Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/27/2023

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Mike Man's Mastermind. Let's get started.

It's not.

That should be better. Okay, very good. Now let me go into Facebook. Paste this in here.

No, that's yesterday's.

All right, couple announcements and then we'll jump right in. First things first.

I was notified this morning that Augusta Lawn Care was put in the top 100 franchises for veterans. Kind of cool. Don't know how they come up with all those numbers. Supposedly they called a bunch of people and they interviewed some of the franchisees. So if you took your time to fill any sort of forms or talk to people. Thank you. I have no idea how they do that. They tell me it's legit. So Entrepreneur magazine says that we are in that category. So woohoo.

More or less just to tell you thank you. If you did take time to do that, I appreciate that.

Secondly, I put it on the Facebook group and that is about the estimate request forms. In case you have seen any that I say test all over them. We try to make it very clear like don't take action on this, but if you've seen those. We wanted to triple check every single location. Now the new design, there are more updates coming but we wanted to make sure that we do it in a more staggered fashion. And part of that system check was to make sure all the estimate request forms are still working and connected. So far we haven't hit any that are not. But if you see multiples of them, you might be in the line for some testing that we are doing for a feature that's going to be optional coming up here pretty soon. Don't you do anything with it. It is not going to change your workflow and you will have to opt in in order to be part of the new feature for the estimate request form. Basically it's going to upgrade to the estimate request form which will allow people to get pricing on their mowing. If you want it, it'll be opt in only and it'll be fully customizable by yourself. So.

Something we're working on for a few months now, but it'll be completely optional so please don't be alerted thinking that we're going to change everything on you. Again, it'll be completely optional. You can just see what happens and see how other people are using it. I know all my locations will be opting right away. Looking forward to that.

But yeah, in terms of you might see some s request forms come in that have other pieces of data like pricing and things they're all test. It'll say test all over it. Don't worry about it. We're just making sure it's working as intended across the entire system.

All right, next one is, I made a note on the Facebook group yesterday. Max is now notifying everyone that he's a virtual agent. Right from the get go. Command center has seen a much better reception from customers knowing from the very beginning that he's a virtual agent. Instead of them kind of questioning it halfway through, especially once it starts where Max is asking them questions and he slows down a little bit, that's usually when people start picking up on me. This is a virtual agent. So instead of waiting for that period, we're just going to tell them right up front, hey, you're speaking of virtual agent. I can help you really fast. And we continue on. And if they don't want to, they can easily opt into command center during office hours if they. If they would like to. But we're seeing the vast majority still continue with maximum. But now there's better pronunciation because they know they're talking to a robot as well as.

If he ever makes a mistake, which is less likely because they're not saying they're not rambling as long because sometimes happens people just ramble and ramble and it starts to confuse Max because they'll talk about an estimate that came in last year and the pricing of a quote. It starts to get confusing for him. And so this is much better. People are much more succinct. They're quick the phone call, um, how long people are staying on the phone is dropped and they're more often getting to completion. So all very positive. I was apprehensive to do that mostly because.

The whole goal is for them not to opt out. But far less than I thought are often out of that interaction with Max once they know that he is a virtual agent. So now when customers interact with him, they are making the active choice to do so and they can't. They can opt out of that. So just as a heads up on that, I made that note on Facebook. All right, let's jump into questions.

All right, got three. First one is from Kyle Turner.

Have you ever considered getting Brad Dreyer to do a small presentation at conference for basic accounting for our business? I understand the best thing is to have an accountant, but I always want to understand even if I'm not the one doing it. I have thought about doing this. It is better operationally for it to be in a course video format. So I highly recommend going to I believe it is. Let me just check this before I tell you all the link.

Just go to. Yeah. Mikeandy.com tax it's a free course that Brad put together and I put it together with him. I think it's probably four, three, let me see here. Adding up all the. It's probably like three hours long, two to three hours long. And it's probably, it's far more in depth, it's distinct than if you were to, if we did like a 20 minute session at conference. So highly recommend it. It's free and it will not be free once we hit tax season because then people will start doing it so much. It gets overwhelming for us. So highly recommend it. Mikeannies.com tax it's a free tax course led by Brad and myself. And then yeah, I'd highly recommend if you watch that, if you're, if you want Brad to do your taxes this year, make sure you fill out the form. It's on the dashboard underneath forms. Because we will basically get to probably November, December and then open it up to the public. And when we do that, it'll fill up pretty fast. This year we were pretty close to like.

