our arms around these men and women that do this work, and then we're going to send them home with a lot of tools that they can deploy into your business and a vibrant community on Slack that they can ask questions of one another and they can connect with one another. We'll do monthly masterclasses. There's all kinds of stuff. We did two monthly masterclasses right now, just sort of as a warmup to Pantheon, and then we'll be introducing this product to Pantheon.
Speaker 2:So I'll be there. I will be at PHCC in Birmingham, alabama. I will be at Service World Expo and then I will come back and be at when else will I be? Women in HVACR in Dallas. I'll be there. Sarah Hammond, yeah, sarah, sarah, and I will be hanging out. Yeah, so a lot happening. And then I'll come back and we'll do our women in HVAC. We'll do our CSR Academy event in November, right before the holidays. We'll get that squeezed in this year and then we'll do two more and we're going to try to do two every year? Fantastic, yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, look, this has been such a great conversation. I'm so happy that we got to connect and I got to learn more, and I'm super excited about the Academy. That's really cool.
Speaker 2:Thank you. It's we're really excited. It's a long time coming, it's something that's needed in the industry. It's going to help up level those individuals. It's going to give them that community and that support that we talked about when we first started, and I really truly believe that you, as a business owner, putting your business and putting your CSR on an airplane or a car and sending them somewhere really shows them how important they are in your company, and so we're really excited to do that for the men and women that do this work.
Speaker 1:I think it's a wonderful way to get back. Thanks.
Speaker 2:We're excited.
Speaker 1:Well, so if somebody does want to reach out to you, where would be the best place to do that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. They can go to the website and fill out the contact form. They can go to the website and just hit the contact, or they can email me at Michelle, at pink collars and it it's pink, like the color Collars like calling on the phone. C-a-l-l-e-r-s dot com. Any of our social media outlets I'm always engaging in, so you can ping me on any of those Instagram, facebook, linkedin is a great place to find me too, so any of those places are great, and the website is Pinkcollarscom Perfect?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, Michelle, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, thank you so much I really enjoyed this. I love it. Thanks so much, Corey.
Speaker 1:You're very welcome.
