December 16, 2025 • 42 mins
If systems are the engine of your business, automations are the turbocharger — and most tradesmen aren’t using ANY of it.
In this episode, Wayne & Andy tear into one of the biggest growth multipliers in the trade industry:
Automations that run your business in the background while you crack on with the job.
No robots. No sci-fi nonsense.
Just smart, simple processes that save you hours, make you more professional, and massively boost your reviews, conversions, and customer satisfaction.
Inside this episode we break down:
🔥 What automations REALLY are (in trade language, not tech jargon)
🔥 Why manual reminders, notes & follow-ups are costing you thousands
🔥 The “Big 3” automations every trade business must have
• Review collection
• Quote follow-up
• Booking confirmations & reminders
🔥 Why automations beat human effort every single time
🔥 How to scale from 10 reviews to 1,000+ using one simple automation
🔥 Why customers LOVE consistent communication (and why you can’t do it manually)
🔥 How automations help you upsell service plans without being salesy
🔥 Why manual follow-ups ≠ professionalism
🔥 How automation removes emotion, hesitation & human error
🔥 How to build a customer journey that feels like Amazon/Uber — not “Dave the plumber”
🔥 The truth about complaints: why a handful of moaners shouldn’t dictate your strategy
🔥 Why automations + systems + marketing = explosive growth
PLUS:
Andy shares the exact automations that took his business from zero reviews to nearly 1,000 in eight months.
Wayne explains how 10,000+ automated review requests saved MONTHS of admin time.
If you want:
More reviews
More conversions
Better customers
Fewer headaches
More time
A more professional reputation
And a business that runs even when you’re not touching it…
This episode will hit home.
Automations aren’t optional anymore.
They’re the difference between staying small…
and scaling properly.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Welcome to another episode of the Off the Tools podcast.
In the last episode we spoke about the importance of systems
and today we're going to go a little bit further and we're
going to be talking about how automations can help you grow
and scale your business. So hello Andy.
Sorry, I should say hello Andy. I'm forgetting I've got a Co
(00:34):
host. Morning, morning, morning.
Yeah, sorry, still getting used to having a Co host.
So I've got to remember I'm not interviewing him.
So today we're talking about automations.
Explain automations, Andy? What, what, what do we mean by
(00:55):
automations? Because to some people that's an
alien terminology. I know to us it's not.
But for some people listening orwatching, they're going to be
like automations. That's that's like what robots
do. I would probably condense that
to something that is set up onceand then continues to run in the
(01:18):
background to your advantage. So the probably the most obvious
1 is a review collection system.So obviously last week we spoke
about service mate and sales item.
So to not get too deep into it, we stick to service mate.
(01:40):
For example, you can build in a,a singular automation where once
each job is completed within thesystem itself, it will then
request a review from the customer that is done.
I know a lot of guys probably dothat manually.
(02:02):
So I know if you'll, as you do that, they'll complete a job and
then they'll send a text review request to a customer.
Whereas when it's built into automation, there's no need for
you to do that. So I think that's the, the core
of it really, isn't it? Because you'll forget, you'll,
(02:23):
you know, be tired, you want to,you know, you're tripping a gear
in the van and you're like, you just want to get home, that sort
of thing. And then the, one of the big
beauties with that, just that onthat specific review note is you
can dial in the timing of when it's done and it will do that
consistently. So for example, you can have it
(02:43):
so it goes out at 7:00 PM the day after the job's completed,
something like that. So that can allow you to scale
your reviews exponentially really.
And we've touched on before about the more jobs you do, the
more customers you get. You need to make sure that you
(03:05):
get a review from every single one of your customers to scale.
And automations are the, the obviously the easiest way to do
it because you're not having to do anything.
But also, I would argue the fastest way to do it because
like I was just saying, you can't miss one or two a year in
the until just an extra little sprinkling on that.
(03:29):
Some people probably, maybe, probably, maybe probably don't
ask the same customer for another review.
The automations don't care aboutthat, which is I see as as a
positive. So for example, if you've got a
customer where they've just got a little niggle, let's say you
(03:52):
put a new boiler in, you know, afew months ago and they've, you
know, they've bled a radiator orwhatever it might be and then
the pressure's gone. They're not quite sure how to do
it. You would put that in as a job
on your job management software.Go out, you know, have a chat
with them, fill the system up, get it running, get it up to 10,
stand around for a little bit, have a chat with them.
(04:14):
They'll probably be happy with that, that you've gone out and
then the system will just recognise that as a job and send
another automation for a re request.
Most people will probably leave you another review, whereas I
think a lot of guys on I've already asked, they've already
left me a review. And this this touches a little
bit on like looking at the the systems and the automations as
(04:38):
sort of part of the business in some ways kind of an entity of
the business. Like we've said about people in
the office are less sort of emotionally invested in like a
pricing structure. So when someone rings them for a
price, they're not going to be tentative the way that the owner
(05:01):
would be. And I feel like automation's, I
like that they don't care. You've already been to that
customer earlier in the year. There's no emotion, is there?
When it's a, when it's a computer sort of dealing with
it. The biggest thing for me is like
the human error. Human error is probably the
wrong word. But I think you mentioned it a
few minutes ago. Like, you know, people forget if
(05:22):
you're doing it manually, you genuinely, you know, you've had
a busy day rush home, life's busy at home.
And and then before you know it,a few weeks have gone by and you
haven't sent out any review requests.
And in today's world, like reviews are, are the lifeblood
of a business that wants to grow.
(05:43):
You know, if if you've been in business 45 years, you know, and
you're not too fussed, you're just sort of ticking over, then
yeah, I understand You don't probably necessarily need
reviews as much as someone like Andy, for example, who's
actively growing, actively scaling, you know, and, and it's
a newer business than these moreestablished 2030 year old
(06:05):
businesses. And once you build an
automation, if you build it right, it should just run on
autopilot. So that just not only gives some
consistency to the business. So the customers are, are
experiencing a similar experience time in time out.
It just compounds, you know, like my review collection
(06:27):
automation has been processed over 10,000 times.
So you imagine even if it took 10 seconds, right to, to send
that review request, if you saiddid it manually, which it would
take longer, you know, to find the message, send it, copy
paste, whatever, whatever 10,000+ * I, I can't even do the
(06:47):
maths. I don't know how many hours that
would physically equate to or how many days or months or
whatever it would be. But you know, it's ridiculous.
And that's just one automation. And you compound that, then you
start building other automation.So we'll focus a bit on reviews
because we're talking about it now.
But automations isn't just aboutthat.
(07:09):
It can be for following up customers, like chasing quotes.
It can be for marketing, it can be for chasing invoices, it can
be for upselling. But you know, the world's your
oyster with with automations, isn't it?
Yeah. How many lads send a quote and
then leave it be? Like, you know what I mean?
(07:29):
Like, so we've talked about a software called Quotient that
we're both really big, big fans of.
And within that software itself you can build an automation.
So we have set to 48 hours within that software for when we
send a quote for something a bitbigger.
(07:51):
And if it's a smaller job, it'llbe 24 hours.
So again, that's just done. You don't have to forget about
it. The software will just give me a
little nudge. Have you had a look at your
quotes? Obviously you can build this out
yourself, but have you had a look at your quote if you got
any questions? It can be as simple as that.
I've dread to think how much work has been lost from lads who
(08:17):
don't follow up, whether becausethey're too busy or the the, you
know. Distressing people see it
following up on a quote to me asa no brainer, you know, you're
just being polite, just making sure that they've got it make
asking if they've got any questions.
But a, a lot of a lot of people that I've spoke to over the
years say, oh, I don't need, I don't follow up people.
(08:37):
I'm not desperate. I'm not chasing these people for
the work. What's your what's your views on
that that mindset? I think I've got a bit of this
from you to be fair, combined with my own mindset on it.
And statistically far less people moan about being pestered
(08:59):
than do right way around. We don't get that many people
who moan about pushing, pushing,pushing.