60, 70% of his capacity last year. So I fully anticipate this year having all of those people coming back. Any new clients would fill up the remainder of his schedule pretty fast. So please make sure you do that. He is giving that to us at cost and so it's about a between 3 and $600 savings per LLC and he's very available like he's in our Facebook group. He knows exactly how Augusta works, et cetera. So there's a lot of like side benefits of having him, in my opinion. Kevin from Bloomingdale when, when clients call into CC they get a message saying something like thank you for calling Augusta Lawn Care Services. Please stay in the line for the next available agent. To me, that's a message I would get when calling a bank. Other big business. Would there be a better verbiage to use to sound more like a local business instead of big business or is it intentionally worded this way? Great point. I agree with you 100%. This is something we went through about two and a half years ago when we decided to have all the calls recorded. So the option one is that it you, you must have, you must notify a client that the phone call is being recorded. It is the law. So you can do that one of two ways. One, which is more normal is you hear automated. This call is being recorded for quality assurance. That is an automated something that you can put before pickup. We do not have that. It is me personally saying, thank you for calling us to Lawn Care Services. Please stay in line. The next available agent will be right with you. So it's me saying that, and it's pretty clear that it's a human being. And furthermore, because of the way we do the technology, the maximum MAX doesn't require that. So any incoming lead or someone calling immediately, they're getting Max saying, thank you for calling Augusta Lawn Care Services. This is max. Because the way that we record phone calls with MAX is where we only are recording their responses. So we're able to get around some of the legal side of things and we don't have to put that before those calls. So when someone first calls in, they're not hearing that line that you just, that you just stated here until they are being transferred to a live agent at Command Center. And furthermore, by the time this has been stated, UG Command center has the phone ready to go. So it's actually like really smooth. The only way this would ever seem the way you're talking about is if we are a little bit backed up at Command center and it takes like 3, 4, 5 seconds of a, like a beep in between there. That might happen. But the vast majority of people, number one, when they call in, Max is immediately answering it in a very personalized tone. And then he can take that to completion if it's a lead. And then currently, if it needs to be handed off to Command center, he's saying, great, let me go ahead and transfer you to the department that can help you with that. And then they're hearing this line, thank you for calling us along your services. Please stay online for the next available agent. And usually immediately someone's there, so it's not like they're going on hold, etc. So I agree with you. We, we decided, though it is far more valuable for us to record the calls, it has saved countless thousands of dollars for all the franchisees that someone needed proof of them being said that a customer said something. And then we can go back in the calls and see them. Any incoming call, we can record. Like, we can't even record outbound calls. It's like it's illegal because again, you have to notify automatically every customer that you're recording. So the functionality isn't even inside of RingCentral to record outbound calls, but inbound calls. It is required to say something. And we could technically have our numbers stripped away from us if we didn't and we got caught. And then the second part of that is.

I was thinking something else.

Yeah, yeah. Basically like the value, like it costs us, it costs a good chunk of change. I think it's about fifteen hundred dollars a month to make sure we get record all the phone calls. But we've just seen far better return in having those recorded phone lines for every single location. Even if it's once a year. You need a recorded. It's worth it on our end we. We pay that and that is a piece of what is covered by everyone paying the $50 per month just for the phone line is part of that covers the cost of the recorded phone lines. Obviously there's a whole other cost in terms of like users at Command center, et cetera, et cetera, but that is that.

Mount Vernon. Tim, I haven't been receiving notification when Command center from Command center when someone is officially sent to Collections. Is this possible? It would help also when we receive payment, and I believe we have to notify Empire that we receive payment. So a couple things. One, you do not need to notify Empire. They will send you an invoice itemized out with which customer and the invoice number and how much you owe them. So you don't have to worry about that. And in terms of Command center notifying you, we made the conscious decision not to make things like this, where we always are constantly reaching out to you. Instead, you're going to get a report at the end of the month and it's going to itemize out the total, the invoice number and the customer for everything that has gone to been sent to Collections. But furthermore, in live time, when they are sent to Collections, that note will be put on their office notes of that client on that customer profile. So if you ever went into a customer's profile, you would see if it has been sent live. But we try to avoid annoying you with things that you don't really need to take action on. Like if we just tell you, hey, it's been sent to Collections.

You don't really do anything about that. The only reason you would need to know that information is if you were actively working on that person's account and inside of their client profile, you would see that note. And furthermore, you'll get a report at the end of the month. So there's a lot of things where I understand it's like, well, I would like to know that. It's like, yes, but for 90% of the time, you don't need 100% of the time. In this case, you don't need to take action on it. And it's just a distraction. And the whole point of Command center is that you don't have to think about that stuff. But it is recorded in their client profile. So if you ever were, like, actively now in contact or dialogue with a customer, you could see, hey, they've been sent to collections, but you'll get a report at the end of the month. An Excel spreadsheet. It's new. They launched it a couple months ago from the department itemizing all of these out, as well as if you need to pay Empire, they will literally send you an invoice with that itemized out for you.

Cool. I think that's all the questions for today. That's it. All right, everyone have fantastic Wednesday. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.