Mark Taylor: 0:11

Hi and welcome to episode 3 of the automated analytics podcast. My name is Mark Taylor and I'm the CEO of automated analytics. I'm delighted to have joining me here today as the Don. Some from Dyno-Rod welcome. Welcome to myself. Thank you, absolutely so. Dyno-Rod have been a client of Automated Analytics for about five years now and actually one of our first clients to actually implement our AI solution. So I just thought we'd take a few minutes today on our third episode just to talk to Alistair and get his view and a bit of feedback and some knowledge about how he implements our solution and what results you got. But first, before we start talking Dyno-Rod um, let's talk about you, astor.

Alastair Donson: 0:51

So you've been at uh, british go, I think, for about 14 years now yep, going on 14 years and various roles like the business started off working actually just as a call taker. Um, really out of our call center, yeah, just moved back to the country two, two black bags, sofa surfing. That's where my career started with British Gas. But yeah, so I went my way up, done many roles, many years 14 years I've been there. Started off, obviously, on the calls call centre manager. Then moved across into the field roles so looking after the franchises in the network. At the time it was not an area manager, it was like a service delivery manager. We called it it was like a one-on-one looking after that from a KPI performance basis. Then I moved on to a stint as an area manager, so again just looking after Scotland and the north as a region for about six or seven months. And then I moved into business coaching. So how we restructured was we'd have the area managers. Then I became myself and a colleague of mine. We were sort of parachuted into the franchises.

Alastair Donson: 1:57

That needed support yep, and we spoke to them on all kinds of things. So whether whether it was recruitment, whether it was performance-based metrics, whether it was engagement, all sorts of literally anything within the business we support, so a really rounded experience of actually how a business works, because Dyno-Rod is is a franchise business, isn't it?

Mark Taylor: 2:18

And so when did British Gas buy Dyno?

Alastair Donson: 2:22

So Dyno? Well, dyno's been around since 60 years last year so 61st year, so quite a lot of history there. British Gas, or Centrica shall we say bought them in 2004. Plumbing came, so initially it was a drains business. Plumbing came in the 1990s. Centrica brought them to support their home care products yep um, and support the the um upholding that, and then yeah, so it's been around quite a while and just to give us a bit of size of of dyno rods.

Mark Taylor: 2:58

So how big is it today? How many franchises are there?

Alastair Donson: 3:01

so we have uh 54 think different business units across the country. So we cover it national In Northern Ireland. We license out the brand to Southern Ireland. So yeah, we cover everywhere in the UK.

Mark Taylor: 3:18

Good. And in terms of services, you say it's mainly drainage plumbing. Is there anything else Dyno-Rod does? No, purely it's just drainage and plumbing.

Alastair Donson: 3:24

No, purely it's just drainage plumbing. That's our two revenue streams. Um, obviously we're owned by a centric so we have to be careful what we get into that space with the gas. But um, but in essence we do. We service to home care policies and the plumbing side. That's most of our work in the plumbing um and the drain side, but most of our work from in the drains business is B2C or B2B.

Mark Taylor: 3:45

Yes, yeah. So business, consumer business, yeah, business Got you Okay. So obviously you came to us five years ago with a specific challenge. What was that challenge?

Alastair Donson: 3:55

So at the time we had four I think about four different systems. So we had a company that we worked with who did our call tracking. We had a company that managed our website. We had a company that did our media spend and then we had a company that did our social channels and things like that. Those are the sort of bits and bobs and what we found was that none of those individual companies talked to each other, obviously because they were separate entities. The reports were all very different, so you'd have a meeting with one that told you one thing. You'd have a meeting with another that told you another. Trying to tie them up really was confusing, a because they don't talk to each other, but also be how the reports were presented presenters in different units and measures and things like that. So it's really hard for us to sift through everything that was going on to understand what was happening in that space.

Mark Taylor: 4:51

And so it was very much a case of you just wanted that one line of sight the customer journey.

Alastair Donson: 4:56

Yeah. So for us it was at the time we wanted we were looking at our website anyway, it was looking at that customer journey piece and it all made sense. So I think we went out, send them, spoke to you guys, said how can, is it possible? What is it you can do, um, and I think out of everyone that we spoke to, I think there's only you guys at the time. That was what gave us that one track solution of actually we can show you where it comes from, we can manage all that um and we can show you where it goes to full end-to-end journey. But I suppose also what was interesting at the time was it helps not just understand the journey, but also help us spend in the right way, because people think we have millions and millions to spend. We actually don't, and it was very important to us to make sure we spent the right money and solicited it in the right place and got the right ROI from that investment so that you spent pounds.

Mark Taylor: 5:51

You know you could get 10 pounds back or five pounds back and where to spend your money. And I just want to pick up on a on a point you just mentioned about that, that kind of end to invisible visibility, because what's quite interesting about Dyno business business is you actually get quite a lot of revenue from phone calls. It's not just online bookings.

