When you’re not taking care of your customer, it’s usually your facilities team doing so. Our guest today understands that more than anyone. This episode features an interview with Tom Sansoucy, VP of Facilities at EG Group America. EG Group is the fifth largest C-store network in the country. Brands in the EG Group Family consist of Cumberland Farms, Certified, Fastrac, Kwikshop, and Loaf ‘n Jug. Prior to the acquisition by EG Group, Tom was the Director of Facilities Support at Cumberland Farms. Before that, Tom served as the Director of Client Services at ServiceChannel. He began his career as a petroleum service technician. On this episode, Tom discusses the importance of taking care of your technicians, creating both convenience and value for travelers. Plus, how he balances working hard with working smart.
When you’re not taking care of your customer, it’s usually your facilities team doing so. Our guest today understands that more than anyone.
This episode features an interview with Tom Sansoucy, VP of Facilities at EG Group America. EG Group is the fifth largest C-store network in the country. Brands in the EG Group Family consist of Cumberland Farms, Certified, Fastrac, Kwikshop, and Loaf ‘n Jug. Prior to the acquisition by EG Group, Tom was the Director of Facilities Support at Cumberland Farms. Before that, Tom served as the Director of Client Services at ServiceChannel. He began his career as a petroleum service technician.
On this episode, Tom discusses the importance of taking care of your technicians, creating both convenience and value for travelers. Plus, how he balances working hard with working smart.
—
Guest Quote
“The thing that we say a lot at Cumberland farms is if you're not taking care of the customer, then take care of the person who is and facilities.” - Tom Sansoucy
—
Time Stamps
*(0:18) About Tom
*(1:42) Tom’s responsibilities
*(3:11) Tom’s journey into facilities
*(5:40) EG Group’s Acquisition of Cumberland Farms
*(9:17) Segment 2: Across the Goal Line
*(14:49) The Coffee Differentiator
*(15:55) Industry Shifts
*(23:05) Segment 3: How We Do It
*(26:46) Making your customers feel safe
*(27:11) Segment 4: Future Forward
*(35:47) Consumer shifts that are here to stay
*(37:00) Tom’s final words of advice
—
Sponsor:
Wouldn’t you like to rest easy knowing that your brick and mortar locations are offering the best possible guest experience? It’s time to partner with ServiceChannel for peak facilities performance. Check out Servicechannel.com to learn more.
—
Links
Welcome to elevating brick and mortar, a podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance. This episode. Futures an interview with Tom Sansoucy. Vice president of facility is the EG group. America EG group is the fifth largest C store network in the country brands in the EG group.
Family consists of Cumberland farms, certified fast track, quick shop and loaf and jug prior to the acquisition by EG group. Tom was a director of facility support at Cumberland farms. Before that Tom served as the director of client services at service channel, he began his career as a petroleum service technician.
On this episode, Tom discusses the importance of taking care of your technicians, creating both convenience and value for travelers and how he balances working hard with working smart, but first, a word from sponsor. Wouldn't you like to rest easy, knowing that your brick and mortar locations are offering the best possible guest experience.
It's time to partner with service channel for peak facilities, performance, check out service channel.com to learn more. And here's your host industry and FM technology thought leader and chief business development officer at service channel. Sid Sheti. Hello everyone. Welcome to the show. I'm here today with Tom San SU.
Tom welcome. How are you? Hey, Sid. It's great to be on, on your show. And I appreciate you asking me to join. No, thank you. I truly appreciate it as well. So let's jump right in Tom. What is your role and what are you responsible for? So I am vice president of facilities support. For EG America and we're a convenient store chain.
We have about 1700 locations across the country in 36 states. My role is to maintain these stores, make sure that our revenue generating equipment is up and running so we can stay in business, make sure that the facilities are, are clean and maintained. So we have attractive appearance for our guests. I know we'll be touching on this in your, in your podcast.
It's an important job and it's we have, we have a great team and it's work that needs to be done, and there's nothing glamorous about it. but it's very important to, to the brand and the company. Oh, I couldn't agree more. I mean, there's a lot of glamor in our space. What are you talking about? just kidding.
Um, I, I think that part of our mission is to bring more visibility and light on the work. The teams do in our space and the impact they have on the overall brand. So again, that's the whole purpose of this podcast to, is to share thoughts from the different leaders in our space. So again, thank you for joining us.
I do want to learn more about Cumberland farms and EG group and our audience I'm sure would love to know more about them as well, but before we do. Can you talk about how you ended up in facilities management? I love hearing that story from all our guests, because I don't know if everyone starts out by saying I wanna be in facilities management when they think about their careers, right.
