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- [00:05]
Bear
Here we go.
- [00:21]
Naylor Taliaferro
Welcome back to LCR Media podcast where you get to know the pros. I'm your host, LCR Nailer Taliaferro. And we're back for the second year in a row here at the Lawn and Landscape Technology Conference at, at Pod Row. And we are getting these guests rolling and I have a familiar voice and name in the industry you may or may not have heard of. Bear. Bear. We used to be with Service Autopilot but now, now with applause. Welcome back. Welcome to the show Bear.
- [00:49]
Bear
Thank you so much. Yes, I've lent my voice out to a number of fine institutions. Service Autopilot started the, started the Profit Roadmap podcast there.
- [00:57]
Naylor Taliaferro
Yeah.
- [00:58]
Bear
And then now get to work for a great company here at Applause and we're excited to be here at Lawn Landscape Technology and sitting down with you, man. It's fantastic. Good to see you again.
- [01:06]
Naylor Taliaferro
Yes, you as well. I remember I was on that podcast at the Service Edge conference. That was the last time I was in that kind of world there. And now you're on my podcast. You're on my turf now.
- [01:21]
Bear
Yeah, sounds good man. Full circle.
- [01:23]
Producer/Announcer
Always.
- [01:24]
Naylor Taliaferro
Yeah. So let's. Why are you here at the Lawn and Landscape Technology Conference?
- [01:31]
Bear
Well, we, first of all we have a number of fantastic partners here from a number of different angles like including yourself included. But we, you know, we have, you know, that's what I love about my job is we have the opportunity to, you know, we play well with everybody in the space. You know, we have great partnerships from every company from like, you know, Jobber to people who are here like Service Autopilot, Aspire, Real Green Work Wave and on and on. And also our telematics partners, we've got, you know, we're right next to Truce. We've got a great partnership with them. Azuga, Sam, Sarah, Verizon Connect, on and on as well too. Links up Linux and some others. So it's about being, it's really great about being in a room with your partners and then also talking to the fantastic attendees as well too and then kind of educating them on what Applause is and how we can improve their employees performance directly and how we plug right into the systems they're already using in some cases. So it's, it's, it's, you know. Yeah, it's a great spot. I love this conference. I love Arizona. I grew up in the desert in, in West Texas so this is like normal heat to me. So everyone's always talking about the, complaining about the heat, but I'm, I'M feeling good right now. I'm like, hey, it's summer, it's appropriate. I'm good.
- [02:46]
Naylor Taliaferro
Nice. So let's dig into applause. What, what, what is that about and how can that help our businesses?
- [02:53]
Bear
Yeah, as I mentioned a second ago, so Applause is a employee incentive and performance driving application that plugs again right into systems that you're already using. So in addition to what I was mentioning earlier, which is your CRMs and your telematics providers, we also plug into you. We also plug into your, your telephone systems like Voice for Voice for Turf, Voice for Pros, Dial Pad, Ring Central and a few others as well. But the whole point is to really engage your team in those day to day tasks that as a manager, manager, as a leader and as an owner of business, they're your, they're you where you've got your focal point. Because again, it's your business. Right. And for whatever reason it's always hard to translate that to, you know, across the entire team. Usually you have a few all stars that really buy in, buy into your culture, buy into your leadership, buy into why everything is important to you and really have kind of immersed themselves in your business. And the whole point is we want to kind of stretch that across the entire organization and collectively improve performance at scale. As I tell people, we're not fixing problems, we're just improving. We're improving your already existing performance. And we do that by in two different ways. We have an engagement and perform product, engage directly engages with your customers on your employees behalf. So for example, right when your technicians leave a property, we can fire off a text message directly to your customer, pushing them for, you know, reviews, pushing them for referrals, upsell opportunities, customer satisfaction surveys, a number of different combinations that we can do in order to can keep your customers engaged in the service that you're providing. And then we immediately can reward the technician on your behalf when they, when they achieve good performance. So and then on the perform side, we directly ingest all those data sets from those partners we were talking about. So that's your telematics data. So your harsh breaking, speeding events, idle times, distracted driving from your CRM, your route completion time on site, reservice percentage, things like that. And then on like you know, for your, you know, your customer service team from the phone, you know, time, you know, time on call, number of calls, you know, call demeanor, things like that. We can pull those in and put them into a scorecard, a literal gamified scorecard for your employees so they can see in real time, how they're actually doing at their job. And you can set up different markers, different tiers, and instantly incentivize them when they hit certain goals.
