How to Improve Your Implementation Process | Jason Gullett

All right, so today we are going to talk about implementations, and we're going to talk specifically about payroll implementations. This is something that we are continuously trying to improve at Guru, formerly ERG Payroll and HR, and the reason why is really pretty simple. So we've got this, this sort of dichotomy of we've had clients that have reached out to us after implementation has been over and said, wow, your guys' new client onboarding process is so tight, so well done. We want to learn from you. We want to know how you manage that. We want to understand, you know, the work and energy that you guys have put into this great experience— is always the word that we're looking for, right? We're trying to create a great experience— all the way through to we've lost a client and we've looked back and said, man, we bumbled that from the time we were setting them up, which led to problem after problem after problem as we went through. And I think the interesting thing when you look at it— so I do a ton of research, put a bunch of data out as it relates to new employee onboarding being like the most pivotal part of the employment relationship. I think client onboarding is the same way, right? We're setting expectations, we're training, we're educating, we're getting somebody associated with our way of doing things. And if we don't do that properly and we don't engage them from day one, then we're probably not going to keep them from the long term— for the long term. So I'm really proud and honored to be joined by Mr. Jason Gulick, Captain J Bones here from Guru. He is our Director of Client Success and he oversees all of our implementations. And I just threw this question at him right before we came on air that I'm curious to get his, his, his sort of visceral reaction to. And that's, what do you think our biggest improvement has been over the last year or so as it relates to how we implement and onboard new clients?

So I would say, I mean, looking back is probably the most important thing. We've looked back and seen, you know, where have we made the most mistakes, whether that's in the form of a tax notice or whether it's in the form of simply clients not really understanding, you know, what they're doing come the first payroll run. And I think we've addressed a lot of that as we've gone on, whether that's from, you know, implementing training training with the software or whether that's doing a deeper dive into what their tax setup currently looks like and, you know, really getting involved in their old payroll system so that we know what was going on previously so that we can try and replicate all the best parts of that and kind of leave out some of the bad and implement our processes with that.

Awesome. So my hope for today is for anyone listening, you're going to do one of two things or both of these things. Probably both of these things. You're going to say, oh, that's a good idea, we should add that to our implementation process. Or you're going to say, you guys are morons, you should be doing it this way. And if you say that second part, please reach out to us and tell us so we can improve. That's, that's a big part of this whole thing. Uh, we started Payrollin' because we want to get better. We're having these great conversations with folks that are in this industry, and we're trying to do a little bit more exposure of how we operate internally because we've obviously spent a good amount of time on, on a lot of these best practices as well. So let's take this thing. When we look at new client onboarding, I mean, much like using that employee onboarding analogy, you know, it kind of starts before their first day, right? So we've got that sales process and how they sign their agreement and what the, you know, the touchpoints are before they get into the actual implementation process. And then we start our implementation process with what we call a kickoff call. We'll talk about that and how we use that to set expectations, then what the process looks like as we to kind of power through it. And we'll maybe touch base a little bit on some of the way these things varies as it relates to rolling out our ASO clients or any of our other HR service clients, but we'll try to keep it mostly payroll since I know everybody listening will be offering payroll. So I'll touch base. I oversee the sales side of the organization. Um, so for us, from the time somebody says, hey, we're ready to go, uh, we're gonna— we've got an email template we send them where they can easily sign off. On an embedded form on our website that the first page of the form is just an agreement to our rates and structure. And so we want to create as little friction as possible on that first page. And so that means linking out to our terms and conditions, not putting a signature page on our terms and conditions. And what I mean by that is, you know, the, the kind of old-school way would be to send over your 8-page agreement and have somebody DocuSign the first page. We've basically just taken that and embedded that on the website like any other SaaS company would nowadays. So somebody completes that and says, yes, I agree to the rate structure, this is exactly what I was hoping for. They get moved into a secondary landing page that forces them to book their kickoff call before they move into our client interview. Uh, obviously, as you can tell, one of the things that's going to be persistent throughout this conversation is that how often those things don't go according to plan. So it's amazing how many people just immediately, you know, it takes them to the second page where it says, don't go anywhere, book this kickoff call, and they X out of the screen and move on with their day, and we have to, you know, chase them down and then break our process to, to try to make it, uh, work for them, which is fine because it's not everybody. So once they do that, we then push them into the client interview form, which is a form on the website that feeds back into our CRM that asks all that sort of high-level company information, you know, tax IDs, bank account information, addresses, key people, frequency, all that kind of stuff. And so we've worked really hard over the last couple years to move that into as singular of a process as possible. We still, we still struggle. I laugh a little bit because we've got a couple different form builders we've been using. We finally put it into our, our new, uh, marketing CRM recently, which is, is, is the final resting place, I believe, for this entire process because If you listen to, I don't know, we recorded an episode yesterday. I don't know when it'll air before or after this episode, but on the marketing side, we're talking a lot about the ability to build funnels. We've basically built that funnel on the client onboarding side as well. And so from there, we then have them start with that kickoff call. And Jay, why don't you share a little bit with us about the kickoff call, what we're trying to accomplish on that call, what the structure is, and maybe even some things you think we can improve on that conversation.