We all kind of fell into it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure nobody starts off with a plan to be in facilities management. For me, I was going to college and I was commuting to school and, you know, I needed to work to pay for my car and pay for part of my tuition. And I worked at a garage. When I was in high school and I had sort of continued on in that job.
So I was driving a wrecker, picking up cars on the highway and so on and doing a little bit of work in the repair shop. And I was approached by a fuel dispenser repair man turns out he was the owner of the company and he said to me, Hey, do you want to come work for me? I, I need some people on my team.
So I said to him, well, I'm going to college. And I. I need to work part-time he said, yeah, it's no problem. So that's how I get started. I worked for him rebuilding gasoline dispensers in a shop. And then I started driving and doing service calls on weekends and at night. And then eventually I just started getting to know people in the industry.
And eventually I ended up taking on a position as a, a facilities manager at a convenient store. That's how I got started. It's quite a journey, right, Tom. I mean, you started out as a service technician, then your career evolved into being in facilities management. And today you are the vice president of facilities at EG group, which is a global company.
And phenomenal journey. I mean, I had a conversation with Chris lamp from Lian mechanical a few weeks ago, Emery spoke about what it is like in our space with regards to talent and the skilled trades and the lack of it, or rather it's a very depleting resource. And so, I mean, your story is a phenomenal story about what a career could look like, because that's where you started.
Right. Yeah, I think I I've met several people in our industry that, that started on the technical side. That's one place. Some of us come from and some other folks worked in the retail side and transitioned over into facilities. But, uh, yeah, it's something you sort of fall into, right? Yeah. Yeah. Tell us more about Cumberland farms and then you were recently acquired by EG group.
Can you share a bit about the culture at Cumberland? EG group and more about your program within the organization? Yeah, I, I started with Cumberland farms back in 2010 and I was there under the previous ownership and, and it was a really great journey there for a little over 10 years where the, the portfolio of stores was transformed and the brand was strengthened and Cumberland farms has an amazing culture.
The people really care. A lot and put in a lot of discretionary effort, you into their work. It's, uh, really not uncommon to see people putting in long hours and, and really going above and beyond the, the leadership is much the same at EG group is, is very good. So it's when you have a, a solid vision and goal, and everyone's working towards it and believes in it.
And you have a really good organization. You get good results. That's great. And we'll talk more about this in an next section, but when you were acquired by EG group, huge company successful in over 10 countries, 6,000 locations, it sounds like a big part of what they care about is the customer experience.
And also. The appearance and how welcoming the for court is. Right. And for folks that may not know the word for court for court is the, the space between the entrance of the convenience store and the actual road. And that's, I think for all of us consumers, Helps bring us in to the convenience store and the gas station, right?
Yeah. Our newer concept stores. They're beautiful from the outside where as beautiful as, as a convenience store can be. And you're right. That's the idea. It's, uh, it's a site that's clean, that's safe and has plenty of space while you're outside. Fueling you have you're covered. With a canopy written protected from the elements to a degree, you've got just a, a beautiful landscape and exterior area.
And our, and our new concept stores have a lot to offer there's different brands of food. So we have brand partners that we work with, you know, so that we can like SA borrows and burger king and, and so on. And we also have our own proprietary brands as. That we've worked hard on that we believe, um, differentiate us from the competition and we have a really good marketing team.
That's very good at that. And they, they find products that appeal to folks and we're the, the only place you can get it. So that's part of our vision there of, of having the complete offering. That's great. I wanna double click more on that in our next section, but before we go there, any surprising or interesting sta.
About your company or the industry in general that, that you can share with us? Uh, that's a good question. Um, you know, I, one interesting statistic about the convenience store industry is that 60% of the stores in the United States are privately owned by a family or an individual. And I think that's counterintuitive.
I think most people would think that companies like EG group or some of our competitors would, would own. The, the lion share of the locations, but that's not true. Wow. So there's, there's a lot of opportunity for growth in our brands, in, in the United States. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. Did not know that.
Okay. So let's talk about some big picture objectives and the way teams can move them across the goal line. We're gonna go inside. We're gonna go outside, inside and outside. We're gonna get 'em on the run. Once we get run, run, we're gonna keep on the run and then we're gonna go, go, go, go, go, go. And we're not gonna stop towing sack.
Go lie. So we spoke about this, right? I mean the convenience store space is a very interesting business. You have a very different value proposition to develop customer loyalty. Can you explain what that is? And can you share what's unique about your business? Yeah. I mean, I can tell you a little bit about what we do at EG America.