Most of them are grateful that you've followed up or the
appreciate all that. Not about that.
Oh, thanks. Yeah.
I was meant to give you a ring back today, but I forgot.
Whatever it might be, most people who are looking for that
(09:19):
work in this day and age prefer to be chased for it because
we're all busy at me now. You know, even your customers
are busy, even though they've they've requested the work.
Your customers are busy and theyand they, they get distracted
and they forget about it. They're oh shit, that that
quarter hasn't meant to look at that.
So yeah, was it? You always say better to ask for
(09:40):
forgiveness kind of thing on it and you don't chase up someone
else probably will. And it's not even like like a, a
prime example, last week I took my son's car.
It's got a clutch problem. Took it to a garage, had a look.
They they, they gave me a price and I've just been busy, you
know, that. He's done a manual follow up.
(10:03):
He's he's chased me up this morning manually.
But it's reminded me, oh, sugar,yeah, I need to, I need to get
that booked in. So sometimes in a lot of cases,
it's not that the customer isn'tready to make a decision, it's
just that life just got in the way.
They're just busy. Other things have happened.
So giving them that nudge, you know, and following them up just
(10:26):
pushes it, pushes it down the line.
So obviously in that example, the guys had to write that
message out to me this morning, right?
Which is better than not following up at all, of course,
but how much better would it be if that was on autopilot?
So that after three days, five days, whatever it is, whatever
time frame you want, it just sent out a nice little message,
(10:46):
whether it's on e-mail, whether it's on WhatsApp, whether it be
a text message. You can even go further, you
know, and you can record voicemails and send voicemail
drops out. And there's all fancy stuff you
can do with technology and, and with, with building these
automations. But it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's
a just a no brainer to me. It's, it's like, I couldn't
(11:08):
imagine not just following up and the same with the reviews to
circle back a little bit. You know, some of the, some of
the guys I've worked with over the years, they asked to turn
the review collection off because they've had one or two
customers moan about being askedfor a review.
And, and, and it blows my mind every time someone, someone
(11:29):
brings this up to me because youcan't make rash decisions by
turning off like a system or an automation based on a, a handful
of customers. You know, if the majority are
either ignoring it, you know, because most people, if they, if
they don't want to leave you a review, they're just going to
ignore it. You know, if they don't want to
follow up, they don't want to accept your quote, they're just
going to ignore it. But if the odd few make a
(11:53):
comment, you can't, you can't stop at every dog that barks at
you, can you? You know you otherwise you'll
you'll never get anywhere. So what's your thoughts on that?
Yeah, that's something I've I'vespoke with my office manager
about because she's had a few people say that they get too
many automations. But again, it's such a small
(12:17):
amount of people. Like we had one person say they
didn't actually go with us because we sent too many
automated messages, but that's one person from the thousands.
The the side of that is obviously it's harder to track
the metrics, but how many peoplehave we managed to secure the
(12:39):
work for because we've stayed onon point with it?
You know what I mean? That's probably only in the
thousands. So it's like you say, whereas I
think some of the, the sole trade allows this with a
slightly more delicate approach.Probably think, Oh no, I've had
a couple of bad responses from that.
I want to turn that off, but andwe just a circle again back to
(13:00):
the reviews. There was a post on gash chat, I
think yesterday, a guy looking to go on his own just offered a
little bit of free advice. And one of those was to make
sure you invest in marketing andscale your reviews.
Because you cannot, as we said last week, you cannot grow a
(13:21):
business free word of a trade business, free word of mouth
anymore. It just won't work.
You can't do it because. And some people will probably
challenge that and say, Oh yeah,yeah, you can.
You can. I would say you can't.
You actually can't anymore because you will not be able to
(13:41):
acquire enough customers at speed to offset inflation.
Yeah. It's probably probably an
interesting thing to to discuss in a different time.
But if you're trying to scale just free word of mouth, you
know, like we've said to offset inflation, you need a continuing
stream of fresh customers who are more in line with your like
(14:06):
ever increase in pricing structure.
And that's, you know how many lands.
I don't want to increase my prices because I'll lose my
customers. And that's why we say you need
your new ones. So those reviews form your new
word of mouth and that's usuallythe first thing that people see
as in from a new customer perspective.
(14:26):
You know, we've said before our business is quite expensive
compared to others. But yeah, using automations were
almost at 1000 reviews in I think it's is it about 18 months
since we. Yeah, I think we worked it out
last time. Yeah, it was about that sort of
time frame where it implemented.On it, which you know, 1000
(14:48):
reviews is, is wild when you think about it and just to to
delve into that a little bit more, there is things that you
can get that also customers can leave multiple reviews as well
across different platforms or you can ask multiple times.
(15:09):
So you can really leverage the amount of reviews that you get
by. If you if somebody leaves a
positive review, you could then have an automation set up so
that they give those, those particular customers a love.
(15:30):
Another little nudge to say I really appreciate that last
review leaving as well. Would you mind leaving us
another one on this one? So to give that a slightly
better context, the for those who don't know what which
trusted traders is like, it's quite a challenging platform to
(15:51):
scale your reviews on. I believe they've made it a
little bit easier, but it used to be very, very difficult
because they, what they do is they vet the customer.
So when someone leaves a review,which then reach out and make
sure it's a genuine review. Obviously, if there's a lot of
talk about these like black reviews you can get on Google
and stuff like that. And then you can pay someone on
(16:13):
the other side of the world an amount of money and they'll
leave you some reviews. That is you cannot do that with
which because they've every single customer individually.
So with that is you need to really try and push a platform
like that. So we have that in place where
when someone's left a review on one of the other regular
platforms, let's call it, then we reach out.
(16:34):
We built an automation that we reach out and say, I really
appreciate that review. Could you leave one on which as
well, this is a special platformfor whatever reason.
But again, that was built out asAPR automation.
So we haven't had to touch that.And that's scaled exponentially
just off the back of that automation that we built out.
Yeah, and, and in, in, in today's world, you know, the
(16:59):
word of mouth is, you know, I'm not demonising word of mouth.
Word of mouth will always have place.
But if you, if you're serious about growing and, and and and
and doing better, then you've got to be on multiple platforms.
You've got to be collecting reviews as regularly as
possible. And this isn't just this talk
(17:22):
isn't just about reviews. We're just using reviews as the
example because it is the most simplest one.
And the probably one of the mostimportant is I I'd say probably
is the most important because without that collection of
reviews, you're not building trust, which means you can't
raise your prices that as easy you can't.
(17:43):
I'm going to challenge on that actually.
I'm going to say I actually don't think you can build a
business, a trade business from word of mouth anymore.
Not if you're starting from, notif you're starting out.
No, no, no. I think you can.
You can, obviously, if you're already established.
You've been going? Yeah, Yeah.
You can, you can keep, keep going, can't you?
But yeah, to be honest, I'd agree, I'd I'd agree there
(18:05):
because it is just the way of the world, you know, like we're
we're buying a new TV for the lounge at the minute.
And the first thing I do is lookat the reviews, see what actual
people are saying. Yeah, you know, you're always
going to get the idiot. Like 111 of the reviews
yesterday weren't even about theTV that I was looking at.
It was because it had GB news built into it.
(18:25):
And the guy, the guy who didn't like it had the TV, had GB news
on it, you know, So you've got, you know, you're always going to
get these numpties that that will leave not so nice reviews.
But again, though, that's sorry.I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to
rewind that for you. So some people are scared of
online reviews because they're scared that customers are going
(18:46):
to leave them the bad 1 And I understand the fear of getting a
bad review, but the more reviewsyou get, the less you get
because the less impact it has. If you've got ten reviews on
Google and some numpty puts on areview because you fix their
boiler, but then six months later something else went wrong
(19:09):
and they got the they didn't want to pay, blah, blah, blah.
You know, you know the story. Then it affects you because it
it it it's 11 out of 11 reviews.No, I only 10 are good and it
messes up with a star rating. When you've got hundreds if not
thousands of reviews, the odd numpty doesn't matter.