- [05:32]
Naylor Taliaferro
So what were some challenges that applause was thinking about solving in the industry for, like creating applause.
- [05:40]
Producer/Announcer
Right.
- [05:41]
Bear
So, like one of the, one of the things like when we, especially when we on the perform side, what we were seeing across this industry is that, you know, when, when we, we really had a technology boom about 15 years ago, that's when all these companies from, you know, your service aspires and everything, they started popping up. And like, some are older than that, but they really started understanding what they were and started building themselves up to be what they needed to be for business owners. And that's the way it should have been. Right. It's not like they did something wrong when they did this. But in wake of that, what happened is employees have kind of gotten late, have gotten left in the dust. Now there's applications out there and they're like, they use technology too. It's not like I'm saying that, but the way that things are communicated to them is very much still like it's 1986, not 2026. Everything is SEC, everything is verbal for the most part. Everything is second or third hand information. Hey, Bear, I was talking to Naylor about your performance and he said you're terrible at your job. Well, what did he say? Oh, I don't remember. He just said you're terrible. Yeah, well. Well, now I want to go talk to Naylor. I want to figure out what my problem is, you know, and it's not, it's not again, it's just how things are relayed. It's any game of telephone. Right. And it doesn't have to be that blunt. But I mean, if things get misconstrued or miscommunicated. Right, but this way we absolutely. We put the things that matter the most to you, the business owner, directly in front of the technician in real time. There's no time lapse. They can understand and they can improve faster. Because if you think about it again, even with technology, what have we always done as professionals? We've always looked in the past. Hey, neither. How was your year last year? How was your season? How was your month? And you're always looking backwards. This allows as much as possible to have the chance to improve in real time. I can see, hey, I'm not doing so well this month in these particular areas. I can pick it up and still recover, have a great month and get some Bonuses.
- [07:41]
Naylor Taliaferro
Well, along the way, I also see this as being a good source of accountability as well, because how many times have we, as business owners think that John is, like, our best employee, but if it. And no one else is telling you otherwise because they don't want to be. They don't want to be a rat or whatever. Yeah. So, you know, they end up picking up John Slack, you know, and they're not happy with their job. And you have no idea. You know, boss man's not on the truck, so you don't know how good John really is. You think he's the best. But I. I feel like this, you know, using applause could be a way to have real time, accurate information about, is John, you know, Johnny really good or not? You know, think.
- [08:23]
Bear
Think about the Personas that I'm about to describe, right? Everybody on their team has the crotchety old man, right, that, like, is really good at his job. He's done it forever. He's really great. He's reliable, he shows up to work. He knows how to do everything. But his demeanor, working with him.
- [08:43]
Naylor Taliaferro
Yeah.
- [08:43]
Bear
And people can't stand working. But his customers love him. Yeah, his customers love him because of the way that he is with them. But the way that he is in the workplace, you wouldn't know that, right? Then there's the other person who's extremely likable. He's a great team player, still shows up to work on time, works well with others and everything like that, but he's not as good as that guy. He has areas where he can prove and he doesn't know it. And this. This allows for that kind of conversation to take place in real time. They can see what. Where their gaps are. Man, I thought I was one of the best employees. Naylor tells me all the time that I'm one of his best, but I'm really lacking over here, right? So, like, yeah, accountability is real. It's in, like, can be. It can be seen in real time. And it makes those hard conversations really easy. Because when you say, man, why are. Why are. Why is our. Why are our callbacks and reservices up month over month? And you can do some. You can do with our AI insights, It's actually pretty easy. You just ask, right? And it tells you right inside of our system who. What. What the cause is. And you can say, oh, it's Bear. Everyone else is actually doing really well, but Bear is having a really rough month. And you have a conversation with me and say, bear, your research. Yeah, I know, because it's right in front of me, right? It makes the conversation so much easier.
- [10:02]
Naylor Taliaferro
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- [10:31]
Producer/Announcer
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- [11:47]
Naylor Taliaferro
Do the employees have access to that as well? Because let me ask it this way because you know how. Maybe you know how. Traditionally there's no real, real time feedback or regular feedback from employer to employee. And so the unless the employer gives the feedback, the employee really has no idea until their review or until something goes wrong or whatever. Like so does applause give those employees more access and more flexibility for their own for their own future growth?
