How to Run an Effective Call Center 101 with OXI Fresh Brand Developer Matt Kline

Audio Transcription

If you have employees on your team who have been hired for the purposes of answering phones, customer service calls, making outbound sales calls, answering inbound sales calls, you might have a call center. And if you have a call center, it’s very important that you know how to manage your team effectively so that they can allow your current and potential customers. So on today’s show we’re joined with Matt Klein, the franchise brand developer with Oxi fresh who shares with you and I how to run an effective call center.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity in the writer to introduce a show, but this show dies to may eight kids co-created by two different women, 13 Moke time million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome

Cause the thrive time show

[Inaudible]. Yes, yes, yes and yes.

Back to another special edition of the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. And you might be saying to yourself, self, why is this a special show? Well, it’s a special show because Matt Klein joins us from beautiful Denver, Colorado. Met client. How are you?

I am doing awesome. How are you guys?

Hey, I’m excited man. Did you take yourself out of the snow or are you still officing from a, from your house?

We’re still I’m, I’m at my office, so no problem there, but it’s, no, it’s still wreaking havoc on the streets.

We had a thriver Matt that reached out and I think it was, might’ve been in part due to the snow thing where they’re wanting to know if they bought, reach out and buy an Oxi fresh franchise. They’d been looking you guys up and they know that if they buy an Oxi fresh franchise, your call center is included in that.

I really liked someone find you a customer, find you however they find you, whether it’s on Google or they find you on a mailer. Right. And they call that number. It goes to the scheduling center. They’d take that person through the call. They get all the information, they give them an accurate quote on the current Oxi fresh franchisees pricing structure and then book that job into their schedule. Now if somebody calls overnight or maybe on a Sunday and leaves a message, they will call those customers back and get them through the same process to book them on the schedule as well. But they are typically calling out unless the customer is calling us first. Does that make sense?

So the co, the, your, your call center will call people that express interest in carpet cleaning? That is correct.

Yeah. So you can go on like Yelp for instance and say I want to be contacted by AKI fresh, they will call out. Right. or if somebody leaves a message and in off times or on. But the vast majority of customers that are coming through are calling in, getting a live person and then taking that process and booking a job. Now it’s important to note that about 75% of our jobs are booked through that scheduling center across the country. We’re at about 25% of the jobs currently right now being booked online. So the biggest thing is they aren’t specifically an outbound call center. They’re taking calls from customers that need jobs, but they will call anything back, any messages, anything that comes to that schedule.

And Andrew, you’ve been talking to two people out there to Thrivers who are going to meet Matt Klein at the conference there. [inaudible] What questions are, do you have or would you have, do your, do your, if the folks you’ve been talking to do they have about the Oxi fresh call center, their process for followup, that whole things. I think some people are viewing the call center as a huge asset going, this is awesome. I don’t have to recruit my people. I don’t have to train my people. I don’t have to manage my people. I don’t have to PRI provide an office space. All I have to do is buy a oxi fresh franchise and go out there and clean those carpets and do a great job. But I’m sure you have, you’ve had some questions. So Andrew, you’ve got kind of a list of questions for Matt Klein. Let’s fire away. Yeah. So one I’ve heard a lot is like when scheduling, so if someone reaches out or calls in a that scheduling software, what does that look like? So if someone calls in, what does, what does your team, they’re used as a software to book it and then how does, how would the franchisees see that on their calendar? What calendar do you use? What does that part look like?

Yeah, great question. So nobody outside of Oscar’s pressure would have a name for it cause we actually customize that entire scheduling center CRM platform. We have a single sign on for every aspect of your business beyond your year end taxes. So whether it’s our product store, whether it’s your, your scheduling software itself, our customer relationship management on the backend. So it’s all customized. We’ve been building it for 13 years. It’s excellent. That’s what I’d say is probably the hardest thing to quantify over the phone is how valuable that piece of software is. But we’ve been building it for years and years and years. But essentially what will happen is everything prox, especially done by zip code, so that customer’s going to call in, right? And then they’re going to get that. The first thing they’ll do is say, what is your zip code? That zip code is going to place that customer with the correct oxi fresh franchisee that owns that area because we have protected territory.

Okay. And then it’s going to open that schedule to that franchisee, their unique pricing structures, their unique zoning structure so they’re not driving all over the place. And then they’re essentially going to take that customer through the process of evaluating what the job is, right? Give them the accurate quotes, collect their information, collected coupon or whatever code they’re using. Every single customer must have a code so we can track it. And so you can pull reporting on the backend and then effectively put that job onto the schedule. And everything is live time. Our software is all in the cloud. And so if it goes to one of your employees, they’re essentially going to be able to log in. See it’s all live, they’re going to be able to see what jobs are on the schedule that day, next week, any same day. They get a text message as well as an email directly to them as well as you had the franchise owner. And so everything is live time, right? They’re just, they can access everything just through a simple login.