Sure. And, you know, I think some of it even starts before the kickoff call when that client, you know, or any client doesn't submit the new client interview form that we have set up or they don't schedule the kickoff call right there. You know, that's kind of a red flag to me. You know, when I'm running the kickoff call, I kind of like to know what kind of client am I dealing with? You know, where might we falter? Are they going to be responsive or not? Because that just gives me a better idea of, you know, how on top of them I need to be. And so, you know, that kind of goes right into the kickoff call where maybe I'll be a little bit more detailed or maybe I'll put more of the onus on them and stress the importance of certain things a little bit more intensely, I guess, if I know that, you know, they haven't submitted that new client interview. So I know they might be a little bit more lackadaisical in getting us some stuff. And so that kind of changes how I tackle the kickoff kickoff calls, and that's always a learn— something that I am trying to continue to learn as we go along is just picking up on individuals' different habits. But for the kickoff call, you know, first of all, we like to introduce ourselves. You know, we like them to know who they're working with, and then we also like to give them a chance to introduce themselves. That gives us an idea of who, you know, we're sending certain things to. Tax information typically goes to the accountant that might be on the phone call. Employee information might go to an admin that's on the phone call. You know, some cases everything goes to the owner. But if you've got multiple people on the phone call, it's important to really identify where you're going to be sending certain things and who's signing off on things. So that's, you know, one of the reasons that we allow them to introduce themselves. So our team is aware of that as well. After that, you know, we really like to go into, hey, here's your solution. This is what you are getting based on what you signed up for. You know, we cover the ins and the outs and try and bullet it out. You get this, this, this. You know, if there's any confusions about that, we always ask them, is this what you signed up for? Is this what you think you signed up for? You know, if they add anything in there that they want to say, hey, you're— we were told you were doing this, that's something that's addressed right at the front so that we don't have any confusion down the line. Probably one of the most important pieces just because it clearly defines what we are going to do for them and what they can expect from ours. So setting those expectations right up front. After that, we move into what our actual implementation process is. So giving them an idea of how this process is going to work, what the flow is going to look like. We try and make that as simple and structured of an approach as possible so that they can grasp it. They don't want to hear every single little thing that we're going to be sending them, what we're going to be doing. They don't want to know that, you know, we're going to update X and XY's tax information on this date. They just want to know what the flow is going to look like. And so we try and bucket, bucket that down into nice little digestible pieces. After that, we cover what's called the ERG or Guru journey, kind of give them a little bit more of a breakdown at an individual level of what they can expect as far as documentation needs, what they're going to have to sign off on, and what information we're going to need from them that might not be given to us in the new client interview. Following that, one of the more important pieces is how we're going to help them. We give them every way that they can reach us, whether that's phone calls, emails, chat support, and what they can expect as far as time frames for responses. One of the things that we like to mention is, you know, our response times and how they might differ from other companies. And really, you know, we just stress that, you know, these are the best ways to reach us so that they feel comfortable just sending emails or phone calls to one place instead of all of our different teammates that they might have, you know, met earlier, earlier on in the phone call. One of the things that we stress is, you know, you don't need to know what we're doing on the back end. You don't need to know that, you know, Olivia is in charge of payroll and, Maybe I'm the director of client success. You don't really need to know that because you're sending all your information to one individual place and we're going to make sure that it gets to the person that's supposed to be handling it.

