Shifting from Defense to Offense with FOM

Welcome to Tenacity Talks, where real people share real stories about the best and brightest in Mobile Field Service. I'm your host, Katie DuVall, better known to the industry, ask Katie from Kentucky, and today we are headed up to the land of 10,000 lakes. Before we dive in, I have to highlight the incredible team our guest represents, four cliffs of Minnesota. They've been in a staple in the industry since 1949, and with over 75 years of experience, they have a footprint that covers Minnesota, the Dakota's, and Wisconsin. They're a regional leader that prides itself on being a total solutions provider, from massive plates, down to 24/7 emergency service. Joining us today is the man they call head coach of that legendary service department, Matt Whalen. Matt, your team has probably seen it all over the last seven decades, but you've recently navigated some big digital changes. I've invited you here to give the unfiltered truth about what it's really like to modernize a legacy operation. Welcome to the show, Matt. Much appreciated. What's the number one most important thing a leader can do to keep a service team running at peak performance? It doesn't matter what department you're in or what you're doing, obviously communication runs everything. So, if you don't have systems in place to follow up through and communicate on, that can definitely put yourself in a position where you can't respond quickly. Obviously, a service department is all about response time and how you handle the job and how you handle any kind of situation or opportunity. We don't have problems here. We only have opportunities. What was the broken part of your old tech that finally made you say enough is enough? Well, the old system, you know, it had its flaws where the moving of the work order, how it would go out to the technician, how it would come into us, how we would navigate through it and move it around from department and department, making sure you know, parts are on it. The technician was completely done with it. It didn't have the ability to actually give it back to the technician if he completed it already to actually make sure that it was completed or if there was another issue, we couldn't re-dispatch it where now, you know, we have that opportunity with Tenacity, which is good. The old system, you couldn't, you could take pictures, but it wasn't really attached to the work order. Obviously, any service department or manager will tell you that whip, you know, work in progress is a huge thing. And having the capabilities for the back office to follow up and fall through with the customer on any open work order, it just gives us the visibility now. And it gives the technicians better visibility too. That's the most important thing there, where the other system hit or miss. You're already light years ahead of other people in this industry, you know, because you did the steps in the right order. You went paperless, right? You started a digital platform. A lot of people struggle because these other platforms are using are more out of the box and force you and your company to mold to them versus have something like Tenacity that's literally built by people from material handling and industrial equipment sectors to know exactly what they need, exactly the way it should be and make it as most efficient and easy as possible for your technicians to adapt to. 100%. Yeah. Spot on. You can ask the technicians to do something on a digital work order, you know, where before if it's on paper, you had to pick up the phone, you had to make the call, you had to, you had to line out the expectations over the phone to the technician. Hey, our manufacturers are requiring this and it's a huge thing for warranty, huge, huge tool for warranty. The expectations from the manufacturers nowadays is they want pictures of the data tag, they want pictures of the hour meter, they want pictures of the failed part, they want, they want all of this information, we can easily provide them though. You know, and that's our goal is, you know, we have our customers, we have to take care of, but we also have to take care of our manufacturers that we sell for and deal with. You know, a lot of people only relate to or speak on the customer experience, but you guys have both buckets to fulfill and it's important to keep those things in mind so everybody's happy, right? Oh, you got to keep everybody that you're in business with, you got to keep them happy too. It's our dealer's focus is to take care of our manufacturer along with our customers, you know, and you know, if you're taking care of the manufacturer, then they're happy. Obviously, that brings more opportunity, you know, and more customers and better opportunity for us out there. More money. Some way somehow. Very good. Yeah, it comes down to that, you know, profits are made. How long was it before you felt like you weren't just learning a new tool, but your team was actually winning with it? Yeah, we talk about this a lot going from defense to offense with our new business system and tenacity. The downtime was little to none. It became more back office work than it was on the technician side, which is a great thing, but a huge learning curve for us where everything was kind of from the back office to the technician. Now it's