You know, they, you, they lose the power, don't they?
(19:32):
The customer then, because now if a customer tries to like hold
me over the barrel and say, oh, we'll leave, we'll leave a bad
review. I'm like, OK, if that's what you
want to do, leave us a bad review, because ultimately one
or two bad reviews amongst thousands isn't really going to
touch me, you know? That's the really, really good
point that and we was talking about that in the group the
(19:52):
other day. It wasn't really one of our
groups. And that in my opinion
counteracts that fear that so many guys have with trying to
get reviews on mass to I think alot of guys want to sort of hand
pick the customers, don't they? They were really nice.
They had a really good chat withthem.
I'll ask them for a review, but.When we get the odd random,
(20:15):
generally it's usually a black review.
So it's when people haven't sortof read the the job notes
properly or whatever reason, andmaybe people have an unrealistic
expectation of an outcome. So let's say, for example, a
customer books in a boiler breakdown, but doesn't quite
understand the concept of it, despite the girls explaining on
(20:35):
the phone, despite having automations, which we'll we'll
come back to that different automations in a minute.
And as a result, they met, perhaps expected the boiler to
be fixed rather than a full diagnostics report what they
actually get from it, because they only see not working boiler
working boy, they don't see the journey in between.
But in those scenarios now, while one of the girls in the
(20:56):
office will reach out and explain like this is what's
done, we won't even bother trying to chase the platform to
get it taken down anymore because they were gaining them
at such a rate. It just doesn't matter.
And like you say, they always look hard and out of place
anyway by when you're a good company, like you know, like our
checker trade for November as I'd like, for example, 70 good
(21:20):
reviews and 10 review because ofthat reason.
He said, well, we came out, theydidn't fix my boiler.
So but we came out and told you what was wrong with it,
diagnostics, blah, blah, blah. Point being is there's just no
point when you're using the leverage in the automations to
grow the reviews on mass. You don't have to worry about
(21:40):
that anymore, do you? Just you just let it go.
We get washed away. And I would argue if you've got
1000 reviews and they're all five star, then some people so
that. But yeah, just to, to say about
the, the fear behind a lot of lads from, from not getting
them, that's absolutely holding them back like 100%.
(22:06):
And you know, we know, we know lads ourselves who've tried that
technique of trying to vet the customer to see if the
experience was good first beforethey then ask for a review.
And you're just hindering yourself too much.
Like, because even if you've got1000 reviews and your average
(22:26):
rating is 4.6, people will see more value in that in my opinion
than if you've got 25 spare reviews.
So yeah, that's, that's something.
And yeah, automations are the secret sauce to do in it.
Not saying it's impossible. Again, spoke about my best mate,
successful electrical business and he does everything manually,
(22:51):
but he's had time in the game and he he says himself he was to
start tomorrow. He knows he would have to
automate everything to the Max and do things in a bit more of a
modern way that you say when you're established, you can kind
of keep things going. But again, that's the if you
only want to keep things going. If you, if you're already
(23:12):
established and you want to kickit up a notch.
You know, we spoke about lads, you've been doing it 20 years
and they're OK, but then proof in the pudding when you overtake
them after only a couple of years, then they'll actually
have you done it. And, and automations are, I
would, I would probably say the main reason behind the scale of
growth along with the marketing,which I would say they're
(23:35):
intrinsic then aren't they? Like there's no point in doing
loads of marketing and drawing loads of customers if you're not
going to leverage them with something like reviews.
And then to to come off the reviews subjects slightly, one
of the biggest sort of issues that customers raise is not
(24:00):
being kept in the loop when theybook a tradesman.
So after the obvious one that you, you often say to guys just
turning up makes you better thana lot of guys, which is very,
very true. But to step it up a notch,
keeping them in the loop is the,in my opinion, absolutely a must
(24:22):
these days because you know, theAmazon prime mindset, the Uber
taxi ordering mindset, people know and ringing someone up and
them saying I can probably get to you next week used to be
allowed. It used to be the norm.
To be fair, still is for. A lot of people, unfortunately.
(24:44):
Yeah, which again, why if you'reimplementing something like
this, the automations and the and the software and things like
that, what you'll find is your customer retention will go off
the chart. You might have been, you might
be the best tradesman in the world, but if you're doing
things in that way, yeah, I'll get to you next week.
If that's not enough for someoneand someone wants a bit more of
(25:07):
a solid answer than that and they ring through to a company
that's using software and as a result automations, then they
get that booking confirmation and the booking reminder, the
chances are you've probably lostthat customer.
And regardless of how good you are as a tradesman, just it just
(25:28):
isn't enough anymore. You know what I mean?
We have. Being a good tradesman is not
how you grow a business, is it? Being a good tradesman will give
you a solid, a solid income, youknow, steady.
But it's not, it's not what's going to take you to, to being
an actual business that is expanding, growing, making, you
(25:49):
know, better money than, than, than everybody else.
And yeah, it's, I think that's one of the big shifts in, in
people that we work with is whenthey realise, you know, yes, you
have to be technical. Of course, you know, of course
you need that technical knowledge.
But like, we see it all the time, don't we lads going on
training courses, they're going on training courses to get
(26:11):
better as an engineer, which is part of the journey.
More strength than that, but allit.
But what they don't do on maths is invest in training on how to
be a better businessman, you know, and invest in training on
software and services and coaching and you know,
everything else and, and ultimately that is the
(26:35):
difference, isn't it? That's the difference to growing
a business or basically just building a job.
I think as well, there's probably less really, really
good tradesmen out there. And as a result, they would be
the guys that would probably better going working for a
company and holding a senior position in that company.
(26:58):
So you know what I mean? You, you let's say you're a guy
maybe like mid 50s and you've done this for a long, long time.
That probably puts you in a worse position from the business
perspective because you'll have spent more likely spent all that
time being becoming a shit up tradesman can probably fix a
boiler your eyes shut. But you've got you'll come from
(27:20):
a time where there wasn't the necessity for what we've just
been talking about today. And you're probably better than
99.9% of the other lads in the game.
And that person in particular that in the right company would
probably be on the 50 grand a year.
You know, we'll have a position,we'll have a space for someone
(27:42):
like that in the future. The 50 gramme a year, you know,
50 odd gramme a year senior engineer kind of role because
the focus has been lasered on being that good engineer.
And they'll be, they'll be the guy that is going out fixing the
boiler in 20 minutes because they're so fucking good.
(28:04):
And then going out. And it's like that, that's to
extend what you're saying becomes counterproductive,
doesn't it? You know, we've touched on this
before. We're going after a little bit
of a tangent. That's what we do.
The better the tradesmen you arein generally, statistically the
(28:25):
worse business owner you become.Admittedly, there's always
variables, but you've only got so much learning capacity.
And if you keep funnelling it that down, like you said into
becoming the better and better engineer, you're going to be
less, less headspace and less time to focus on the back ends.
Other things. You know, we've said before,
(28:46):
we're relatively average tradesman.
And as a result, that's allowed for that little bit of extra
headspace. And if you're the, if you're
always the best engineer in the business, let's say you start
taking on more guys, I would saythat becomes a problem in
itself. This has been more of a tangent.
(29:08):
This is one for another podcast.But because then you become
that, you become that role we'vejust been chatting about.
And what happens then it's just,yeah, stopping where you are.
There's a thing, statements of that will be contested, I'm
sure. But stop where you are in your
(29:30):
development journey as an an engineer or tradesman, whatever
the industry you're in and put your focus on to on the business
side of things and don't get anybetter really the trade.
But anyway, let's bring it back.All right, let's bring it back.
Three questions. Booking confirmations, booking
reminders we was we were segwaying into hasn't we?
(29:53):
Yeah, yeah. So, So what what I'd like to
just share with some of the people that that are going to be
watching and listening. This is what are some of the
other alternations. Obviously we spoke a lot about
reviews. You've obviously touched on
booking reminders and booking confirmation.
