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Ever On Customer Service - a conversation with Jamie Marshall
26 Plays13 days ago
Jamie Marshall is a co-founder of Everonan always-on Leeds based on IT services provider.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds, Jamie explains to host Michael Millward how working out what the IT services industry was failing to deliver to customers enabled him and his co-founders to reinvent Everon as a customer service first IT services provider.
Jamie explains what being a customer service first provider means.
He describes the changes that Everon needed to make to become a customer service first provider, including
· changing person specifications they use in recruitment,
· the way in which employees are trained,
· the processes used to deliver services to customers
Jamie is also open about the financial implications of being customer service first and the characteristics of the ideal clients he now hopes to work with.
More information about Jamie Marshall and Michael Millward is available at abeceder.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Independent Minds' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:21
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseedah. Today, in this episode of The Independent Minds, I'm joined by Jamie Marshall from Everon.
00:00:34
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr.
Podcasting Journey and Zencastr Recommendation
00:00:41
Speaker
My podcasting journey started during lockdown. I thought it would be a bit of fun.
00:00:46
Speaker
It turned out to be a huge learning curve. If I had waited, it would have been a lot easier because now you can use Zencastr. So if you have thought about podcasting before, I want to avoid the costs and the learning curve.
00:01:00
Speaker
Use Zencastr like me. With Zencastr's all-in-one podcasting platform, you can create your podcast all in one place and distribute it to Spotify, Apple, Google, and the other major destinations.
00:01:15
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If you would like to try podcasting using zencastr visit Zencaster, forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abysida.
00:01:25
Speaker
All the details are in the description. Now that I've told you how wonderful Zencaster is for creating podcasts, I'd better make a podcast.
Leeds-Based Companies and Customer Service Focus
00:01:36
Speaker
Today, I'm joined by Jamie Marshall from Everon.
00:01:40
Speaker
Hello, Jamie. Hiya. Thank you very much for having me. Like Abysida, Evron is based in Leeds. If I didn't live here in Leeds and wanted to visit, I would be making my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club, which is also based in Leeds, because the Ultimate Travel Club is where I can access trade prices on flights and hotels and everything associated with travel to this great city.
00:02:06
Speaker
There is a link and membership discount code in the description. It's great to have you here. Thank you very much for joining us. I know you're a busy man. Normally, i would have said what Everon is in my introduction, but if I did, i know I would have got it wrong because you have a very different way of describing Everon.
00:02:24
Speaker
So please, can we start by you telling us a little bit about Jamie Marshall and Everon? So yes, I'm, as you mentioned, a co-founder of Everon.
00:02:35
Speaker
Ultimately, Everon is a an IT company, a tech company, or a managed services company. And ultimately, what that means is we will deliver IT support, cloud infrastructure, digital transformation or process improvement as a managed service to your business.
00:02:51
Speaker
Though we have a different approach, we basically like to act as a customer service company first that just deals in technology rather than a technology firm that does a little bit of customer service.
00:03:04
Speaker
In terms of our journey, we we kind of ah originally started as a more traditional IT company, but felt it wasn't the kind of right way forward or didn't suit the values we wanted to have as a company.
00:03:15
Speaker
So in 2016, 2017, we kind of started EverOn version 2 as we are now with this customer service ethos at the heart of everything we do. Okay. Where the name comes from, please.
00:03:27
Speaker
The name, funny enough, some people get this straight away. Some people, we have to explain it to, but EverOn is just a mix of ever and on, as in like always on or always up, always alive.
00:03:39
Speaker
That was kind of the premise from when we created it back maybe 2008, I think it was. So when we first started this, obviously uptime and keeping systems alive was ah a big metric or a big key point that prospects were interested in. So we picked the name ever on to be like always on, always up.
00:03:58
Speaker
um But yeah, some people seem to to get that straight away. Some people, i think, unless you explain it, then they never really catch on. I got it. I just wanted you to explain it a little bit because it makes an awful lot of sense that you always want your IT system, your Wi-Fi, all your connectivity. You always want it on yeah there when you need it, when you want it.