Alastair Donson: 6:08

Yeah, because if you think about the nature of our business, it's people are in an emergency situation, they've got water coming to the ceiling or the drains are overflowing in the homes and human nature is I want that reassurance of speaking to someone. So, yes, we do try and drive online Efficiencies cost it's a lot easier and we obviously integrate our website into our direct booking system so it's all seamless. But also, we do have a big part of our business, or the larger part of our business, is person-to-person over the top. Yes, and I think again, we do have in-house technology in FirmMotion. It's always been used for um quality assurance, shall we say yeah, but it never gave us the real understanding of what was going on the calls. Yeah, um, coming to obviously with you guys.

Alastair Donson: 7:05

With the solution that you've got, it gave us that visibility of understanding what's happening on the calls, not only from listening to the calls, which made it easier, but obviously we've got the transcript, so when you're trying to go through the calls it's a lot easier to understand and quicker, easier process. You have the sentiment side of it where we can sort of pick out the keywords that's happening on the calls. But the powerful thing for us as well was, like you mentioned earlier. We have got 52 different franchise businesses. We have calls going into our call center that we have at head office. We have calls going into our call centre that we have at head office. We have calls going into our franchises. It's understanding where those calls are going, why they're going there, what's been said. So we actually now, through the tracking capability that you provide, are able to understand what's happening, not only at our call centre, but what's going on the phones at the local offices as well, yeah, it helps that training aspect.

Alastair Donson: 7:59

It helps us identify training needs um internally and externally with the network. It helps us identify um what people are actually bringing up, for if there's any complaints, we can pinpoint that. We can understand what our customers are wanting to talk to us about.

Mark Taylor: 8:15

Yeah. So I guess that visibility and that knowledge of what's going on on that call, because we're analyzing it almost in the real time, is a benefit. But obviously you were one of our first clients to actually implement our AI, which we're very proud of, don being one of the first. What's the benefits that you've seen off the back of it?

Alastair Donson: 8:35

Apart from everything we've just gone through, that is, benefits at different levels. So that's our training, understanding, listening, AI capability. But actually, from a KPI and performance point of view, we've seen our missed calls half over the period and that's across all the boards call center and at the local franchise level. We've seen our customer service calls reduce roughly about half again, and that's not saying that our customer service has disappeared.

Mark Taylor: 9:09

It just means that we're understanding it better and moving it in the right place and the customer journey is getting better, so not having to phone you as often or talk to you as often because the customer journey is better, because you've done the analysis, yeah less missed calls.

Alastair Donson: 9:20

answering calls, we're answering calls in the right places as well. So one of the things we did with yourselves was put an IVR in place. So we identified that our franchises have the knowledge if a customer wants customer service calls, and understand what's going on, because all we do at the call centre we pass them through anyway. And we also understood that as a whole, throughout the network, our call centre performed better for sales calls and new business than our franchises. Just because of the nature of that franchise, they're always at the back of the mind of like can we fit this in?

Mark Taylor: 9:53

Yes, and your franchise is your service delivery. Your call centre is well, their job is to close that call and sell that labor. Yes, exactly that.

Alastair Donson: 10:01

So what we did is on the IVR is because IVRs have a purpose. To a degree, I think and you'll speak to anyone out there they get fed up of listening to IVRs all the time and it makes the journey too long. And again, what you do is helps identify where to send the calls and it makes the journey too long and again, helps. What you do is helps identify where to send the calls and what happens on them. But what we did do is put the simple IVR in, if like, is it a new or existing job?

Alastair Donson: 10:25

yeah the existing work goes to the franchise. They're in the prime place to deal with that, yeah, and they've got all the information, they know what they're doing with it and we were able to get the sales calls into it, so we were able to deal with it in the right place in the right journey for that customer.

Mark Taylor: 10:39

Got you through the analysis that you got. Now what's interesting is when you talk about the initial challenge, the initial challenge was actually to solve your kind of almost your marketing attribution. But then I think and for us as a business as well, from the journey that we've been on with you over the past few years that's changed into more of a business process and a customer journey kind of analysis piece. Really. It's that almost that attribution piece was solved quite quickly. You know you got an understanding reasonably quickly of actually what the return on investment was from the AdWords or from the marketing activities you were doing. It was then right. How can we then improve that with business process improvements?

Alastair Donson: 11:14

Yeah, it's information, it's data, it's understanding what's happening. So, in regards to our revenue streams you talked about, we can understand that full journey. We know what keywords, we know what sources our revenue streams come from. Now and I'm not saying it's simple for you guys to do, but it is quite transparent when you see it, put it in a long list, guys to do, but it is quite transparent when you see it it's put it in a long list of journey. You can see it quite easily and I think you're right, it has become a very different relationship now these four or five years. In is actually, how do we improve process around that customer service piece? How do we understand not just that customer's calling back? It's like why is that customer calling back? Why is it chasing a call? Is it a chase call or is it something slightly different?

Mark Taylor: 12:03

It's just the nuances which really start to get under the skin of them.