- [12:21]
Bear
Yeah, when I've said in real time, it absolutely is in real time because we have an application, we call it their Applause. It's called the Applause Wallet or the app or whatever, but it's called the Applause Wallet. And the reason why it's called the Wallet is because again, you heard me say earlier how we incentivize when people hurt certain goals or achieve different things. Well, we Send the money immediately to their applause wallet. And in this wallet is also their scorecard so they can actually see it. And we have, you know, our numbers are telling us that, you know, our technicians are opening up the applause wallet six to seven times a day, seven days a week. Like, even when they're not at work, they're opening up.
- [12:55]
Producer/Announcer
Why?
- [12:56]
Bear
They want to see if their customer said anything good about them. They want to see how close they are to their goals. And so we want to make it easier for them. So we just put it right there on the first page. We also have competitions available as well, too, which really, I mean, we talk about gamification, really gamifies even further. You'd mentioned accountability. That's accountability at its highest level. Putting something on the line, some stakes, you know, or whatever. And then we, we have that all right there right in front of their face on the application.
- [13:23]
Naylor Taliaferro
Yeah, that's really good. Because when you talk about gamification. I know I've heard a lot of successful companies have different versions of this without having applause even existing, you know, years and years ago. And they would just figure out their own way of doing this. Like you, like one company owner, he's like, so everyone starts out at 100%, and if they forget to lock the truck door, then they get dinged. If they forget to gas up, they get dinged. If they forgot to clean such and such, they get dinged. Then at the end of the month or the end of the quarter or whatever time frame it is, whatever percentage you're at, that's the bonus that you're going to get, right? So it's yours to lose, essentially. And that's another way of incentivizing and gamifying, just doing your job every day. But things that are really, that really matter and make a difference, things that could lose the company money or make it more money if you do them. So I think applause, you know, is a way that you can really streamline that process a lot easier.
- [14:20]
Bear
I know a lot of customers that have come to me and have done something similar or they tried to, and it failed. And I think what you said is kind of important is the, the we. We really believe in the power of positivity. And that doesn't mean that we don't tell you when you're doing something wrong. That doesn't mean when we don't, like. It doesn't get called out. It just doesn't get the positive attention. Right. Positive attention comes when you get those positivity. So they don't necessarily start with a certain amount. It's hey, here's the bar. This is where we expect you to be at. That's where you need to be. If you're below it, that's bad. If you're above it, that's good. And in fact if you're so far above it, you get, if you take that extra leap, that extra step, you can get rewarded here and you can actually do tiering inside of applause to where you're like, hey, let's just say the line of demarcation is like, let's talk about driving score. I need ever all my drivers to be a 90. Nobody's perfect. If you're a 90. I know you're doing a lot of things right most of the time can live with that. But hey, if you do, if you go an entire month and you, you're at a 95, I'll give you a few extra dollars for that. You're at a 97, I'll give you a few more. If you have a perfect month, I'm going to bonus you this. So you can have different levels of performance but you can always still have that line of 90. Like 90 is your job. That's what you need to do. You know, if you're below it, that's a problem. And if you're above it, great. And even greater if you can do hitting those levels and get bonused at it. So nice.
- [15:42]
Naylor Taliaferro
Well, what are some things that, some future ways that you can think of our listeners who are primarily the solo owner operators or one or two crew companies that could really utilize applause in their future.
- [16:00]
Bear
I think that some of the capabilities are there and ready for them to use as they scale. But with some of the smaller teams that we work with, like our Engage product is perfect because it helps build businesses and it still rewards technicians for something a lot simpler, which is like the, the review generation lead generation referral engagement piece. So how it works is again we plug directly into your CRM technician doesn't have to do anything different and as soon as they click they're finished in their job. Whether that's on, you know, service autopilot, app, Aspire, mobile app SA5, whatever it is, mobile Live or whatever, the technical message is automatically sent to your customer on their behalf. Again, they don't have to touch anything, they just finish their, they do their job, finish it and then the, the, you can customize the message but it essentially solicits feedback. So we can ask for that Google review, we can ask for a referral and Even bonus for the referral, which is really cool, too. And then we can also have upsell opportunities. With some of our partnerships, we're able to actually see specifically what some customers have in their portfolio so that we, depending on this part of the time of the season, depending on the campaign, campaign or campaigns we're running, we can offer an upsell to that customer that is specific to that customer. Hey, Naylor's never had laundry mints. He's only been a mowing customer. Right. Or he's only been a. He's only had laundry. Was. He's never been a mowing customer. Right. It helps you cross sell and building customer value, especially in this economy. I keep hearing about this economy, this. This economy, that rising fuel costs, all that stuff. And I'm not making light of that. What I'm saying is you've got incredible assets right now. Your customers are incredible assets. Build that value. And so the fastest way to do that is just easy upselling. Whether that's anything like a hedge trim, which has the best profit margin in the business. I keep telling people all the time, just go out there and do for 50 bucks a pop, it takes you 15 seconds. Like, that's the best. That's the best profit return ever.