So for those that that again, tosome people, they're, they're
(30:13):
like, well, I just ring the customer, you know, book it in
and then they see me three days later and that's it.
So if you're using the right system and you can build
automations within that system, you can make things like booking
confirmations, booking remindershappen on autopilot.
So again, we don't want to add manual interventions into your
(30:36):
business. That's the point of systems and
automations is to do things thathappen just on autopilot.
So I'll use it and these businesses as an example similar
to mine in regards to the automations in place, but phone
call comes in, office lady or office person answers the phone,
books the job here. OK.
Obviously that part is a manual process.
(31:00):
Obviously we do offer online booking.
I believe Andy does online booking too.
So, so you can sort of automate that booking part.
But let's just go traditional customer phones are books in the
job. Within 20 seconds they're going
to get a confirmation to confirmwhat's been booked in.
So they're going to see what's what time, what time date,
etcetera that the job's booked in.
(31:21):
Then there's automations built in that will remind that
customer so it will send out reminders 24 hours before that
we that someone's coming. Then with the software that we
both use, which is service mate and I know other softwares do
it, but with service mate you when the engineer is actually on
route to that customer, this is on again on autopilot.
(31:44):
It will send them a tracking link to track the engineer
similar to Uber. If you're, if you've ever used
Uber or one of these delivery apps where you track your food
comes to you, it works in exactly the same principle.
So the customer is being kept upto date and a live status on
when you're actually going to arrive at the at the property.
(32:04):
What other automations are you do you feel are important in in
this day and age? I would say there that the ones
we've spoke about, the big threereally aren't they.
So the review collection, the quote, follow up and then the
booking related confirmations. I would say the booking stuff,
(32:33):
the booking related automations and the reminders feed into the
review collection because we generally find other than the
office, the the, the feedback weget from the girls in the
office. And we have got another podcast
scheduled in about scaling and an office side of stuff.
(32:53):
But that's the next thing that people mention in a lot of the
reviews. Obviously the office staff are
brilliant, but that's that's onething.
But the next thing the the consistent feedback we get is
being kept in the loop and that's too hard to do in from a
manual process. So you had plenty of lads that
do it and it's, it's doable, butit adds so much more effort to
(33:19):
your day. Like you say, service may as
soon as that jobs booked in, it kicks off the net so they get an
e-mail. Another thing to delve a little
bit into the more clever stuff with the booking confirmations
by your service mate is you can select your booking windows
kindly how it how it gives the arrival time.
(33:40):
So you can do you know, an hour,2 hours?
We have ours, we've just kicked ours up to 4 hours because of
the time of year. But generally we have it on
three, which means if you book ajob in for 10 O clock, it'll say
between 8:30 and 11:30 because it will split splay out 90
minutes on either side. And within that automation, it
(34:02):
tells them that this is your arrival window for the engineer.
And people really appreciate that because they know where
they're at with it. Don't really go actually.
It means that they can pop out, they can do the school run or or
whatever it might be. Just makes life easier, doesn't
it? And and.
Then the the automation. I would say this is a true
(34:23):
automation in in some ways and probably automation at its at
its finest for for the lads thatmight be interested in software
is the notification to tell the customer the engineer's on the
way. Now this is something that
people give the most feedback onas good as the booking link is,
(34:45):
and it also then is an internal beneficial automation.
That's the right way of saying it because, and most vans
generally have car play nowadays, Apple Car Play or
you've bought something that's added it to your van.
In the van, plug your phone in, Service mate comes up on Apple
(35:06):
Car Play. You can do it on your phone or
Apple Car Play because it integrates into maps.
You can click navigate to Job and that's something you do
anyway. You'd put the post code into
your maps, but you just click navigate to Job.
It brings the maps up, tells youwhat to do and to get there and
does your map inside of things. But then it behind the scenes
(35:26):
texts the customer and says Wayne's on his way.
He'd be with you in 25 minutes, whatever it is.
And then he can track the engineer as well.
That to me is, was is something that customers, even though it's
a very basic thing and like you say, customers are experiencing
that with Amazon, with Uber, with.
But they're not experiencing it with, with Daniel plumber down
(35:50):
the road and, and, and John, John the chippy that's coming
round to do the doors or whatever.
Do you know? And another note on these
automations, right? And it all, it all feeds into
everything. So like people always ask me,
what can I do to, to grow my business?
And there's never one answer. Everything we're going to be
discussing on on this show. And over time, you have to be
(36:12):
doing it all. But one of the powerful things
that automations do is they build rapport and trust.
And when you build rapport and trust with people, you're going
to win more work. You're going to be able to
charge stronger because they have that level of trust and,
and rapport with you. And on top of that, and this is
(36:34):
going to be a whole different, different podcast.
It's going to have to be becausewe wouldn't have the time to
discuss it now. But what the content that you
put in to these automations is so important because Andy, you
sell a lot of service plans, right?
Pretty much on every automation you're mentioning service plans,
(36:55):
aren't you? You're, you're, you're, you're
you're leaving little bread crumbs, which, which is what I
call it along the way. So when that customer gets that
booking confirmation, somewhere in that e-mail or text, there's
going to be a mention. Did you know that we offer
service plans when they when thecustomer gets the on way text,
they're going to be mentioning the service plans or whatever
(37:16):
upselling it is that that you might do as a business.
Like I said, that's going to need a whole subject on like
content upselling and everything, but it is so
powerful. Communication is in today's
world is one of the most easiestthings to automate, isn't it?
Because, you know, everybody uses e-mail, everybody uses
(37:38):
text. Back in the day when it was just
a phone call, yeah, it was difficult to man you, not
difficult, but it was time consuming someone.
Would you have to physically geton the phone, ring that
customer? Yeah.
Hi, Mrs. Jones, we're on our way.
You know, we'll be with you soon, etcetera, etcetera.
Whereas that is gone now, you don't need that.
And then then we start getting down the subject of AI, which is
(38:01):
again going to be probably the next episode.
I I would imagine so, yeah, I'm not going to, I'm not going to,
I'm not even going to open that Pandora's box on, on AI.
But have you got any other, any thoughts, any other message, any
other things that you wanted to talk about on automations at the
minute? No, I think this is probably a
(38:21):
good one for, again, let's get some feedback on it.
If anyone's got more questions on how they can elevate their
business with the use of automations or as much as it is
elevate the business, it's get some of your time back, isn't
it? It's free up that personal time
just yeah, just reach out. You know, a lot of the guys that
(38:43):
are sitting down doing stuff in the evening, it can all be
automated. It can just be like, you know,
and one last thing I wanted to to mention before we we close
off on the automation side, it also can be internal, can it?
So for example, again, if you'reusing a job management software
like Service Mate, it allows theon site payments to be taken.
(39:08):
And one of the automations that can be built into Service Mate
and other job management softwares is automatic
reconciliation of payments, which is going to reduce the
amount of effort you either do manually or you maybe have a
bookkeeper doing currently. It literally just once it takes
(39:28):
the payment, it recognises that it's been taken and then
communicates with your job, withyour accounting software and
tells it basically tells it thisjob has been complete and it's
been paid for. So move it on to the next stage
essentially. And that's something that most
guys do actually do their own account software management,
(39:50):
let's call it doing most likely manual.
So yeah, when you can then just you can stack your automations,
can't you? You know, the automatic even.
You can even have an automatic payment link go out to request
payment. They can pay that and then
behind the scenes it will automatically reconcile.
Automatically, yeah. So actually, as with everything
(40:13):
we're discussing, obviously we're going to be revisiting all
of this with, with, with furtherdetails, with follow-ups after
questions and stuff like that. So don't sit here and think that
this is the only time we're going to be talking about
automations or, or systems or whatever other episodes you've
listened to in the past. We will be revisiting a lot of
(40:33):
these subjects to dive a little bit deeper to refresh because
time, time, time changes and, and systems change and
techniques change and strategieschange.