00:04:20
Speaker
Yes. That's great. Thank you very much. Right. So you were an IT services company and then you reinvented yourself as a customer services company that does
Shifting from Technical to Customer-Centric IT Solutions
00:04:32
Speaker
IT.
00:04:32
Speaker
Why did you make the decision to make that that change? It must have been quite a leap. But why did you make the decision? I just think we felt that our industry is guilty of delivering bad customer service at root. So while tech is an easy thing to fix, I think customer service is something our industry neglects a lot of the time.
00:04:54
Speaker
And then also to almost... sort of set us apart and not become our US people, become one of the kind of core values of everyone. We want it to be people people. And of course, it's really hard to be personable and approachable without having that good communication and great customer service.
00:05:14
Speaker
ah Yeah, and the kind of more we leaned into it, the more we realized it was different to the traditional approach. So we then decided, like I say, in 2016, 2017, to really lean into it and to to make our primary focus to be a customer service company, but then just deliver great technology as a secondary measure.
00:05:33
Speaker
This is a ah different type of episode of The Independent Minds. I don't think I've ever had a guest who's been judge and jury on a whole industry before and declared them guilty.
00:05:45
Speaker
but It's obviously my personal opinion. but yeah, I i would stand by it. So let's, in the interest of fairness and and all this sort of stuff, let's just dig into what we mean or what you mean because I'm impartial.
00:06:05
Speaker
But what do we mean by the the industry being guilty of not getting customer service right? What sort of examples have we got of where anyone listening would be able to say, oh I know exactly what you mean by that?
00:06:22
Speaker
At heart, the type of tech people that work in support, for example, always just want to fix a problem and they always want to fix it by delivering the best tech solution possible.
00:06:34
Speaker
I don't think that solution always aligns itself with a business case or a staff member's actual daily routine or things they actually need. And I think that because there's not a good customer service or communication between those two,
00:06:50
Speaker
we end up trying to put in this all singing all dancing solution which the end user it doesn't need or doesn't hasn't even asked for um and we end up kind of causing more disruption by trying to do something to the very best technical ability when all we needed was just to to fix a problem or put a different solution in for the client.
00:07:11
Speaker
I can give you an example of one we had, which kind of works on that line. So we actually hired someone probably 2016, 2017, maybe when we were going through this change. And the the staff member I had was the smartest person I've probably ever worked with in my entire life.
00:07:31
Speaker
in terms of the tech things you could ask and like being able to show them a new service then learn it and deploy it was literally incredible, the pace that it could be done at.
00:07:42
Speaker
And we had one project where a client was switching to from on-premise, so that means like your servers and stuff are locally in your office, you can go and touch them to a cloud-based solution. and We started on this path of putting this solution in this cloud solution and going by Microsoft kind of best case, this is how you put in, this is how it should work.
00:08:03
Speaker
And what actually happened was it stopped one of the client's softwares from working because it out of data technology, it wouldn't support this kind of new method that Microsoft were trying to to make us implement.
00:08:14
Speaker
And when we sat down and explained it with the tech that was doing it and said, look, I know this is what we should do and this is the perfect world and this is what Microsoft wants us to do, but is stopping this application from working, which is going to damage their business because they can no longer meet their deadlines.
00:08:28
Speaker
It was a little bit alien. It was like, I can't do... what the client wants because Microsoft say we have to put it in like this and there was there was almost no gray area of yeah this is what we're working towards long term right now I understand there's a business need for them having this application and for us to show a little bit flex or to set up in specific way that accommodates this need it was a case of this is what Microsoft say this is what we're doing if the business can't work that's a Microsoft and then problem that I guess is a good example of
00:08:59
Speaker
some of the things that might occur in our industry or the way really tech focused people might think sometimes. so Yes. it You can't be too technically focused and the technology is what drives what you do.
00:09:13
Speaker
Whereas what you're saying is that the technology has to meet the needs of the business and the people within the business. Exactly. It should support that organization. yeah listening to you i was thinking as an hr person and i know that we give computers to people that sit on their desks we give laptops to people who are working remotely and sometimes i wonder if the person understands the cost the value of the piece of it t that we've given them the cost of the software that we've given them to use and then
00:09:46
Speaker
How much do they actually know about how the software works or the capabilities of the software?