Although I think that's my, that's my, that's my PSA for everybody, the smaller bureaus that are just getting started. We got the question, it was on an FAQ episode not too long ago. Set up the support@ email address because you can never do that until you do that, right? So you can't tell people that, oh hey, don't worry, we'll serve you by the, the person who's available with the expertise as quickly as possible if you are everybody sending to jason@guru.co, uh, because then it just turns into, you know, everything going to jason@guru.com. What happens when Jason wants to go on vacation? And what happens when Olivia wants to go on vacation or Nikki wants to go on vacation? Then we're, we're all behooven to a single person's inbox or multiple people's inboxes. Set up that inbox of truth. Support@, success@, whatever your cool term is, and send it there. And I want to hit on a couple other things real quick here before you keep going. And so, so this conversation overall is about a 30-minute long conversation with the client. Um, and it is really, you know, my biggest takeaway as I, as I hear you talking through this is like we're setting the expectations on everything right here from the jump. And that means we're setting the expectations on how long this implementation is going to take, how long, you know, who to talk to, how I talk to them. And when we— before we were doing these kickoff calls, we were getting a lot of, you know, sort of cluelessness around how to interact and engage with us. And that's when people leave, is when they don't know what's expected of them or where they are. You think about that, that map when you go into the mall and it says, you are here. Like, people want to know where they are, what the next steps are, what, you know, where they are in the process. And so like, we're literally looking at the slide deck, both Jason and I, on the other screen, and they're like, it accounts for every type of personality because we send them the PDF of the slide deck after the call. It's got a checklist for those that want to keep up with the checklist. It's, you know, can easily be ignored for those that don't care. It's kind of got it like meets people at their point of need because you have so many different personalities when you're setting stuff up. So yeah, that's great. Jay, go ahead and pick it up.

Yeah. So, you know, continuing along the next piece and this is part of something that we've actually, you know, we've identified where we have struggled in the past You know, we, we've created a whole nother slide or another piece of the kickoff call solely revolving around areas that we have struggled with in the past. Or maybe there's areas where we know the clients are less in tuned with. You know, for example, this might be tax. A lot of clients might not know their tax situation, what their frequencies are, what their what their account numbers are. And so we put this in the kickoff call just to bring attention to it so that they're aware of, you know, this is going to be an important piece. We're just really highlighting the need for this because this is where we've identified a lot of things can kind of fall off or go wrong down the line. It's not something that we want to address 4 weeks down the road when we're running the first payroll. It's something we want to address initially with them.. And so that we can, you know, continue to have a conversation around those pieces and everybody's on the same page.

How long are you telling clients it takes to set up? Let's just say they're the sort of average 15-man payroll-only client. How long are you telling them it takes to get set up from front to back?

Front to back, full payroll, right about 3 to 4 weeks. Now, you know, that's going to really depend on the responsiveness as well as communication. You know, we've seen these go as smoothly as 2.5 weeks for a 15-man payroll. And we've seen them, you know, take 4 to 6 weeks because we're simply not getting what we need. You know, that's another key component of this is just follow up, follow up, follow up. They need those reminder emails because payroll is typically the last thing that they really want to think about. Right. And so follow up is really kind of key to the whole implementation phase. In my opinion.

Um, let's finish this, this kickoff call part, but don't let me forget to come back to what are the other ways people set up. So like, I, I don't know all of you out there listening, I don't know what your implementation processes are. I've worked, obviously I've worked at a large national company, I know what our small business unit did over there and the kind of mindset. I know, you know, the Gustos and the SurePayrolls of the world, how they're setting up these small businesses. And I'll share kind of why we do it this way, uh, because you— some people listen to this might be like, 3 to 4 weeks for a 15-man payroll? Like, good gravy, why would it take you so long? Um, but so, so we'll dive back into that here. So, so let's, let's finish out some of the things that we're doing here on the kickoff, and then we'll talk about what's next from there.

Awesome. I think it really— the last portion of it is really the next steps. So we're capturing everything that we've mentioned to them on the kickoff call. We're identifying what the clear next steps are, and I'd stress the importance of those being very clear so that they know what to expect and they're ready for whatever's going to come in the next following week as we reach out and we receive documents from them. You know, right after that, we're just simply thanking them for the partnership. Kind of a key component, or You know, I think one of the more, uh, friendly components is just the thank you, letting them know who we are as Guru, what we do. You know, we mentioned we're a mission-based company. We kind of detail out what we do for charity and whatnot, just to give them a sense of who we are, what we represent, and, um, you know, kind of what we stand for at that point.

And that— I'm gonna echo it right now, Jay, because one of the, one of the things early and often, so to So we are a mission-based company. What Jason means by that is we actually give away 5% of our business. We give away 3% of all revenue, 1% of our product, and 1% of our time. So that's not 3% of profits. That's not a paper tiger number. That's 3% of all revenue, you know, win, lose, or draw. Now, we're not a large company, so that's not an astronomical amount of money, but we have made a commitment also to talk about it so that maybe one of you listening right now says, hey, how do we get more socially involved as an organization and how do we set parameters up to make sure that we're hitting our giving goals no matter what happens, and then put some structure around it. If you're anything like me, I'm a Gen Xer. I've got to have like a format and a structure for everything I do. I'm a linear thinker. So like that makes our giving program really easy at the end of every month to go, okay, what's 3% of the revenue for this month? Let's get it and get it out the door and support the causes that we care about and that our clients care about. We actually use a system called donorschoose.org or a site. If you've never been there, it's so cool because it will allow you to make Uh, it will allow you to make donations directly to classrooms anywhere in the country as long as they've risen their need up. So this is a really cool way to, you know, we had a client recently in Pennsylvania where we, you know, we looked what county they were in, we found a need for a classroom in their county, we fulfilled the needs, sent them the, you know, the thank yous that we got from DonorsChoose and said, hey, we want to just want you to know that we're not just supporting our community, we're supporting your community as well. So you can use that in a variety of ways, but I think it's important that we talk about it and hope Hopefully we can continue to have that positive ripple effect that we're having with our clients, with some of y'all as well. Um, all right, so you're wrapping up the kickoff call, you're setting, you know, we've got them, got their new hire, their new client documentation, they've scheduled their kickoff call, they've had the kickoff call. What's next from here?