So what will happen is if somebody out there buys an Oxi fresh franchise, part of that includes the scheduling center. So again, if you have a location today, let’s say in Dallas, Texas, and you have an Oxi fresh in Dallas, Texas and somebody fills out the form or reaches out to inquire about carpet cleaning services, your scheduling center pretty much handles that. And then you sync that with the local franchisees calendar, correct?

You are correct. Yeah. And the nice thing is, is as a, as an owner, you have complete customization of your schedule. So you can give managerial power to your employees if you want or you can just have them as technicians and they have different access to that. But essentially you will be able to set your schedule for your individual employees so that the scheduling center follows your lead, not the other way around. So you have complete control

And it’s somebody out there as leery because again, these are just great questions. We have people that are, you know, going, this could be a really cool thing or a bad thing because we’ve all had, we’ve all filled out a form before. Josh, I’m sure you have with living water, I’m sure you as a business owner have filled out the form on another vendor’s website, whether it be a handyman or a repair company or another vendor. You fill out the form and you wait and you’re going, okay, okay, I’m ready for the call back. Okay. And I’m ready for the call back. Okay. And I’m ready. And you’re waiting and you’re wait, Josh, have you ever done that when you filled out the form and you’ve never got a call back from somebody? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it happens way more often than, than people realize.

And Forbes did research on this mat where they showed that the vast majority of small business owners do not call back their leads quickly and consistently. Do you, do you guys call back the leads right away? Do you answer the phone right away? I mean, talk to me about that. Cause I think a lot of people think they’re going to go out there and answer the phones more efficiently than a call center could do it until they find themselves quitting a carpet and receiving an inbound phone call. So talk to me about this. I mean, do you guys follow up with all the leads and how does that work?

Yeah, so we actually, it’s managed by Kelly, who’s the manager of the entire scheduling center. She has a scheduling center leads underneath her and then they have the actual reps that are taking calls. They’re all taking calls the same time, but there’s a chain of command there and they’re actually going through reports. So they actually hire and train. They have to pick up the phone certain times. They got to have certain close ratings, right. To be able to maintain that job. That’s how they get bonus as well. So yeah, I mean, and you’re also leaning on people that take hundreds of calls a day and speak the language of carpet cleaning. Right? So you don’t have to, as a franchise, waste a lot of good contacts in the beginning or trying to hire people, train them on the language of carpet cleaning, train them on the scheduling software to be able to do it right from day one. You have professional people that understand that system better probably than we ever will because they’re in it every single day, multiple times a day, a hundred different phone calls a day. So it is an excellent scheduling center that is track, recorded, reported on daily.

Andrew, what other questions do you have about the call center, the call center, they, we’ll get Josh’s take on this. What other questions do you have about the call center? Cause I know Oxi fresh, which has been around for years, but Matt, is this the 13th year of Oxi fresh? The 13th year?

We’re going on our 14th year, so we’re in 13 next July will be our 14th.

If you guys decentralize the call center and let the phones ring to each individual location. Matt, what would happen there?

Two things have happened. One, we’d get a heck of a lot of complaints on not being able to answer the phones quickly. Right. We’re certainly for people that are used to that already being in place. And then also we’re going to have franchisees really not leaning on their core strengths. I mean if you’re really, really good at answering the phones, that’s really great. But I would venture to say that as an owner of a business, you can very easily lean on that and do other things like business development, making sure your technicians are in a better place today than they work tomorrow by training them. So I mean it’s already in place for you. You don’t have to worry about it. I can’t imagine me as an owner wanting to take all the calls from my franchise cause I can tell you right now they’re better at it than I am. I’ve been in that scheduling center. I’ve done it. They’re very, very good at what they do.

Andrew, we have time for two more quick questions for Matt Klein, one from you and then one from Josh about the call center and the power of the follow up. Absolutely. So let’s say if someone had a franchise location so we’re in the United States and there was more of a, like a larger commercial job that came up and called Oxi fresh. How would that be handled if it’s more of like communicating back and forth, big job, bigger jobs, commercial jobs. And how does the call center communicate that with the, the separate locations?