So, yeah, don't don't feel like this is just a one time
discussion because we will be talking a lot about all
different things, but we need you guys involved.
(40:54):
We need you to be reaching out. We need you to be asking
questions so that we know that we are discussing the right
things for the people that are watching and listening.
So the e-mail addresses for bothof us are on, on the system on
the screen. Now, if you're, you're just
listening, it's Wayne off the tools.co.uk or Andy off the
tools.co.uk. And of course we're on all the
(41:17):
socials. You know, if you're not already
part of the free Facebook community, just search off the
tools community. And, and it's a, it's a free
group that you can join. And obviously in there you can
post questions and, and, and, and see what other people are
talking about, see what other questions other people have got.
(41:38):
Yes, I think, I think we've cometo a natural sort of close of of
this session. Andy, are you done, mate?
Right. Have a good one, guys.
And we'll see you on the next one, which is more than likely
going to be about AI. Let's go.
Welcome to another episode of the Off the Tools podcast.
In the last episode we spoke about the importance of systems
and today we're going to go a little bit further and we're
going to be talking about how automations can help you grow
and scale your business. So hello Andy.
Sorry, I should say hello Andy. I'm forgetting I've got a Co
(00:34):
host. Morning, morning, morning.
Yeah, sorry, still getting used to having a Co host.
So I've got to remember I'm not interviewing him.
So today we're talking about automations.
Explain automations, Andy? What, what, what do we mean by
(00:55):
automations? Because to some people that's an
alien terminology. I know to us it's not.
But for some people listening orwatching, they're going to be
like automations. That's that's like what robots
do. I would probably condense that
to something that is set up onceand then continues to run in the
(01:18):
background to your advantage. So the probably the most obvious
1 is a review collection system.So obviously last week we spoke
about service mate and sales item.
So to not get too deep into it, we stick to service mate.
(01:40):
For example, you can build in a,a singular automation where once
each job is completed within thesystem itself, it will then
request a review from the customer that is done.
I know a lot of guys probably dothat manually.
(02:02):
So I know if you'll, as you do that, they'll complete a job and
then they'll send a text review request to a customer.
Whereas when it's built into automation, there's no need for
you to do that. So I think that's the, the core
of it really, isn't it? Because you'll forget, you'll,
(02:23):
you know, be tired, you want to,you know, you're tripping a gear
in the van and you're like, you just want to get home, that sort
of thing. And then the, one of the big
beauties with that, just that onthat specific review note is you
can dial in the timing of when it's done and it will do that
consistently. So for example, you can have it
(02:43):
so it goes out at 7:00 PM the day after the job's completed,
something like that. So that can allow you to scale
your reviews exponentially really.
And we've touched on before about the more jobs you do, the
more customers you get. You need to make sure that you
(03:05):
get a review from every single one of your customers to scale.
And automations are the, the obviously the easiest way to do
it because you're not having to do anything.
But also, I would argue the fastest way to do it because
like I was just saying, you can't miss one or two a year in
the until just an extra little sprinkling on that.
(03:29):
Some people probably, maybe, probably, maybe probably don't
ask the same customer for another review.
The automations don't care aboutthat, which is I see as as a
positive. So for example, if you've got a
customer where they've just got a little niggle, let's say you
(03:52):
put a new boiler in, you know, afew months ago and they've, you
know, they've bled a radiator orwhatever it might be and then
the pressure's gone. They're not quite sure how to do
it. You would put that in as a job
on your job management software.Go out, you know, have a chat
with them, fill the system up, get it running, get it up to 10,
stand around for a little bit, have a chat with them.
(04:14):
They'll probably be happy with that, that you've gone out and
then the system will just recognise that as a job and send
another automation for a re request.
Most people will probably leave you another review, whereas I
think a lot of guys on I've already asked, they've already
left me a review. And this this touches a little
bit on like looking at the the systems and the automations as
(04:38):
sort of part of the business in some ways kind of an entity of
the business. Like we've said about people in
the office are less sort of emotionally invested in like a
pricing structure. So when someone rings them for a
price, they're not going to be tentative the way that the owner
(05:01):
would be. And I feel like automation's, I
like that they don't care. You've already been to that
customer earlier in the year. There's no emotion, is there?
When it's a, when it's a computer sort of dealing with
it. The biggest thing for me is like
the human error. Human error is probably the
wrong word. But I think you mentioned it a
few minutes ago. Like, you know, people forget if
(05:22):
you're doing it manually, you genuinely, you know, you've had
a busy day rush home, life's busy at home.
And and then before you know it,a few weeks have gone by and you
haven't sent out any review requests.
And in today's world, like reviews are, are the lifeblood
of a business that wants to grow.
(05:43):
You know, if if you've been in business 45 years, you know, and
you're not too fussed, you're just sort of ticking over, then
yeah, I understand You don't probably necessarily need
reviews as much as someone like Andy, for example, who's
actively growing, actively scaling, you know, and, and it's
a newer business than these moreestablished 2030 year old
(06:05):
businesses. And once you build an
automation, if you build it right, it should just run on
autopilot. So that just not only gives some
consistency to the business. So the customers are, are
experiencing a similar experience time in time out.
It just compounds, you know, like my review collection
(06:27):
automation has been processed over 10,000 times.
So you imagine even if it took 10 seconds, right to, to send
that review request, if you saiddid it manually, which it would
take longer, you know, to find the message, send it, copy
paste, whatever, whatever 10,000+ * I, I can't even do the
(06:47):
maths. I don't know how many hours that
would physically equate to or how many days or months or
whatever it would be. But you know, it's ridiculous.
And that's just one automation. And you compound that, then you
start building other automation.So we'll focus a bit on reviews
because we're talking about it now.
But automations isn't just aboutthat.
(07:09):
It can be for following up customers, like chasing quotes.
It can be for marketing, it can be for chasing invoices, it can
be for upselling. But you know, the world's your
oyster with with automations, isn't it?
Yeah. How many lads send a quote and
then leave it be? Like, you know what I mean?
(07:29):
Like, so we've talked about a software called Quotient that
we're both really big, big fans of.
And within that software itself you can build an automation.
So we have set to 48 hours within that software for when we
send a quote for something a bitbigger.
(07:51):
And if it's a smaller job, it'llbe 24 hours.
So again, that's just done. You don't have to forget about
it. The software will just give me a
little nudge. Have you had a look at your
quotes? Obviously you can build this out
yourself, but have you had a look at your quote if you got
any questions? It can be as simple as that.
I've dread to think how much work has been lost from lads who
(08:17):
don't follow up, whether becausethey're too busy or the the, you
know. Distressing people see it
following up on a quote to me asa no brainer, you know, you're
just being polite, just making sure that they've got it make
asking if they've got any questions.
But a, a lot of a lot of people that I've spoke to over the
years say, oh, I don't need, I don't follow up people.
(08:37):
I'm not desperate. I'm not chasing these people for
the work. What's your what's your views on
that that mindset? I think I've got a bit of this
from you to be fair, combined with my own mindset on it.
And statistically far less people moan about being pestered
(08:59):
than do right way around. We don't get that many people
who moan about pushing, pushing,pushing.
Most of them are grateful that you've followed up or the
appreciate all that. Not about that.
Oh, thanks. Yeah.
I was meant to give you a ring back today, but I forgot.
Whatever it might be, most people who are looking for that
(09:19):
work in this day and age prefer to be chased for it because
we're all busy at me now. You know, even your customers
are busy, even though they've they've requested the work.
Your customers are busy and theyand they, they get distracted
and they forget about it. They're oh shit, that that
quarter hasn't meant to look at that.
So yeah, was it? You always say better to ask for
(09:40):
forgiveness kind of thing on it and you don't chase up someone
else probably will. And it's not even like like a, a
prime example, last week I took my son's car.
It's got a clutch problem. Took it to a garage, had a look.
They they, they gave me a price and I've just been busy, you
know, that. He's done a manual follow up.
(10:03):
He's he's chased me up this morning manually.