From here, I once again just touching back on the follow-up. So we have a specific template that we use for after kickoff call. Next steps, action items. Just once again, even though we just covered the next steps in the kickoff call, we're going to hit them again with it just so they have something on paper, they have something that they're receiving, they're reading, and so they know what's coming. We are also scheduling weekly phone calls. So scheduling those weekly phone calls where we're really just touching base, making sure that we're getting what they promised to give us, and we're giving them what they need to feel comfortable with the process. You know, these might not even last the full 30 minutes that they're set for, but we still have them anyway. It allows us to also get familiar with the client. I've learned a ton from all of our clients, you know, a little bit more of who they are, what they like to do, just because of these implementation calls is what we call them. They're half an hour. They're one time, the same time every week, and it allows us really to just, you know, keep in touch, stay on base, stay focused, make sure there's no burning fires throughout the implementation process. So we're having those every week. You know, we try and structure that out to where we're covering certain topics each and every week, and we let them know in an email before the actual implementation call what topics we're going to cover and what documents they can have ready for us before that call even starts. This is, you know, something relatively new that we're doing as in the whole scheme of things. You know, we were finding that clients were coming into these calls, they didn't really know what to expect. And so, you know, the meeting could get off track. It gets— it goes down a bunch of different paths that you don't really want it to. Things that are not relevant are coming up., you know, in week 1, where those are, you know, way out in the future type topics. Um, and so having that structure and having that flow where we cover certain, uh, topics on each and every call, uh, was kind of important to that. Um, so yeah, beyond that, we're having those half an hour phone calls. We're going through, we're covering each topic. Um, you know, we cover the next steps in each of those phone calls so that they know what's coming the next week. Once again, we're following up with emails for after that implementation call and before the next implementation call. So that way, you know, they're constantly seeing emails from us. They know exactly what's going on, even if they're not listening during the phone calls. You know, they know what's going on. They have that email. They're ready to go. They're providing us the documentation in a little bit earlier of a time than, you know, say we bring it up just on the phone call. Now they have that 1-day notice or 2-day notice, and so they're actually providing that in a timely fashion. Helps us stay on track, and it helps them, you know, remember what they're supposed to bring to the table. So yeah, I mean, that's essentially it from that point. You know, at the very end or at the tail end, we're doing training calls once we have at least 99% of the setup completed. We are scheduling a separate meeting to train them on our software, train them on anything that they might be doing. If they're a self-processor, we're training them how to actually process payroll, how to enter hours, how any integrations work, just allowing them to be comfortable before that first payroll processing. Sometimes we even, you know, throw an audible in there and we'll help them through the first processing. On a Zoom call. We'll stay with them on a half an hour Zoom call and actually go through the hours entry with them so that they're comfortable with it. So all that just to really make sure that they feel comfortable with the entirety of the process.