We're obviously providing a convenience for travelers and we want to be a destination for them. We believe in adding value, especially today where we have inflation and, and high price of, for all kinds of goods and services. People are under a lot of pressure to find, uh, value. And so we focus on that pretty heavily, whether it's our loyalty program.
Which offers discounts on fuel. I earlier, I was talking about our products, our Cumberland farms, brand products that we believe differentiate us. We have lots of value to offer in those to buy two. And you get a third item for free and, you know, in other, um, programs like that on our food programs, we do similar.
Similar things. We have hot dogs and pizza slices and things that are, that we work hard to keep the price down on. We have proprietary offerings for cigarettes that are, uh, lower cost options. So offering products that differentiate us and also offer value, that's what we're doing. Let's face it, right?
Like when a regular consumer is driving down the road in any intersection there's possibly. One or two choices that they have to fill their gas and you really have to have a strong brand loyalty for the customer to say, I'm going to choose to go and make a U-turn and go on the other side of the road, because.
I trust that convenience store, they have great product they're clean and I can walk in while my gas is being filled and do a little shopping and get everything I need and have a pleasant experience. Right, right. It's the thing that we, we say a lot at Cumberland farms is if you're not taking care of the customer, Then take care of the person who is yeah.
In facilities, that's, you know what we're doing, we're taking care of, of, of those folks in, in operations, we're doing the best we can with it. Try to get them, uh, prompt service and a quality service, you know, at a price that you know, that, that helps us make our budget numbers come out properly. At the end of the day, it's all about the, the, the customer and making sure that they're getting that consistent product.
I think with the number of locations you have, I think consistency is so important because when someone drives in fills their gas and walks into the actual convenience store, They would like to know what to expect and if you always get what you expect and you're delighted, I think to your point, you start building brand loyalty.
Can you share what you think the role of facilities is and the value that you bring to. The overall organization. And how, how is your facilities team different from maybe others in other spaces or industries? So there's certainly different ways to, to tackle facilities maintenance as the model that that we're using.
We have a team of folks that, that receive repair requests and triage them. And we have three shifts staffed with folks that are familiar. The different trades and equipment and things that we have. So our calls come into this call center, they get reviewed and we try to find the best solution for people.
If we need more information, we, we call them back and we try to avoid the sending service if we can. On the other side. So when we do have to dispatch service, we, we do about 30 to 40% of our repairs with our own technicians today. And, and the remaining the balance goes to outside vendors. And so the, the job there is, of course we have a team that manages our internal techs.
And then we have a team that manages the outside vendors and the challenges are always the same. It's trying to get the right technician there. That's prepared to complete the job on the first trip, hopefully. And if not following up with those jobs, there's quite a few moving parts to it. At the end of the day, we're trying to, we're trying to get that revenue generating equipment or keep it op operational.
So let's talk a little bit more about the revenue generating equipment or assets, right? I mean, there's a lot more critical assets in your business, so you can't have. Gas pumps not functional. You can't have the coffee machine not functional. From what I understand, coffee is a critical component of getting the consumer into the door.
Right? What, what are your thoughts on how you look at these assets and how quickly you have to get them resolved? Because of the impact they have. Not only revenue, but also the experience. Yeah. You bring up coffee. Coffee is one of the differentiators that, that we offer across all across all locations at EG America, we have Cumberland farms, coffee.
I think it was CSP magazine that just recently rated that. Coffee program where we're ahead of dunking donuts on our coffee program and it's it's 99 cents any size. So that certainly helps to drive, drive traffic. And to your point, very important to have all that equipment up and running. At all times.
So our, the service levels have to be fairly high with these revenue generating equipment. For example, if we have an entire product offering that's down, we're looking to have that fixed with four to eight hours, and that can be challenging. These days with parts availability and, and everything else. So, yeah.
Think about the past three years and it's been very interesting. You mentioned parts, but let's also face it like gas prices today are extremely high. CA can you talk about. What has changed today compared to maybe from three years ago. And what's been the impact on, on the business and your team since COVID started, it's been an interesting ride for sure.
It's harder to hire people. Now, before the pandemic, there were plenty of statistics out regarding field technicians. I don't have them in front of me, but there's some statistics of the, the rising age, the. Age of like an air conditioning technician just keeps going up because there are not as many new younger people getting into the trade and the cost, the hourly costs for the technicians had been going up and there were projections that were telling us it was gonna get harder and harder to higher skilled labor.