Data Analytics and AI in IT Support
00:09:52
Speaker
Because people the the end users can be too focused on the business and the jobs that they need to do and not understanding how the technology can help them.
00:10:05
Speaker
and And it's almost like you've got this clash between the two. Yeah. What you're saying is that at Everon, you're sort of trying to balance the needs of the business, the needs of the individual with the capabilities of the software.
00:10:19
Speaker
You must have a an awful lot of cu long conversations with your staff and with with clients. Yeah. Obviously, internally, it's, I think, a forever push and a forever idea and ideology of customer service and customer experience. So we, we continuously have these chats and even when we do something well, or the client is happy with the end result, but we feel we could have done more or we could have enhanced the experience.
00:10:49
Speaker
We'll still have a bit of a debrief and round table of how could we made it better. So that I think will be a never ending kind of journey for us. And I think, yeah, in terms of clients, we, um,
00:11:00
Speaker
We try and meet people at minimum once a quarter to do a high-level kind of rev review. But then we also have monthly and weekly analytics and kind of internal reviews. So because we do a lot of the clients' ah day-to-day IT, every time we have a touchpoint from a client, we record it and we categorize it.
00:11:20
Speaker
So we don't always have to have super long conversations because sometimes we can see something in the data set that will show us where there's an inefficiency or show us where there might be a training need and things like that.
00:11:32
Speaker
So one example, going back to your kind of talking about staff not knowing the value of their technology stack or what they can do with it and kind of stuff. If we see in a client's data from all the touch points we've had that one particular staff members had three times more contact with us than anybody else, and they're using exactly the same systems in exactly the same way, there's only two reasons for that. One is the solution is not the same, or it's not set up the same as an issue, or it's that we need to spend a bit more time kind of nurturing and helping that staff member understand how to use different things.
00:12:08
Speaker
That sometimes negates the need for these long conversations because we can kind of pick that stuff up weekly or monthly depending on kind of what the data says. Yeah, you're almost using ai artificial intelligence, then to identify where the problems might be so that you can be proactive in providing the customer service rather than waiting for the problem to come up.
00:12:31
Speaker
ah Exactly, yeah. I think ah problem with, or as I see it, is people, unless they're really unhappy, will always voice something if it's just average. and They'll be happy just to say, well, you know, my issue is fixed.
00:12:46
Speaker
I wasn't blown away by it, but at the same time, wasn't really frustrated with it. So they'll just kind of let it go under the radar. So that's where it's important for us to have these touch points that allow people to to pick these bits up.
00:12:59
Speaker
right Sorry, there's food truck that's just arrived outside. i don't know if you could have to have lunch, don't we? So the issue then, the customer service then that you have is not simply reliant upon the people.
00:13:11
Speaker
You are using the technology itself to through the AI, artificial intelligence, and the identification of of patterns and trends to actually proactively identify where there might be a problem, which enables you then to provide a higher level of customer service.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, ultimately, the enhancements we can deliver to a company are technology based. So they do have to, there's no point in putting in a technology that isn't going to be used or adopted or isn't going to deliver any benefit to the client. So we do take an analytical approach to that. And that's all from those data points.
00:13:48
Speaker
Right. There is a lot of work that goes into, obviously, those relationships and having the trust, for example, with the board members of a company or the decision makers of the company or even the kind of key stakeholders so that they understand that when we do have these chats and we might say we've noticed this, it's not a negative conversation, it's a positive one. It is we've noticed this, but look what we can do with it.
00:14:14
Speaker
So we do a lot of customer service or a lot of kind of is built into our offering to allow us to get to that point in a relationship with a client where we do have that understanding and that authority and trust that goes both ways, I think.
00:14:27
Speaker
One of the things that frustrates me about IT people is that sometimes they, well, they make decisions without necessarily making sure that I have understood what it is that they are going to be doing or don't even tell me at all.