Yeah, it's really good. And I want to touch on a couple of things you hit on there. So, so first of all, templates, right? So email templates are huge in this process for us. We've got one for before the meetings, one for after the meetings. You can adjust them on the fly, but we've got the core template ready to go for before and after. We used to have the after but not the before. And to Jason's point, like, we realized, like, okay, everybody's showing up to these meetings unprepared, we don't have what we want. And then we, you know, the whole point of having a weekly call for 4 weeks is it's like the call of accountability, right? So that means all that stuff that we assigned you or you assigned us over the last week, everybody's got to get it done before this call. There's no choice. And, you know, going back to that earlier point of Well, why would we do this over 4 weeks when you look at, I think about the ADP reps from small business. I never worked in small business over there, but I remember I'd see these guys come back to the office with like stacks of reports and documents and they just spent like 4 hours at a client's office and they were keying balances and they were doing all that stuff in real time. And I mean, it looked like a nightmare to be honest for our team. And it was just kind of silly for the client of, you know, I got this ADP rep sitting in my office for 3 hours, you know, going through all my reports and key-in data. And I mean, just people are too busy nowadays for that. So we want to spread it out. We found that very rarely does somebody say, hey, I need to get my payroll moved over to you next week. Um, and you know, when they do, it's like, you know, you know, we've got some ACH restrictions and things that are happening there anyway that are going to make that unlikely to happen. It can, uh, but we try not to. And so We just find it's better for our internal team's workload and it creates a better experience for the client if we do it slow and we do it right. And so over 4 weeks, that allows us to do it. And one of the other things we do, probably a lot of you listening do the same thing, but we position this really well in the sales process because what's the biggest barrier to changing payroll systems if there's not a deep burning pain right at the moment? It's like, well, the cost to change, the, the effort I'm going to have to put into setting up a new system So we always ask for the login to their current system or to just set us up as an admin on their account so that we can go in and pull the data out so they don't have to mess with it. Um, and some of you might be going, oh my goodness, I can't believe you do that. Others of you are going, of course we do that. It's the only way to go. Uh, for us, we just find it's way better than going back and forth with them over the reports. It makes it very simple for them, which is what, once again, we're trying to create a great experience for the client. Is it harder for us? Actually, probably not, because the back and forth when we ask for stuff versus go in and just get it— the amount of times people have sent us over PDF reports for a year's worth of prior balances, and then we've, you know, said, all right, we gotta do what we gotta do, key this in, you know, that's a nightmare. So, so this helps us to bypass some of that, and, and it definitely creates a better experience for the client. So, so I really like that. Um, and for those of you you know, who are wondering, okay, so do you charge a setup fee? We charge a setup fee and setup fees have always been one of those things. I remember, you know, not to go back to my ADP days too much, but it was almost like whatever you could get, get was their mindset. So they had this rack rate for setup, which was like some arbitrary number. And then you could discount it up to, I think setup, I mean, I think setup you could discount to zero with your manager's approval, um, but, you know, like 50% off with no approval. And, you know, just so you know, that is pretty much the status quo over there, is reps have the ability to discount their rack rates up to 30 or 40% without even having to get an approval. Uh, so you can use that for or against your, you know, your cause, especially in the sales process, just understanding what you're up against out there in the field. But so for us, we just charge the equivalent of of one month's fee. So we're going to set you up in one month. We're going to basically start the clock running when we go to set you up so we don't lose our tail on the labor during the setup cost. But we're not charging you— I mean, we're doing work for a month while you're, you know, you're paying for the service for a month. So I'd love to hear how y'all, uh, charge your setup fees and what variances you have there. But that's the model we landed on, and it seems to— it's very easy and logical to explain to somebody of, hey, we're charging you for a month's worth of service because we're serving you for a month. You know, could we get more money in setup? Absolutely. We could if we wanted to get more. But once again, I think that just makes sense. So, all right, so we're moving. We've done the kickoff call. We've gone into that week 2, week 3, week 4 training. You touched on, Jay, it's so important. So we are only training people to what they need to know in the system, right? So if we've got this 2-man company that just needs to go in and click calculate and approve every 2 weeks, then we're showing them how to do it. And to Jason's point, we also set them up with a couple of videos prior to those last two calls where usually they know how to do it on that first processing where we offer to sit in on the Zoom for them for the first processing. How often do they even need us to sit in on that? What percentage of the time would you say we're actually hovering over their shoulder during the first processing?

Really, probably only 10% of the time. Yeah. You know, usually it only comes across when there's something, you know, outside of regular hours that are being processed. Uh, maybe they have a ton of deductions. They're just making sure really we're just watching over them, making sure they're doing it right. And 99% of the time they're going to be doing it right anyway. We're just there to keep an eye on it. They just want that comfortability factor of it.

So, all right. So that's great because you guys do a wonderful job of getting them comfortable enough with the system where they don't only need to talk to you 10% of the time on the first processing. But now let's talk about the thing I know from, from doing this over the years that is like the sticking point is, all right, I process that first payroll, now what? And so, you know, when is my money moving? What, how do I get this into my general ledger? Where is that report I really like? How do you set people up for success with those things that they need after the first processing?