coming from the technicians of the back office sitting in my chair, you got to work with individuals every day. It doesn't matter where you're at in your position here. If you've been here like me, 22 years, you still have a learning curve every day, right? It was fantastic. You guys came in, took care of the tax right away, you know, taught them, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, this is how it's done. There's still a lot of good opportunities for us to, you know, mold this into what we want it to be. And it continues to get better, better and better. Matt, you mentioned that service quotes have seen the biggest improvement in terms of turn around time. How much faster are we talking? Is it actually showing up in the, you know, in the bottom line or is it just making everybody's desk slip cleaner? Well, I wish it made my desk slip cleaner, but it doesn't know how. So our quoting system before we went on tenacity, you couldn't oversee it. We couldn't see who's doing what. I'm sure there's a lot of other service departments, service managers out there that can relate to this and say, you know, the excuse train of, oh, it's these guys back there, you know, the parts department, they got it and they had been on it for a week or whatever, you know, the excuses would come out, but with tenacity, you know, the quoting system in there, you can see who's working on it. When it was started, how it was started, you know, where it came from, it gives you all of the information and the tools up front, right there on the platform. So you can visibly see it where before it was a piece of paper or some kind of document or an email that you could not see because there was somebody else's email box floating back and forth and it really helps knowing where things are at. The tenacity platform has given us a huge opportunity there to improve and grow our quotes. I love that. And being able to track everything in tenacity, like you said, prevents the finger pointing from different departments and also gives you the visibility to manage your customers' expectations. I mean, everything about the quoting system is fantastic. So we can go on there and figure that stuff out right there and communicate right to the customer, you know, hey, this is where we're at, this is what we're doing. We can expect the part within this time. Any response is a good response. It doesn't matter if we're waiting for back order parts or whatever it is, you know, we can still respond with something. At least we can see it right in front of us instead of chasing everywhere and run into the parts department or run into the sales guy or wherever we are. You know, customers ask and so that's a great, great system. I truly, that's like one of the things that I talk about whenever anybody that's looking into tenacity and like, I mean, everything the technicians get or whatever, gain time, you can hear all about that. If tenacity just it quotes, that'd be great, you know, because that's been a huge success for us for sure. For sure. You touch on this briefly, along with visibility, you mentioned accountability. How has tenacity made it easier for you to coach your team and keep everyone on the same page regarding daily goals? Grabbing any information, expectations from the customer, from tenacity, right at my fingertips, has really improved, you know, the accountability part. Holding the technicians accountable, you know, when we can see what's going on, what they put on there, and you can communicate right on the work order. You know, that's fantastic too. You know, that's another part of tenacity that we didn't have on the old system. You could communicate to the technician on that particular work order. But when it's communicated on the work order, the back office again can see all that. You can see it, you know, they can see, hey, Matt talked to the customer, Matt talked back to the technician and advised the technician. Now this is it, it's back to time. So if I'm not getting the call later in the week or whatever, at least somebody else can pick it up and run with it. It sounds like you almost moved from being like a private investigator looking for these mistakes, you know, to almost mentor. You can see exactly where the team needs a hand and where the ball is dropped or where you can, you know, include yourself in and help out. Yeah, that's true. And back to the accountability side, utilizing tenacity as a report to the back office, how we can help develop the skills of each technician really, really helps us out back here. So we know, hey, are you struggling with communication? Are you struggling with time management? You know, what is it that you're struggling with that we can help you with, you know, we're not calling you out on it. We want you to be successful. So it's a great opportunity for us to help mentor each individual person for sure. Signs of a great leader, Matt. Thank you. Yes, people hear the word integration, right? They freak out immediately. They think of a nightmare that takes a year and breaks everything else. I'm curious how long it actually took your team to get up and running and productive in tenacity. Was it the headache? Everybody was expecting or was it smoother than expected? I really appreciated the capabilities from tenacity because they came here. They sat down