00:14:42
Speaker
And that seems to be one of things as you go through your customer service model, you must be increasing the knowledge of the customer at the same time.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, ultimately every interaction with a client, we should learn a little bit more. And we try and have a kind of a tribal knowledge here where if one member of staff learns something, we can share it with the team.
00:15:05
Speaker
So we do daily huddles, we do like weekly meetings, and then we also have a end of month kind of debrief, which allows us to those little bits where we're picking up client specific bits or their goals, their frustrations, the way they like to work.
00:15:22
Speaker
They're all fed back into the team. So doesn't matter who then can work with that client for throughout the month, they should get the same customer experience. Obviously, that's something that's super hard for us to ensure happens all the time or to replicate perfectly, but it's it's kind of our utopia and what what we're aiming for.
00:15:40
Speaker
And I guess probably the other thing that important to say is when we recruit now, we don't necessarily recruit for strong tech skills. We actually started recruiting for people that have really great customer service and customer experience, attributes, or soft personal skills.
00:15:57
Speaker
um And then we have an onboarding program of, say, three to six months, depending on that person's baseline. where we then teach them the tech side of stuff. and then we have obviously continuing improvement internally where people will develop that tech side of skill set. But we've realized it's easier to train someone on the tech side than it is those soft skills and those personal kind of customer service attributes.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yes, it reminds me when you say that of when I was working in Hong Kong and we needed to recruit a new software support, desktop support type person. And we ended up with two candidates.
00:16:32
Speaker
One was very quiet, very technically knowledgeable, but very quiet. It was difficult to like pull the answers to the questions from ah during the interview. And then there was Timothy.
00:16:43
Speaker
Never Tim, always Timothy. And he came in and he was bouncing in the chair. was so excited to be there and so excited to when he wanted the job. And he was great. He got the job. He was great fun to work with.
00:16:55
Speaker
And like you, we sort put together all the things that we needed him to learn about the technology that we were using. But the key attributes that he brought were the teamwork, the communication,
00:17:07
Speaker
The interest, the excitement, everything that made him fun to work with then seemed to make it easier for the non-technical people to understand the technology and made him more approachable. So you didn't wait until it was a disaster before you asked for help. yeah You asked for help at the time that you thought, I don't quite understand. you There wasn't a barrier between anyone in in the business and you know going to Timothy for help.
00:17:38
Speaker
One of the things that I do know is that that type of approach where although Timothy arrived with all of his great skills in terms of interactive skills, communication skills, teamwork skills, it wasn't cheap yeah know to actually give somebody all of the technical knowledge and put together the training program, like you say, three to six months onboarding process to make sure that somebody's completely up to speed.
00:18:02
Speaker
All of the in-house meetings that you have to make sure that the team is is working as a tribe, as you know, do tribal knowledge sharing. and yeah and That doesn't come cheap. So what is the what's the financial impact for a for a client?
IT as an Investment for Productivity and ROI
00:18:19
Speaker
Is it more expensive or is it lower cost or is there a bigger picture that comes when you actually look at the money side of things and this focus on customer service?
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm the first to admit this. And i have one of our key values is transparency. And i've I've said this to prospects, I've said it to clients.
00:18:42
Speaker
Everyone are not the cheapest IT company. If you want to go out and just compare us with a traditional IT support company, like for like, we're never going to be the cheapest IT company And as you say, that's because of this this customer service wrapper and and all the factors that come with that and the way we deliver a service is different.
00:19:00
Speaker
So i'm I'm never trying to be the the cheapest person for something I sell. From a client's perspective, yeah, you might pay us a bit more than you'd pay somebody else.
00:19:11
Speaker
But in the long run, the productivity gains you get, the efficiencies, and ultimately the way technology can help you achieve your goals faster should in turn deliver IT as a return on investment, not a cost. So that's ah something I am big on is trying to change people's perception or client's perception that IT is a cost like the electricity bill or the gas bill to something where IT t is actually not cost. It's actually something that makes us revenue. It's something we can harbour and something we can utilise to actually generate ROI for the business.