Yeah, so I think that comes along a lot earlier in the process, really, almost on that week 1 implementation call. Addressing what are your needs for reporting, what's your needs for general ledger. You know, we've ran into issues in the past where our general ledger functionality is simply not robust enough for what they needed. Hate finding that out after running the first payroll. Absolutely. But, you know, obviously there's, there's certain workarounds that you can do for that. But, you know, I think that also goes into the training portion. Where we're showing them around the system. We're showing them what is available, what are the standard reports that are coming out of the system, what can they expect from us as soon as they process their first payroll. Once they process that first payroll, we have a report set that's being sent out to them. Obviously, we're open for any questions that they might have as it relates to those reports, but typically they've already seen these reports before because we showed it to them during the training call. So once again, just giving them that level of comfortability with the system, the process, and making sure they're aware. Now, that's not to say that we don't have clients that come to us with random reports or super specific reports that may be needed that haven't been mentioned in the past. Obviously, we're going to help direct them through the system as opposed to just sending them these reports. We're going to try and direct them into the system on how to find these themselves. So once again, they can be a little bit self-sufficient in the whole standpoint and they can kind of navigate it themselves. You know, they don't want to ask us every single time they want a report. They would rather just go in there themselves, pull that report and review it. Just saves a ton of time on their end.

Yeah. And Jason mentioned something earlier that I feel like is worth going back to. He talked about if they're in there processing themselves, the only people we don't let process them themselves anymore are our ASO clients, where we're offering more of a full-service, hand-holding, outsourced solution. Otherwise, any payroll client that is payroll only or payroll plus more technology, we, we're training them how to get in and process their own payroll. And one of the main reasons why is we used to, you know, do what a lot of folks do when they first started, is we'd say, oh, you know, email over the hours, you know, or send them over via fax, carrier pigeon, um, you know, smoke circles, whatever you want to do. And I mean, I joke, but golly, the some of these people sent hours. I mean, it would take us longer to configure their hours together than, than actually processing the payroll would take. And what we found is those people were way less happy than the people that were getting in and logging in. Like, if you went across, we rock a really high NPS, Net Promoter Score, 70s, 80s every time we do it. I think like most people listening to this call, you know, client success, customer service is our number one differentiator. We take it incredibly seriously and we bend over backwards to meet people's needs. And it shows in the, in the scores and the reports. Interestingly enough, we thought we were doing them a favor by doing things for them, whereas in reality, as soon as they got their own access, they could run a report whenever they wanted, they could process payroll whenever they wanted. They didn't have to wait on us. Uh, you know, we have really fast response times, but still, even 20, 30 minutes, if you're a dentist who's between patients, like, you don't have time for that. And so we saw our, our client happiness rating shoot up when we just kind force them into doing something that we thought was actually going to make them less happy. So, so, you know, going back to the old Henry Ford, if I'd ask my clients what they want, they'd have told me a faster horse. Uh, you know, just make sure that you're, you're actually giving people what they need instead of what they think they want sometimes. So, um, how does this process change? So we talked about like, okay, this is our standard, like, you know, average 10-15 man simple payroll deal, set it up a couple weeks, move on. How does this change? You start getting into some of the larger groups, you know, our 100+ life groups.

Uh, so I mean, with those larger groups, you're going to have a bunch of different variables, uh, whether that's deductions, whether that's different pay types, whether that's end-of-year processes that might not come up until the end of the year. Um, you know, I think it's just a level of attention to detail, you know, going back to what you said about getting into their past payroll system. You can identify a lot of what they're going to be doing, as opposed to some of these smaller groups that may not have a 401, they might not have deductions. You can identify what these people are doing within their prior payroll system just by being familiar with that. I personally love going into other payroll systems. You know, they're not all— they're typically pretty much the same. You find the reporting, you find the company info, and you do A lot of these clients, it's amazing, they don't know how to navigate their own system. We can go in there and we can find information that they've never seen before within 10 minutes of being in their system. It's kind of a little bit of a side tangent, but yeah, I mean, you can really see what they're set up to do just by going into their old system. Another portion of it is just simply asking them. You know, one of the things that I didn't mention as far as the kickoff call goes is ask as many questions as possible. All those random things that you are going to find out along the way, why not ask them earlier? So that's things like workers' compensation is a big one for us. You know, do you offer a 401? Just knowing that they offer a 401 is going to set us up better in the next 3 to 4 weeks during the implementation process than not knowing it. And it coming up during the first payroll. You know, what does your processing look like for the 401? Who's going to be in charge of that? You know, once again, setting those expectations. So I mean, yeah, when you get into those larger organizations, they're typically going to be offering, you know, health benefits. We need to know if it's post-tax, pre-tax deductions. You know, they're typically going to have a 401. So we need to know who's processing, where the liability or the accountability falls for that. And like I said, a lot of this can be determined when you get into their system as well as asking questions on the kickoff call.