Yeah, this, that’s a really great question. And it’s a few things will happen here. So first they’re going to take that customer through the same process. They’re going to gather all the information, find out where they’re from, where they’re located, place that that customer would the appropriate franchise. And then if it’s as simple as I need to talk to someone because I have 35,000 square feet office global. So immediately what they’re going to do is they’re going to take that information from that customer. They’re going to essentially say what it is, 35,000 square feet commercial building, and then they’re going to save that as a quote immediately when they saved that. That’s the very second you’re going to get a text message as the owner, it’s going to say whoever it is, location, here’s what they’re looking to do, and then it’s going to have a to do attached to it that you do is going to say call this customer back. They need to have a quote. They need to talk to you about getting an accurate quote of Fisk property. Okay? And then once they do that, you’re also going to get a following email the exact same second. So anybody with managerial control over that business and you can, you can set the level of whoever’s making decisions for your company or multiple people, they’re all going to get that at the same time. So it’s live time and then that that is on your plate as a franchise owner from that moment.

Andrew, does that resolve your questions about the call center? We have so many people are who are excited to meet Matt here at the conference and it seems like as people are confirming tickets and you’re talking to more and more people, they’re going, Hey by the way, could you ask Matt about the call center? I just, I really want to get Josh’s take on this. Josh, do you have any questions for Matt Klein about that call center? The follow up process, what they do, cause I see a lot of businesses really leaving a lot of money on the table by not following up.

Oh absolutely. I think that that’s a huge, huge problem across the board if you just call your leads. So the question I would have for you, Matt, would be, so if you get a a an under, this is probably all hypothetical, but maybe it has happened cause it sounds like y’all address everything. So you get somebody who has a multiple location or multiunit like apartment complexes or, or somebody who’s, who owns a large number of rental properties. How do y’all mitigate that from a call center? You know, somebody calls in and says, Hey, I’ve got a hundred rent houses all over the Dallas metroplex. You know, how do y’all handle scheduling that between different franchisees and all that stuff meant?

Yeah, so it does depend. It is kind of situational and that scenario where they have new faces talking to the property manager. That one would also, if they’re looking to set something up with you as a company, like, Hey, I have multiple locations, I need these clean, they’re kind of laying out the year for you. You’re going to want to, as the owner kind of go in and have a conversation with them and figure out what the best way to support that that customer is. Right. If it’s a customer that has 10 locations and they just know they call, they can call the call center and get them booked by within the week. They’ll just do that without talking to the owner. But anything large that it’s going to take a property management type situation. You as the owner need to be having that conversation, setting up how that’s going to be doing. And then you would do that. So it is situational. And no matter what happens, you as the owner are going to have live feed access to your schedule. What’s happening on the fly at all times. So awesome. A big, big one owner would basically want meet them a smaller one or they’re just doing individual units at a time. She has decided she’s going to book those in as an easy way to do it.

If you are a small business owner out there right now and you have a call center, if you have a call center, this is what you need to do. You need to interview people every week and have great candidates too. You need to train the heck out of your people. Three and Andrew put these on the show notes here. Okay, we’ve got to recruit great people. You’ve got to train great, great people. Step two, three, you’ve got to record those calls. You have to record the calls with a great service like clarity, voice.com like Oxi fresh does to monitor the quality for, you’ve got to have an integrated software program so people know what’s going on. People have to know who’s doing what. One hand, one hand has to talk to the other and you’ve got to have some kind of centralized organizational system so that Pete jobs aren’t being double booked.

Craziness doesn’t happen. And if you don’t have that working for you, that’s how you fix that. But if you’re thinking about buying a franchise, I’m just telling you a Matt, you own a franchise. I mean you can, it’s a big headache managing a call center and that’s all included for the franchisees. Do they pay per booking? Is it, do they pay a flat fee? How does that work? Cause obviously there’s a lot of money that goes into recruiting great people staffing the people, recording the calls, office space, ongoing education. There’s so many factors there. Is that included with the franchise fee or how does that work?

So that is, it’s called the job fee and you basically get charged per job. But the way that that works is every single job that happens, so let’s just take it to scale. So a customer calls in says, I want three rooms and a staircase. Okay, perfect. That’s going to be $150 with a $15 service fee to the customer. Okay. That $15 service fee does two things. It pays for the $12 service fee that goes to Oxi fresh to book the jobs and to maintain that scheduling center and maintain and update our online scheduling platform continuously. So 12 goes to Oxi fresh, three goes to the, to the owner of that $15 service fee, but it is stacked on top of the actual quoted job.

Matt, I appreciate you joining us for this impromptu edition of the thrive time show, and I appreciate you for digging out of the snow. You could have just stayed there and your condominium right?

Hopefully it wasn’t too loud for you guys.

Oh, you’re beautiful. Where were you right now on today’s show? You sounded like you were getting cardiovascular.

No, no, I’m just outside. So the team here is just having a little team lunch. We had a gentleman in town yesterday, so we’re just kinda going over a recap and having a little lunch or get back to the office. That’s all.

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