00:19:46
Speaker
Again, i think that's an uphill battle because I think most people currently who are special health may be bad service from the current providers just see it as a necessary cost or a necessary evil?
00:19:57
Speaker
Yes. So what we're saying then is that if we're going to improve people's experience of using the IT that is part of their job, whether that's a laptop, a desktop, whatever type of IT information technology they're using,
00:20:16
Speaker
It's almost that you're advocating for organizations to change their approach to how that is used. It is a key part of running a business and employers, organizations need to almost like stop seeing it as a cost and start seeing it as an investment and almost be more demanding.
00:20:39
Speaker
of making sure that they get a return on that investment by ensuring that employees, the users of that technology, understand it better and are using more of its potential.
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think to to probably elaborate a little bit more on A lot of metrics I get thrown around are how many, like I've seen this tons of times, how many rings it takes to answer the phone as an IT support company, how quickly you resolve something might be more more important. But things like people answering the phone, if I answer it within one ring, but we don't actually do anything to fix it for another four hours, is that metric worthwhile?
00:21:17
Speaker
and i think they're too granular yeah you should be interested in the slas and like meeting a set service level that you kind of you know where you're you stand with and you've got acceptable delay or disruption but i think bigger picture stuff you should look at if i'm spending 55 100 grand whatever it might be in my technology for throughout the year what am i getting back for it what Like how many kind of staff hours do I get back in productivity or efficiencies?
00:21:47
Speaker
How much kind of faster can I get a product or service out the door because I'm now embracing technology different? It might be like, for example, Some of this stuff doesn't have to be financial goals for a business. It can be culture as well. So, for example, my staff retention rate has gone up because I'm now using technology to enrich the daily working lives of staff. So they're no longer doing the real tedious, painful parts of their jobs because we've used technology to take that burden away from them.
00:22:17
Speaker
So their job satisfaction, their enjoyment, it works a lot better. so again, that would be a better measure than how many rings does it take my IT support company to to answer the phone and that kind of stuff. You want somebody who answers the phone to be able to provide you with an answer.
00:22:30
Speaker
The number of times that I've sort launched into, I've got a problem, I've been a crisis. And then somebody says, well, I'll give you a ticket number and somebody will get back to you. That's not really what I want. But you mentioned some things there like staff retention. you can't hang onto your people, then the cost yeah of replacing people and finding people is enormous.
00:22:53
Speaker
So once you've found the right people, and you've got them using the right tools, you are going to make their jobs more interesting. They will then be less likely to leave. That's direct consequence of the way in which an organization uses it but it's also not something necessarily that as an HR person, we would connect.
Enhancing Job Satisfaction with Technology
00:23:15
Speaker
The use of IT, t how does that make somebody's life easier? with a turnover rate or an absence rate or accident health and safety issues, all sorts of various different things.
00:23:28
Speaker
IT has become just an absolute integral part of the majority of jobs nowadays that what you're saying, it has to work and it has to work well in order to make that job, that employee more effective and I suppose my experience in Hong Kong with Timothy, great chap, brilliant guy, absolutely, is what you're actually putting into action now. It's this idea that customer service, giving people the opportunity to ask the questions from what you're saying and the confidence to know that they're going to receive a constructive response no matter how
00:24:11
Speaker
Many times the question may have been asked from people who understand ah people. Yeah. Is very important. Yeah. There's so much that I could of just explore with you on each of these different aspects of how we use it in business and the impact that has on the way in which people work and culture and attitudes of behaviors and all the softer side of business.
00:24:39
Speaker
But and Jamie, for the moment, I have to say thank you very much. It's been really interesting. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. No problem. Thank you for having me. It's been great. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Jamie Marshall of EverOn.
Sponsorship Mentions and Health Assessments
00:25:01
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. The Zencastr system has, as always, been very efficient today.
00:25:12
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:26:31
Speaker
That description is well worth reading, believe me. I'm sure that you will have enjoyed this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Jamie and I have enjoyed making it.
00:26:42
Speaker
Please give it a like and download it. And to make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
Conclusion and Critical Thinking on Workplace Innovation
00:26:49
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:26:57
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.