But it's reminded me, oh, sugar,yeah, I need to, I need to get
that booked in. So sometimes in a lot of cases,
it's not that the customer isn'tready to make a decision, it's
just that life just got in the way.
They're just busy. Other things have happened.
So giving them that nudge, you know, and following them up just
(10:26):
pushes it, pushes it down the line.
So obviously in that example, the guys had to write that
message out to me this morning, right?
Which is better than not following up at all, of course,
but how much better would it be if that was on autopilot?
So that after three days, five days, whatever it is, whatever
time frame you want, it just sent out a nice little message,
(10:46):
whether it's on e-mail, whether it's on WhatsApp, whether it be
a text message. You can even go further, you
know, and you can record voicemails and send voicemail
drops out. And there's all fancy stuff you
can do with technology and, and with, with building these
automations. But it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's
a just a no brainer to me. It's, it's like, I couldn't
(11:08):
imagine not just following up and the same with the reviews to
circle back a little bit. You know, some of the, some of
the guys I've worked with over the years, they asked to turn
the review collection off because they've had one or two
customers moan about being askedfor a review.
And, and, and it blows my mind every time someone, someone
(11:29):
brings this up to me because youcan't make rash decisions by
turning off like a system or an automation based on a, a handful
of customers. You know, if the majority are
either ignoring it, you know, because most people, if they, if
they don't want to leave you a review, they're just going to
ignore it. You know, if they don't want to
follow up, they don't want to accept your quote, they're just
going to ignore it. But if the odd few make a
(11:53):
comment, you can't, you can't stop at every dog that barks at
you, can you? You know you otherwise you'll
you'll never get anywhere. So what's your thoughts on that?
Yeah, that's something I've I'vespoke with my office manager
about because she's had a few people say that they get too
many automations. But again, it's such a small
(12:17):
amount of people. Like we had one person say they
didn't actually go with us because we sent too many
automated messages, but that's one person from the thousands.
The the side of that is obviously it's harder to track
the metrics, but how many peoplehave we managed to secure the
(12:39):
work for because we've stayed onon point with it?
You know what I mean? That's probably only in the
thousands. So it's like you say, whereas I
think some of the, the sole trade allows this with a
slightly more delicate approach.Probably think, Oh no, I've had
a couple of bad responses from that.
I want to turn that off, but andwe just a circle again back to
(13:00):
the reviews. There was a post on gash chat, I
think yesterday, a guy looking to go on his own just offered a
little bit of free advice. And one of those was to make
sure you invest in marketing andscale your reviews.
Because you cannot, as we said last week, you cannot grow a
(13:21):
business free word of a trade business, free word of mouth
anymore. It just won't work.
You can't do it because. And some people will probably
challenge that and say, Oh yeah,yeah, you can.
You can. I would say you can't.
You actually can't anymore because you will not be able to
(13:41):
acquire enough customers at speed to offset inflation.
Yeah. It's probably probably an
interesting thing to to discuss in a different time.
But if you're trying to scale just free word of mouth, you
know, like we've said to offset inflation, you need a continuing
stream of fresh customers who are more in line with your like
(14:06):
ever increase in pricing structure.
And that's, you know how many lands.
I don't want to increase my prices because I'll lose my
customers. And that's why we say you need
your new ones. So those reviews form your new
word of mouth and that's usuallythe first thing that people see
as in from a new customer perspective.
(14:26):
You know, we've said before our business is quite expensive
compared to others. But yeah, using automations were
almost at 1000 reviews in I think it's is it about 18 months
since we. Yeah, I think we worked it out
last time. Yeah, it was about that sort of
time frame where it implemented.On it, which you know, 1000
(14:48):
reviews is, is wild when you think about it and just to to
delve into that a little bit more, there is things that you
can get that also customers can leave multiple reviews as well
across different platforms or you can ask multiple times.
(15:09):
So you can really leverage the amount of reviews that you get
by. If you if somebody leaves a
positive review, you could then have an automation set up so
that they give those, those particular customers a love.
(15:30):
Another little nudge to say I really appreciate that last
review leaving as well. Would you mind leaving us
another one on this one? So to give that a slightly
better context, the for those who don't know what which
trusted traders is like, it's quite a challenging platform to
(15:51):
scale your reviews on. I believe they've made it a
little bit easier, but it used to be very, very difficult
because they, what they do is they vet the customer.
So when someone leaves a review,which then reach out and make
sure it's a genuine review. Obviously, if there's a lot of
talk about these like black reviews you can get on Google
and stuff like that. And then you can pay someone on
(16:13):
the other side of the world an amount of money and they'll
leave you some reviews. That is you cannot do that with
which because they've every single customer individually.
So with that is you need to really try and push a platform
like that. So we have that in place where
when someone's left a review on one of the other regular
platforms, let's call it, then we reach out.
(16:34):
We built an automation that we reach out and say, I really
appreciate that review. Could you leave one on which as
well, this is a special platformfor whatever reason.
But again, that was built out asAPR automation.
So we haven't had to touch that.And that's scaled exponentially
just off the back of that automation that we built out.
Yeah, and, and in, in, in today's world, you know, the
(16:59):
word of mouth is, you know, I'm not demonising word of mouth.
Word of mouth will always have place.
But if you, if you're serious about growing and, and and and
and doing better, then you've got to be on multiple platforms.
You've got to be collecting reviews as regularly as
possible. And this isn't just this talk
(17:22):
isn't just about reviews. We're just using reviews as the
example because it is the most simplest one.
And the probably one of the mostimportant is I I'd say probably
is the most important because without that collection of
reviews, you're not building trust, which means you can't
raise your prices that as easy you can't.
(17:43):
I'm going to challenge on that actually.
I'm going to say I actually don't think you can build a
business, a trade business from word of mouth anymore.
Not if you're starting from, notif you're starting out.
No, no, no. I think you can.
You can, obviously, if you're already established.
You've been going? Yeah, Yeah.
You can, you can keep, keep going, can't you?
But yeah, to be honest, I'd agree, I'd I'd agree there
(18:05):
because it is just the way of the world, you know, like we're
we're buying a new TV for the lounge at the minute.
And the first thing I do is lookat the reviews, see what actual
people are saying. Yeah, you know, you're always
going to get the idiot. Like 111 of the reviews
yesterday weren't even about theTV that I was looking at.
It was because it had GB news built into it.
(18:25):
And the guy, the guy who didn't like it had the TV, had GB news
on it, you know, So you've got, you know, you're always going to
get these numpties that that will leave not so nice reviews.
But again, though, that's sorry.I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to
rewind that for you. So some people are scared of
online reviews because they're scared that customers are going
(18:46):
to leave them the bad 1 And I understand the fear of getting a
bad review, but the more reviewsyou get, the less you get
because the less impact it has. If you've got ten reviews on
Google and some numpty puts on areview because you fix their
boiler, but then six months later something else went wrong
(19:09):
and they got the they didn't want to pay, blah, blah, blah.
You know, you know the story. Then it affects you because it
it it it's 11 out of 11 reviews.No, I only 10 are good and it
messes up with a star rating. When you've got hundreds if not
thousands of reviews, the odd numpty doesn't matter.
You know, they, you, they lose the power, don't they?
(19:32):
The customer then, because now if a customer tries to like hold
me over the barrel and say, oh, we'll leave, we'll leave a bad
review. I'm like, OK, if that's what you
want to do, leave us a bad review, because ultimately one
or two bad reviews amongst thousands isn't really going to
touch me, you know? That's the really, really good
point that and we was talking about that in the group the
(19:52):
other day. It wasn't really one of our
groups. And that in my opinion
counteracts that fear that so many guys have with trying to
get reviews on mass to I think alot of guys want to sort of hand
pick the customers, don't they? They were really nice.
They had a really good chat withthem.
I'll ask them for a review, but.When we get the odd random,
(20:15):
generally it's usually a black review.