Well, and it's interesting because as I think about when we've had really successful kickoff calls that I've sat in on versus less successful ones, the less successful ones are just us throwing up at them for 30 minutes about our process and what to expect and like all that stuff's super valuable and it's part of what needs to be communicated in that 30 minutes. But if they just sit there and consume all they leave that call with is going like, okay, great. So we didn't actually accomplish anything though today. And so you're also, when you start asking those questions and getting some of the pieces beyond what we've collected on the new client interviews, then you, you get them engaged, which is obviously better than just sitting there having somebody talk at you. But you also start to help yourself as far as the setup goes. Um, it— so, so let's talk about— so this is a never-ending— if you look at our quarterly rocks, for anybody who uses EOS out there, we've got our quarterly goals called called Rocks. If you've never heard of EOS, uh, listen to any one of our other episodes. I think we mentioned it about every 2 or 3 episodes. It's based on a book called Traction, and you know, it's a great goal-setting formula, vision-setting formula. Uh, but, but if you were to track back, we've been in business 7 years, we've been using that system for probably 6 of those 7 years. If you were to check our quarterly Rocks for the last 6 years, I'm pretty sure every quarter it's improved the implementation process. So it's, it's something that's never done And that's why when I started this, I said, hey, if you've got something where you just heard us talk about it and you've got a great system that automates that, or you've got a great way to get around that thing, or whatever it is, we want to hear about it. For us, there's a huge focus always on automation with still that client experience at the heart of it, right? Like, we don't want automation to turn into a negative. We want it to be a positive. And so those are things like, you know, automatically sending those emails before and after, you know, the weekly calls, or automatically sending follow-ups if they don't have their tax information complete, or making sure that data syncs from one system to another very simply, right? We don't have to have somebody pulling information out of the client interview and keying it into 4 different systems. We want that data to, to push as much as possible. And you can do some of that through low-code tools like, uh, Zapier, or, you know, we use Zoho Flow in addition to Zapier, um, or you can use, you know, simple things like spreadsheets that are with macros that are formatted to import, or, you know, our, our customer support system desk. Zoho Desk helps us with all those templates we talked about, with some of those automations. We need to get more into the blueprints piece of it. For if we've got any Zoho power users out there that are doing a good job with the blueprints, hit me up so we can talk shop on that. But what are some other opportunities you see for improvement on our implementation side, Jay?

I mean, as you said, you know, the rocks kind of dig up where we've had, uh, maybe past blunders or we've typically struggled, um, you know, and I think just that portion of it alone just brings out, you know, where we need to focus. I've simply revised our kickoff decks probably 4 times in the past year. Why is that? Because we find new needs, you know, we get different input from some of our teammates on Hey, this would be super helpful to have earlier rather than later. We should address this earlier so that we're not making these mistakes or we're not knowing or finding out about new things further down the road. You know, I think one of the best examples of that is probably the GL reporting. You know, this is typically something that came up during the fourth week or right after the first payroll processing, we address the GL needs and the integrations along that line. Come to find out, that's, you know, something that's a lot better to focus on earlier because we know what they need earlier and whether we're going to be able to do that or not, whether we're going to be able to satisfy that need for them or those reporting needs. So just constantly reviewing the implementation process and just saying, hey, where are we struggling? Where can we focus? You know, along with the deck I mentioned, you know, we, we put an entire slide on there of things that, you know, are important to address earlier on rather than later. Something maybe like the EFT application that typically, you know, clients are going to stumble on, they're going to struggle. Maybe it's not clear. You know, we're addressing that during the kickoff call so that they're familiar with it. You know, there's going to be less questions questions coming down the line. So we're constantly revising these decks, these kickoff calls, you know, we're constantly revising the templates that we have. It never feels like it's set in stone. And I think that's probably the most important piece of it is that it's fluid, it's ever-changing, you know, when new things are coming out like the pandemic and, you know, new payroll processes as it revolves around that, you know, it has to change. So just constantly looking back and seeing, you know, where did we falter or where did we do well, and just continuously tinkering with those items is probably the most important piece of it.