Mark Taylor: 12:06

Yeah, which is that continual business improvement process and not just a one-off hit, which is interesting. Now, obviously, you were one of our first clients to implement our solution, which is AI-based, and there's a lot of talk about AI at the moment. People are worried about it, you know. Are they going to lose their job? Is it going to replace them? How's Dynarod found that? You know you're one of our first to implement it. Have you seen any job losses? Has it replaced anybody?

Alastair Donson: 12:31

It hasn't replaced anyone. In fact, quite the opposite. We've grown in our volume of stuff that we have. I suppose what AI does do is makes things easier, easy to understand, and then you attribute your time and efforts into the right things rather than the wrong things. Yes, um, it sort of then gives us. Now we understand where we are and what we're doing, we can say, actually we need more people in this area. Yeah, we need more. We need to understand that and we attribute our roles accordingly. Um, and grow right. If we're shrinking, yes, we need less people but we're not.

Mark Taylor: 13:07

We're going, so it's good for us, yeah, which is good to see. And so somebody in a similar place to you so wants to understand their return on investment but is struggling with multiple systems, someone's looking to make that, you know, reduce their customer services calls by 50 percent, the missed calls by 50 percent. What would your advice be to them today?

Alastair Donson: 13:28

Is obviously go and understand your customer journey and your data and I know it's simplistic view but, coming to you guys, for us it's sort of using that one system, that one tone of voice, that one voice, shall we say. It's easy to understand and you can start to sort of really understand your journey and really link where it's come from, what's happened in the output, rather than doing it very sporadically and yes and bits and bobbies. So yeah, for that get you can find someone or some system that sort of can do that.

Mark Taylor: 14:07

It's opened your eyes and I think also one of the things you've been very good at doing as a client is taking that data and using it and testing stuff. I mean, that's one of the things that I've been super impressed with is you're not afraid to test different things. Some things have worked, some things haven't, um, but you've gone it in a very methodical way and just tested different things yeah, nothing, nothing works in life is all the time, every time.

Alastair Donson: 14:32

Um, and you have to try these things. Yeah, don't be spending millions on something that you don't know about, that's a bit obvious. But dip your toe in, understand what works, learn from it, develop it, move on and continuously. It's that continuous development, um, you just have to. Just, if you just stand still, nothing changes. So you just keep on trying and you things won't work. And I think there's things we've done with yourselves where, well, let's, let's try this, and we start looking at it and actually there's been no value whatsoever. Yeah, and you don't write it off as like, well, that was a waste of time. You learn from it and you see, actually now we're going to focus over here and you know the direction it's sort of driven is, like you said from, initially we thought it was going to be a um, all about sales and revenue and things like that. Actually, what you learn from that is well, it's more about the customer service and the delivery.

Mark Taylor: 15:23

Yes, yeah, which made first. So if you look at the, the dynarod business, so it's your 61st year. British gas have owned you for 20 years. Where do you see the future of the industry going on? What technical innovations you see?

Alastair Donson: 15:38

uh, are going to come down over the next five, ten years it's the technical side of it is developing very fast across every business and honestly, I'm really excited about what we can do down the line. Um. I think for me, the focus over the next few years um is going to be very much around linking in our um strategy around our ppc activity and our spend and our marketing directly through to our capacity management and looking at working with you guys on how we can manage that, just because at the moment we spend so much in certain areas on keywords that we can see working but actually if our end delivery point hasn't got the resource, to deliver that?

Mark Taylor: 16:22

How do you match that with capacity?

Alastair Donson: 16:23

It's not going to work. So if we can match that to capacity management and say, actually, well, we know these guys haven't got any work for the fall, well, we won't spend anything in that area for now or we'll reduce it, shall we say we won't spend it and we'll spend it where there is opportunity, that's not saying they won't ever get their spend back up, because what we would say is put more resource in. Yeah, we'll put more, we'll get you more money back in. So that's where I'd like to see it going.

Mark Taylor: 16:52

Yeah, and be a lot more efficient and always like the demand management of using, like programmatic bidding or other such solutions where you can manage that, basically to demand based on demands that you've got for the customer, but also what you can actually deliver locally, because you're very much a local business.

Alastair Donson: 17:06

Yeah, so, like I said, everyone thinks Dyno Rod's a big household name, national we are, our business is local, it's franchised and really some people don't forget that it's the locality, it's their business and we just work with it. But that match into labour I I think is very key is because a lot of people look for the opportunity. Yeah, and there's opportunity there. Yeah, um, we could go spend a lot more money but we it's just going to waste it because we can't deliver on it.

Mark Taylor: 17:40

yes, and it's making sure we can match that and drive that and maximize that, or away from when you spend your marketing money to actually driving, you know pounds in the bank account, yeah, which makes perfect sense. Listen, alistair, it's been great chatting to you today. Uh, you, you've been a fantastic client for us and thank you for all of your support. I do appreciate it, uh. That's the end of episode three. I hope you've enjoyed, uh, the insight that alistair has given over the last 15 minutes or so. My name is mark taylor and I'm the CEO of Automated Analytics. Thanks very much for listening or watching if you're on YouTube.