So before the pandemic, we had those challenges that we were facing. And then during, and I guess as, as the pandemic winds down, the labor pool is a little smaller. We're trying to find people who want to start in and we, we are in a position where we can help. Some young people that want to, that wanna start a new career and, and the technical trades, that's a good place to work.
And we, it is challenging to do that. And we we're actually aggressively building our in-house teams now because it's a hedge against the increased costs of hiring the outside vendors. We also, we, our, the service is a lot faster. Our in-house team is geared towards maintaining a select group of equipment.
Let's. You know, like coffee, brewers that are typically, you know, as our stores are built, they're fairly consistent. So our technicians are trained on our coffee brewers and our icemaker and our fountain soda machines and the types of refrigeration equipment and air conditioning that we use. So when one of our technicians shows up it, he is got the parts on his truck.
Like I say a select group of equipment so we can get things done very fast. When you hire outside vendors, they're more generalists. And a lot of times they don't have the parts they have to order them. So, but getting back to your, to your, uh, original question, the, the, the challenge has gotten bigger now with the, with the internal team hiring and retain.
And so we'll see where time takes us. It's not all just about the hourly rate and what you're gonna pay somebody. It's the, it's the organization and how we treat our people and what we can offer folks that want to join the team that make the difference. So we're working on all those fronts to, to build that team.
We think that's the, the way to, to do it is to get to, uh, somewhere between 70 and 80% of the repairs being done by our own internal teams so that we can, we can get the repairs done faster and cost effectively and have that customer service that we we're looking. Yeah, no, that that's great. And I think we, as an industry, I think need to do more, to attract talent.
We need to bring in fresh blood because to your point, it's a aging workforce. There's not enough new blood coming in. And for all the folks out there that are considering. A career, would you say they should strongly consider the skilled trades as well? It's something that I think will always be in demand, right?
Yeah. I agree with that. Especially today I have two young boys and you always think when you have kids, you know, it's like, I want them to go to college. I want them. And you, you have a certain mindset, but these days, I, I think I'd be proud if they learned to trade and maybe built a small business. It's such honorable.
It really is. And when I was a technician and it's been a while since I, since I've done that, but I remember the feeling that you get when you, once you learn how to do something and you show up and the equipment's down and people are having a hard time. And you get it fixed for them. And then they're happy and you get this instant gratifications and you came in, you were, you're a hero and you move on to the next job.
And you know, you're solving real problems in the, in the real world. I think it's a great trade and career to be in. Yeah. Heroes without capes. Love it. Yeah. Before we jump onto our next section, can you share. What has been some of the greatest challenges that, you know, within facilities you see that prevents you from fulfilling the full potential that you or your teams can have on, on the brand.
And can you also share like some important investments? That have helped you along the way? Well, when I think of challenges and I hope I'm answering your, the question the way you intended it, but issues that we have in our, in our department today, I think that maybe we're not able to, to offer the level of service that, that we would really want, need to offer.
I think directly related to some of the issues that we've had since the pandemic, like landscaping services and floor care services have become more difficult to manage. That's been a challenge for us, trying to find a way to, to manage those programs and, and have our facilities kept at the standards that they need to be.
I feel like we're falling short there and that's not good. So we're putting a lot of effort into that investments that we've made. I would say that a lot of invest was made prior to. Our acquisition by EG group at Cumberland farms, we, we invested in people and in our process, and it was a good thing because when we were acquired, we were able to, a lot of what we had built was could be scaled to a larger number of stores.
And in some cases, straining those procedures and systems revealed weaknesses, and we had to. Some more investments. Technology is, is an area that we had made an investment in and that paid off for sure, having our work order management system set up and having it be able to scale. That was, that was an important, an important piece of being able to take on all the, the new locations and other investments are, are really in building our internal.
So we're, we're investing in like trainers and more supervisory and management so that we can really, we need to take care of, of the technicians, provide for them, make sure that they, they have everything that they need and that there is enough folks to, to spread the workload so that we're not burning people out.
Anyone who's in the facilities world knows. You've gotta be careful. There are a lot of broken things out there. There are a lot of problems that need to be followed up on. And frankly, um, any given time. All those issues are waiting for you and you can give as much of yourself as you want towards resolving them.
And so it's, it's like a balance of working smart and working hard. No, that's great. At the end of the day, I think you summarized it earlier by saying investing in people, right? What an amazing concept. I mean, You, you also said, take care of your employees and they'll take care of your customer could not agree more 100%.
All right. Let's move on to our next segment, which is all about how you do it. This is how we do.