Yeah. And a couple of things I'd add there that we've really been focused on over the last, you know, we've been focused on for a long time, but it's finally permeating a little bit deeper into the implementation process is video. So, you know, the one simple example, you go back to that Hey, they hit the second page after they sign up and we were embedding a video at the top of that page with a big sort of stop sign over top of it of stop, watch this 2-minute video before you go any further. And the 2-minute video is going to emphasize, hey, you've got to fill, you know, book this kickoff call and then fill out this new client interview. And here's the link to the new client interview. If you don't have the 10 minutes to fill it out right now, make sure that you save it and you fill it out. We're not going to have the kickoff call until you do it. And so some of those things are very helpful. Video, you know, we use Loom, L-O-O-M.com. Love it. We've used other systems in the past. I think Loom is just like, it's been a lifesaver since we started using Loom, just because you can share those links so easily. You can download videos, you can edit on the fly, ton of capability and easy functionality. And then the other thing, Jay, so I've got actually a suggestion here as we're, you know, conversation I had yesterday. We get consistent feedback every year when we do our annual survey. It's shocking the number of clients that don't know all the additional stuff we offer. They'll even like, we'll, we'll even put this little question in there that's like, if we offered these things, sort of a question, like, what would you be most interested in? And we did it last year and we offered almost everything in the list already. And so we just wanted to see who was checking boxes for things that we already offered. That they just didn't even know about. And so I think we probably got some, some opportunity here. And I feel like we used to have, like you said, we've changed the stack 500 times. Um, just a list of, hey, here's all the other stuff we offer. So if you ever need background checks, if you need timekeeping, if you need— somebody might reach out about Simple Payroll and we never go to upsell them because we're just not hardcore salespeople on that stuff. And then they realize like, oh, I'm using TSheets for timekeeping and I didn't realize you have a timesheet, a timekeeping system that integrates with payroll. I could kill TSheets and I could do it for half the price because TSheets is way overpriced. So yeah, definitely still continuous opportunity there and, you know, tons of ways to improve the client experience and just also kind of a unique reminder in that like sometimes part of the client experience is selling them things that they need, right? So like we— my background is sales and marketing, but I still don't ever want to like push it. Like I love our clients. I've got this mantra of meet them at their point of need. So I'm never usually really hard pushing upsells. But at the same time, like, there are times where, wow, we're just leaving a ton of meat on the bone. So implementation, probably a good point for us to start bringing more of that in.

Yeah, we've seen that a lot with some of our newer clients where, you know, they might be smaller businesses or more mom-and-pop shop, you know, simply during the kickoff call, it's, hey, how are you doing timekeeping right now? You know, they might say an Excel sheet. They might say, hey, we're writing it down on napkins and entering in from there. It's a perfect time to mention, you know, hey, we have this opportunity right here that you could use. So that kickoff call, once again, is a good time to kind of identify maybe some of those further needs that they might have that we already offer.

Yeah, kickoff call. Not to keep coming back to that because it's not all of implementation, but it's first impressions, man. We're setting that professional bar. Most people aren't expecting when they start working with a small local or regional provider that like we're going to be more professional than the national they came off of. But we've seen what they do, we know how they do it, we know we can do it better. And so that's what we're trying to do. Uh, what else you got? Anything you want to add?

Uh, beyond what everything we've covered, you know, I'd say we've been focusing a lot more lately on Tier 0 support assets. That's probably one of the bigger things that we've been focusing on, especially as it relates to ROCS. You know, we've identified where most of the questions come from after the implementation process. Where do, you know, software needs, where do, you know, employee questions come from. We've kind of done a little bit of an analyze the most FAQs and put together a Tier 0 support asset so that we're sending those to them before they're even asking for them. So they have those articles, they have those videos, they have everything that they need at their fingertips. Now all they have to do is click a button and they have access to that article. They get their questions answered. So I'd say, you know, that's a very helpful piece of the whole process as well.

Yeah. And you're touching on something and this, this is trickling into support, but obviously we use it a ton in implementation and that's just we built out a knowledge base. So does our payroll system have a knowledge base in it? Sure. Does your payroll system probably have a knowledge base in it? Maybe. I know the last platform we used didn't have a knowledge base. We had to build out every article from scratch because their, their stuff was bureau-facing, not client-facing. Ours thankfully has a client-facing knowledge base in it, and we are able to steer people to that. But that's not the only questions they have, and they don't address every question the way that we would address it. And so, you know, built out a lot of articles that, you know, can easily be linked in these email templates. And, you know, like Jay said, popping up in chat and just meeting people, you know, trying to cut off questions before they happen. Uh, it needs anticipation is something that, well, I'll say we're not great at it. It is top of mind all the time. It's like, what is that next logical question going to be from this client? And how do I answer that next logical question? Before it happens. And Tier 0 support are things like those articles, you know, training, um, you know, thing— things that we can create once and replicate across many clients without them having to ask for it and without us having to, to push it to them every time. So, um, great stuff, Jay. I appreciate this, man. I think this is really good. And once again, if, if you're listening to this right now, holler at us. Hit us up with some of your implementation best practices. Leave them out on the chat and the LinkedIn posts where we, uh, and if you're not following the Payrollin' LinkedIn page, it's got its own dedicated LinkedIn page now. We just took the old Guru page when we merged the two companies together, turned it into the Payrollin' page so you can get all the latest updates. We got a ton of new episodes coming out. We're gonna start doing them weekly here going forward, um, instead of just whenever the heck I feel like it, which was the old model. New model is, hey, everybody seems to be enjoying this, let's keep, uh, trying to help each other get better. So Appreciate y'all taking some time to listen to us today. Thanks for your time, Jay.

Thank you.