So it's when people haven't sortof read the the job notes
properly or whatever reason, andmaybe people have an unrealistic
expectation of an outcome. So let's say, for example, a
customer books in a boiler breakdown, but doesn't quite
understand the concept of it, despite the girls explaining on
(20:35):
the phone, despite having automations, which we'll we'll
come back to that different automations in a minute.
And as a result, they met, perhaps expected the boiler to
be fixed rather than a full diagnostics report what they
actually get from it, because they only see not working boiler
working boy, they don't see the journey in between.
But in those scenarios now, while one of the girls in the
(20:56):
office will reach out and explain like this is what's
done, we won't even bother trying to chase the platform to
get it taken down anymore because they were gaining them
at such a rate. It just doesn't matter.
And like you say, they always look hard and out of place
anyway by when you're a good company, like you know, like our
checker trade for November as I'd like, for example, 70 good
(21:20):
reviews and 10 review because ofthat reason.
He said, well, we came out, theydidn't fix my boiler.
So but we came out and told you what was wrong with it,
diagnostics, blah, blah, blah. Point being is there's just no
point when you're using the leverage in the automations to
grow the reviews on mass. You don't have to worry about
(21:40):
that anymore, do you? Just you just let it go.
We get washed away. And I would argue if you've got
1000 reviews and they're all five star, then some people so
that. But yeah, just to, to say about
the, the fear behind a lot of lads from, from not getting
them, that's absolutely holding them back like 100%.
(22:06):
And you know, we know, we know lads ourselves who've tried that
technique of trying to vet the customer to see if the
experience was good first beforethey then ask for a review.
And you're just hindering yourself too much.
Like, because even if you've got1000 reviews and your average
(22:26):
rating is 4.6, people will see more value in that in my opinion
than if you've got 25 spare reviews.
So yeah, that's, that's something.
And yeah, automations are the secret sauce to do in it.
Not saying it's impossible. Again, spoke about my best mate,
successful electrical business and he does everything manually,
(22:51):
but he's had time in the game and he he says himself he was to
start tomorrow. He knows he would have to
automate everything to the Max and do things in a bit more of a
modern way that you say when you're established, you can kind
of keep things going. But again, that's the if you
only want to keep things going. If you, if you're already
(23:12):
established and you want to kickit up a notch.
You know, we spoke about lads, you've been doing it 20 years
and they're OK, but then proof in the pudding when you overtake
them after only a couple of years, then they'll actually
have you done it. And, and automations are, I
would, I would probably say the main reason behind the scale of
growth along with the marketing,which I would say they're
(23:35):
intrinsic then aren't they? Like there's no point in doing
loads of marketing and drawing loads of customers if you're not
going to leverage them with something like reviews.
And then to to come off the reviews subjects slightly, one
of the biggest sort of issues that customers raise is not
(24:00):
being kept in the loop when theybook a tradesman.
So after the obvious one that you, you often say to guys just
turning up makes you better thana lot of guys, which is very,
very true. But to step it up a notch,
keeping them in the loop is the,in my opinion, absolutely a must
(24:22):
these days because you know, theAmazon prime mindset, the Uber
taxi ordering mindset, people know and ringing someone up and
them saying I can probably get to you next week used to be
allowed. It used to be the norm.
To be fair, still is for. A lot of people, unfortunately.
(24:44):
Yeah, which again, why if you'reimplementing something like
this, the automations and the and the software and things like
that, what you'll find is your customer retention will go off
the chart. You might have been, you might
be the best tradesman in the world, but if you're doing
things in that way, yeah, I'll get to you next week.
If that's not enough for someoneand someone wants a bit more of
(25:07):
a solid answer than that and they ring through to a company
that's using software and as a result automations, then they
get that booking confirmation and the booking reminder, the
chances are you've probably lostthat customer.
And regardless of how good you are as a tradesman, just it just
(25:28):
isn't enough anymore. You know what I mean?
We have. Being a good tradesman is not
how you grow a business, is it? Being a good tradesman will give
you a solid, a solid income, youknow, steady.
But it's not, it's not what's going to take you to, to being
an actual business that is expanding, growing, making, you
(25:49):
know, better money than, than, than everybody else.
And yeah, it's, I think that's one of the big shifts in, in
people that we work with is whenthey realise, you know, yes, you
have to be technical. Of course, you know, of course
you need that technical knowledge.
But like, we see it all the time, don't we lads going on
training courses, they're going on training courses to get
(26:11):
better as an engineer, which is part of the journey.
More strength than that, but allit.
But what they don't do on maths is invest in training on how to
be a better businessman, you know, and invest in training on
software and services and coaching and you know,
everything else and, and ultimately that is the
(26:35):
difference, isn't it? That's the difference to growing
a business or basically just building a job.
I think as well, there's probably less really, really
good tradesmen out there. And as a result, they would be
the guys that would probably better going working for a
company and holding a senior position in that company.
(26:58):
So you know what I mean? You, you let's say you're a guy
maybe like mid 50s and you've done this for a long, long time.
That probably puts you in a worse position from the business
perspective because you'll have spent more likely spent all that
time being becoming a shit up tradesman can probably fix a
boiler your eyes shut. But you've got you'll come from
(27:20):
a time where there wasn't the necessity for what we've just
been talking about today. And you're probably better than
99.9% of the other lads in the game.
And that person in particular that in the right company would
probably be on the 50 grand a year.
You know, we'll have a position,we'll have a space for someone
(27:42):
like that in the future. The 50 gramme a year, you know,
50 odd gramme a year senior engineer kind of role because
the focus has been lasered on being that good engineer.
And they'll be, they'll be the guy that is going out fixing the
boiler in 20 minutes because they're so fucking good.
(28:04):
And then going out. And it's like that, that's to
extend what you're saying becomes counterproductive,
doesn't it? You know, we've touched on this
before. We're going after a little bit
of a tangent. That's what we do.
The better the tradesmen you arein generally, statistically the
(28:25):
worse business owner you become.Admittedly, there's always
variables, but you've only got so much learning capacity.
And if you keep funnelling it that down, like you said into
becoming the better and better engineer, you're going to be
less, less headspace and less time to focus on the back ends.
Other things. You know, we've said before,
(28:46):
we're relatively average tradesman.
And as a result, that's allowed for that little bit of extra
headspace. And if you're the, if you're
always the best engineer in the business, let's say you start
taking on more guys, I would saythat becomes a problem in
itself. This has been more of a tangent.
(29:08):
This is one for another podcast.But because then you become
that, you become that role we'vejust been chatting about.
And what happens then it's just,yeah, stopping where you are.
There's a thing, statements of that will be contested, I'm
sure. But stop where you are in your
(29:30):
development journey as an an engineer or tradesman, whatever
the industry you're in and put your focus on to on the business
side of things and don't get anybetter really the trade.
But anyway, let's bring it back.All right, let's bring it back.
Three questions. Booking confirmations, booking
reminders we was we were segwaying into hasn't we?
(29:53):
Yeah, yeah. So, So what what I'd like to
just share with some of the people that that are going to be
watching and listening. This is what are some of the
other alternations. Obviously we spoke a lot about
reviews. You've obviously touched on
booking reminders and booking confirmation.
So for those that that again, tosome people, they're, they're
(30:13):
like, well, I just ring the customer, you know, book it in
and then they see me three days later and that's it.
So if you're using the right system and you can build
automations within that system, you can make things like booking
confirmations, booking remindershappen on autopilot.
So again, we don't want to add manual interventions into your
(30:36):
business. That's the point of systems and
automations is to do things thathappen just on autopilot.
So I'll use it and these businesses as an example similar
to mine in regards to the automations in place, but phone
call comes in, office lady or office person answers the phone,
books the job here. OK.
Obviously that part is a manual process.
(31:00):
Obviously we do offer online booking.
I believe Andy does online booking too.
So, so you can sort of automate that booking part.
But let's just go traditional customer phones are books in the
job. Within 20 seconds they're going
to get a confirmation to confirmwhat's been booked in.