with the technicians and they got them rolling. You know, the next day they're off and run up. Now it's done at that time and they can, you know, we can give them a direct answer here. This is the time that was put into it. And, you know, if it was travel or, you know, part of the repair didn't go so well, you know, it can all be communicated right there. That was a major change for the technicians and not having that flexibility, I should call it, to do things later. It's required of them to do it right there. It's helped us in our billing where the guys get it done. They sign off on it. It's in the office the next day. We review it. Then we can invoice it. You know, so it's a three day turnaround where before it might have been a week. Matt, there's probably a service manager watching this or listening to this right now who's tired of their current system, but maybe they're terrified of the switching cost and changes. What would you say to that company that's on the fence? Is the grass actually greater or are they just trading one problem for another? Well, you're never going to escape the workload. It's always going to be there, but with tenacity, it's been easier for us to push the workload through quicker. It's easier for us to get it out to the technicians quicker. It's easier for us to move it through our operations quicker. We're continuing every single day to improve on operations. It doesn't matter where you're at. You've got to always improve and communicate and improve it and improve it and improve it. I would say that tenacity is really quick to respond, quick to take care of issues, quick to handle things. So if you have questions or concerns once you get on the system, the response time and the service side is phenomenal. To ease the anxiety of making a switch if you're thinking about moving to tenacity, that's a huge, huge opportunity for anybody and everybody out there that's thinking about it. Just knowing that you could pick up the phone and call somebody or send an email right through tenacity. Somebody's going to get back to you right away. When you look back at your very first job, what was it? I was a, I worked at CUB Foods, which is a grocery store up here with my father. He was a cashier and a produce guy his entire life for CUB. And I was basically the clean team. So cleaning bathrooms and pushing carts. That was my first job. Was that a family of your business? Did it teach you a lot about hard work? Well, no, not a family own business. Didn't teach me too much about hard work. It was a job. I was 14 years old, you know, making minimal wage for 75 an hour, which is crazy. Work ethic was a huge thing in my family. So just just getting there is 80% of the challenge and then doing the job. So yeah, that was that was my first gig. Is CUB still around today? Oh yeah. When you aren't managing a fleet of forecliffs or a team of tax, how do you spend your time to reset? Like are you a sports fan, obviously, or an outdoorsman or something totally different? Yeah, boy. Well, spending time with the family is what I do now. Before the family, I guess, you know, just hanging out with buddies and ice fishing or I play a lot of golf, love golf. Yeah, just just really just unwinding, you know, getting away from here and reset in the mind, you know. So I'm always looking for my next trip. I love to travel. If you could hop on a plane tomorrow, Matt, to any destination in the world, where you had it? Boy, you know, my, my daughter's been asking the same question. Like, where are we going? When's our next vacation? We travel quite a bit to, we go to Florida, go down there at least once, twice a year. Where do you go? What's the best spot in Florida to take the kids? Well, we used to go to Mark, Island quite a bit and April's is where we go now. So yeah, Fowler Lies got a nice place down there and it's in a country club, so get to play some golf down there and, you know, fresh fresh fish. I love it. You know, so. And, you know, I hit in the pool, you know, with the kids, it's love it down there. Like a dream vacation for me, I would love to go to Norway. Families from there, so we got family over there and I just want to check it out. Dream vacation, for sure. Before we wrap up, is there anything else on your mind or any experience with tenacity? Maybe we haven't touched on yet? I'm very, very in tune with operations, right? And that's my job here is keeping my operations flowing. You know, our motto is we move a lot of steel. You know, that's the FOM model is moving steel in and out, in and out, in and out, and how quick we can move and how quick we can respond is our deal, right? Developing operations, utilizing tenacity has been successful. Are there thoughts and ideas that want to bring to tenacity and see if they can do it? You know, heck yeah. I think that's how the best partnerships are built when you find the friction and we build the solution. I know you guys have the capabilities of doing it, you know. To everyone tuning in, if Matt's story about quotes and accountability really resonate with you, feel free to reach out to the team at Forklift's Minnesota and see how their team leads the way or feel free to reach out to us at tenacity. Until next time, keep your head up, your quotes fast and stay tenacious. See you on the next episode of Tenacity Talks.