- [18:02]
Naylor Taliaferro
Yeah.
- [18:03]
Bear
And, you know, everyone talks about how mowing is so competitive, those profit margins are razor thin. You got to find out what stands out in the market. You got to find out where you can make those extra dollars up, and that's what you need to sell. You don't need to sell more mowing. You need to sell more hedge trimming. You don't need to sell more mowing. You need to see more lawn treatment. You need to diversify a little bit. You don't need to go crazy, but diversify a little bit, and then you can offer some upsell opportunities. So.
- [18:28]
Naylor Taliaferro
Right.
- [18:29]
Bear
That had nothing to do with applause. I was taking my applause hat off. That was free for everybody out there.
- [18:33]
Producer/Announcer
Nice.
- [18:35]
Naylor Taliaferro
Well, to wrap up the show here, you had mentioned off air, and those of you that have been listening to this podcast long enough, you've heard Charles Nelson from Stepping Stone Landscape Scaping. He has been a friend of the show and been on the show many times. So what are, what are some ways that he has utilized applause in his business?
- [18:59]
Bear
He could give you a little bit more specifics. But, yes, Charles has been a fantastic partner and customer to have, and he's. He's really bolstered his reviews and customer satisfaction scores while he's been with us. And that stuff we're, we're looking at some other avenues that he could particularly use us, but he's been really happy with it, as far as I know. Knock on wood. Charles, I know you're listening, but love, love, love Charles. Love the business. Got to visit him last year at his office and stuff. And
- [19:29]
Naylor Taliaferro
he should have looked me up.
- [19:31]
Producer/Announcer
What the heck?
- [19:31]
Naylor Taliaferro
I'm like 20 minutes away.
- [19:33]
Bear
Yeah, I dropped the ball in that. But I got a bib. I got a bib for my baby, for, from, from Charles.
- [19:38]
Naylor Taliaferro
Nice.
- [19:39]
Bear
And I, I, every time he wear. Wears it and he gets it all filthy from spaghetti or whatever, I take a picture and I'm like, hey, man, he's putting in the work.
- [19:47]
Naylor Taliaferro
There you go. So there you go. Nice. Well, awesome. Well, thanks for being on the show. Is there anything that, that we're leaving out that we forgot to talk about before we wrap up?
- [19:55]
Bear
Now, you can, you can check me out at. Check. Check us out@appausehq.com you can reach out to me specifically at bear@appausehq.com Bear like the animal. B, E, A, R. And, and if you want to learn some more, we'd be happy to schedule a time call or just send you some information or whatever. But I really just appreciate the opportunity to talk to your, you know, to talk to your audience and, and it's just great, you know, great building our friendship over the years, man, and just seeing what, what you've done, I mean, with this, with this amazing community, and it's just fantastic, man. So I, I'm, I'm humbled to be a part of it, really am. And, and, and I, I thank you for it. Appreciate it.
- [20:34]
Naylor Taliaferro
Well, thank you, Bear. I appreciate those kind words. And, and, and I, I agree with everything that you said and I appreciate ourselves, our relationship, friendship, and continue growing that through now through applause, which is amazing. And I also want to thank Delon and Landscape Technology Conference again for giving us this opportunity to have Pod Row here so we can have great conversations like this that we can't normally have, or at least not in person. You know, we can do it virtually, but it's not always the same kind of energy and in conversation. So thank you again to Lawn Landscape for giving this opportunity and thank you, Totoro company, for always sponsoring the LCR Media podcast. Until the next episode. This is Naylor and Bear. Like the animal. He is an animal. Signing off.
- [21:24]
Producer/Announcer
This has been an lcr media and Mr. Producer production.