So they're going to see what's what time, what time date,
etcetera that the job's booked in.
(31:21):
Then there's automations built in that will remind that
customer so it will send out reminders 24 hours before that
we that someone's coming. Then with the software that we
both use, which is service mate and I know other softwares do
it, but with service mate you when the engineer is actually on
route to that customer, this is on again on autopilot.
(31:44):
It will send them a tracking link to track the engineer
similar to Uber. If you're, if you've ever used
Uber or one of these delivery apps where you track your food
comes to you, it works in exactly the same principle.
So the customer is being kept upto date and a live status on
when you're actually going to arrive at the at the property.
(32:04):
What other automations are you do you feel are important in in
this day and age? I would say there that the ones
we've spoke about, the big threereally aren't they.
So the review collection, the quote, follow up and then the
booking related confirmations. I would say the booking stuff,
(32:33):
the booking related automations and the reminders feed into the
review collection because we generally find other than the
office, the the, the feedback weget from the girls in the
office. And we have got another podcast
scheduled in about scaling and an office side of stuff.
(32:53):
But that's the next thing that people mention in a lot of the
reviews. Obviously the office staff are
brilliant, but that's that's onething.
But the next thing the the consistent feedback we get is
being kept in the loop and that's too hard to do in from a
manual process. So you had plenty of lads that
do it and it's, it's doable, butit adds so much more effort to
(33:19):
your day. Like you say, service may as
soon as that jobs booked in, it kicks off the net so they get an
e-mail. Another thing to delve a little
bit into the more clever stuff with the booking confirmations
by your service mate is you can select your booking windows
kindly how it how it gives the arrival time.
(33:40):
So you can do you know, an hour,2 hours?
We have ours, we've just kicked ours up to 4 hours because of
the time of year. But generally we have it on
three, which means if you book ajob in for 10 O clock, it'll say
between 8:30 and 11:30 because it will split splay out 90
minutes on either side. And within that automation, it
(34:02):
tells them that this is your arrival window for the engineer.
And people really appreciate that because they know where
they're at with it. Don't really go actually.
It means that they can pop out, they can do the school run or or
whatever it might be. Just makes life easier, doesn't
it? And and.
Then the the automation. I would say this is a true
(34:23):
automation in in some ways and probably automation at its at
its finest for for the lads thatmight be interested in software
is the notification to tell the customer the engineer's on the
way. Now this is something that
people give the most feedback onas good as the booking link is,
(34:45):
and it also then is an internal beneficial automation.
That's the right way of saying it because, and most vans
generally have car play nowadays, Apple Car Play or
you've bought something that's added it to your van.
In the van, plug your phone in, Service mate comes up on Apple
(35:06):
Car Play. You can do it on your phone or
Apple Car Play because it integrates into maps.
You can click navigate to Job and that's something you do
anyway. You'd put the post code into
your maps, but you just click navigate to Job.
It brings the maps up, tells youwhat to do and to get there and
does your map inside of things. But then it behind the scenes
(35:26):
texts the customer and says Wayne's on his way.
He'd be with you in 25 minutes, whatever it is.
And then he can track the engineer as well.
That to me is, was is something that customers, even though it's
a very basic thing and like you say, customers are experiencing
that with Amazon, with Uber, with.
But they're not experiencing it with, with Daniel plumber down
(35:50):
the road and, and, and John, John the chippy that's coming
round to do the doors or whatever.
Do you know? And another note on these
automations, right? And it all, it all feeds into
everything. So like people always ask me,
what can I do to, to grow my business?
And there's never one answer. Everything we're going to be
discussing on on this show. And over time, you have to be
(36:12):
doing it all. But one of the powerful things
that automations do is they build rapport and trust.
And when you build rapport and trust with people, you're going
to win more work. You're going to be able to
charge stronger because they have that level of trust and,
and rapport with you. And on top of that, and this is
(36:34):
going to be a whole different, different podcast.
It's going to have to be becausewe wouldn't have the time to
discuss it now. But what the content that you
put in to these automations is so important because Andy, you
sell a lot of service plans, right?
Pretty much on every automation you're mentioning service plans,
(36:55):
aren't you? You're, you're, you're, you're
you're leaving little bread crumbs, which, which is what I
call it along the way. So when that customer gets that
booking confirmation, somewhere in that e-mail or text, there's
going to be a mention. Did you know that we offer
service plans when they when thecustomer gets the on way text,
they're going to be mentioning the service plans or whatever
(37:16):
upselling it is that that you might do as a business.
Like I said, that's going to need a whole subject on like
content upselling and everything, but it is so
powerful. Communication is in today's
world is one of the most easiestthings to automate, isn't it?
Because, you know, everybody uses e-mail, everybody uses
(37:38):
text. Back in the day when it was just
a phone call, yeah, it was difficult to man you, not
difficult, but it was time consuming someone.
Would you have to physically geton the phone, ring that
customer? Yeah.
Hi, Mrs. Jones, we're on our way.
You know, we'll be with you soon, etcetera, etcetera.
Whereas that is gone now, you don't need that.
And then then we start getting down the subject of AI, which is
(38:01):
again going to be probably the next episode.
I I would imagine so, yeah, I'm not going to, I'm not going to,
I'm not even going to open that Pandora's box on, on AI.
But have you got any other, any thoughts, any other message, any
other things that you wanted to talk about on automations at the
minute? No, I think this is probably a
(38:21):
good one for, again, let's get some feedback on it.
If anyone's got more questions on how they can elevate their
business with the use of automations or as much as it is
elevate the business, it's get some of your time back, isn't
it? It's free up that personal time
just yeah, just reach out. You know, a lot of the guys that
(38:43):
are sitting down doing stuff in the evening, it can all be
automated. It can just be like, you know,
and one last thing I wanted to to mention before we we close
off on the automation side, it also can be internal, can it?
So for example, again, if you'reusing a job management software
like Service Mate, it allows theon site payments to be taken.
(39:08):
And one of the automations that can be built into Service Mate
and other job management softwares is automatic
reconciliation of payments, which is going to reduce the
amount of effort you either do manually or you maybe have a
bookkeeper doing currently. It literally just once it takes
(39:28):
the payment, it recognises that it's been taken and then
communicates with your job, withyour accounting software and
tells it basically tells it thisjob has been complete and it's
been paid for. So move it on to the next stage
essentially. And that's something that most
guys do actually do their own account software management,
(39:50):
let's call it doing most likely manual.
So yeah, when you can then just you can stack your automations,
can't you? You know, the automatic even.
You can even have an automatic payment link go out to request
payment. They can pay that and then
behind the scenes it will automatically reconcile.
Automatically, yeah. So actually, as with everything
(40:13):
we're discussing, obviously we're going to be revisiting all
of this with, with, with furtherdetails, with follow-ups after
questions and stuff like that. So don't sit here and think that
this is the only time we're going to be talking about
automations or, or systems or whatever other episodes you've
listened to in the past. We will be revisiting a lot of
(40:33):
these subjects to dive a little bit deeper to refresh because
time, time, time changes and, and systems change and
techniques change and strategieschange.
So, yeah, don't don't feel like this is just a one time
discussion because we will be talking a lot about all
different things, but we need you guys involved.
(40:54):
We need you to be reaching out. We need you to be asking
questions so that we know that we are discussing the right
things for the people that are watching and listening.
So the e-mail addresses for bothof us are on, on the system on
the screen. Now, if you're, you're just
listening, it's Wayne off the tools.co.uk or Andy off the
tools.co.uk. And of course we're on all the
(41:17):
socials. You know, if you're not already
part of the free Facebook community, just search off the
tools community. And, and it's a, it's a free
group that you can join. And obviously in there you can
post questions and, and, and, and see what other people are
talking about, see what other questions other people have got.
(41:38):
Yes, I think, I think we've cometo a natural sort of close of of
this session. Andy, are you done, mate?
Right. Have a good one, guys.
And we'll see you on the next one, which is more than likely
going to be about AI. Let's go.
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