How do you make sure that you're having the biggest impact to the brand and the customer experience getting out in the field and spending some time with the folks in the field, which I had to admit is, is something that I haven't done enough of. I, I made a few trips last year with some of the ops of leadership and it was like amazing to get out and.
And sort of realign and see firsthand the day to day challenges that the, the stores face operating as it helps refocus the service that we're offering. We're internal team, we're all part of the same company. And it's really easy to get lost in the day to day. As I was explaining earlier, um, in facilities, it's just an endless flood at times, and you do need to have the ability.
To push back from it periodically to refocus. And so I think you've really gotta, uh, spend some time out in the field. One program that came from Cumberland farms and is now being reimplemented all across EG America is shadowing a. Store manager. And so there's a requirement that, that everybody go out into the field and work in a store and it's, it is a really good program.
I always learn something when I, when I get out there that that will help us be a little bit better. Yeah. I mean, cuz your customer is the store manager, right? The, the operators within the, the physical space and. And if you don't know what it's like to actually be them, how do you support them the right way?
Right. You're working hard and you're trying to take care of things the way you believe that they need to be taken care of sort of like climbing the ladder. Right. But if the ladder's leaning up against the wrong wall, all the effort was for nothing. Right. Yeah. I mean, look, I, I think you mentioned this earlier as a consumer, right?
As when we do road trips and I'm with my family in the car and I'm terrible at, at filling my gas. Like, I, I will wait till. There's only five miles remaining in the car and I'm like, oh, I gotta full gas. Right. But I wanna know that when, when I'm on the road and whether, if it's late at night, that the options I have are not a dark store and a dark parking lot and another dark store and a dark parking lot.
I mean, you want to go into. A gas station and convenience store where you feel comfortable driving in having the gas filled with your family in the car. And if you gotta run in and, and get something for the family that you feel like, Hey, it's all good. It's safe. It's welcoming. It's well lit. And I can do what I have to do without feeling like I compromise.
Right. I mean that, and that is so much tie to facilities. The light's going. And it being a dark parking lot that's facilities, uh, the, the gas pump being dirty. And me not feeling like it's a clean space for me to go in full gas that's facilities, the convenience store and how, uh, welcoming it looks in fields.
When I walk in the fixtures are broken or not, it's all facilities. I mean, so the impact is huge. Right? And the question is, are we collectively as an industry? Articulating that impact across all the industries we serve. Yeah. You're totally right. Said you, you want your facilities to be well lit, clean.
You want to have that trust. Someone pulls into one of our, our facilities. They know, okay, I'm gonna get a good tank of gas. The products that I buy are gonna be fresh. Um, and I know what I'm. I know what I'm about to. I'm pulling in. And I know what I get when I go into a Cumberland farms or a Turkey hill or, or any of our brands.
So it is important and, and facilities is a big part of that. All right. Let let's talk about the future, the future, the future, the future. Before we, uh, do that, let's uh, talk about the past, right?
Tom, what do you think about our space? How do you think it's evolved over the past 10 years? Oh, that's a good question. In some ways the same, right? Things break and we're fixing them. um, I think the technology, I think that we use to manage all of it has evolved. We have, for example, when I first started to work for service channel, we were servicing clients that would have a vendor base that would have trouble.
Checking in and out or using the, uh, the IVR system. So the challenge was trying to get folks to use the store's phone, or they didn't have a computer or have a hard time submitting an invoice. And so there were systems in place where invoices could be received by fax machine and, and things like that.
Right. Fax machines. Yeah. I remember that. And I can remember training vendors that just, they didn't have a computer. And we're trying to find ways for them to participate in the programs without having that knowledge today, it's much different. So most folks have a smartphone. The networks are much better.
Yeah. So we have, uh, high speed data just about everywhere and we have very powerful devices in most people's hands. And so we're in a situation where we can utilize that to have a better program. And manage our program. Better, get better information about the assets. Get more, better information from the vendors in terms of what was done in the repair.
And we can use the business intelligence. We can leverage the, the learnings. From this information. I think the, one of the challenges really is we've transformed and we have these abilities now, now it's leveraging that and really making the most of it. I've I have been in the industry now for what, 25 years.
And I think it's amazing the capabilities that we have now and the data that we have, and we can even do better there. But now that you have it, then you look at it. You. Okay. How can I use this effectively? And that's been a challenge for a few years, hasn't it like, just trying to figure out, like, how do I leverage this information?
I know it's there and I can find ways that I can better serve those store managers and, and have a better experience with the customer to do all those things. So that's, that's something that I think we need to continue to work on, you know, focusing on assets and, and, and asset specific information and data to do a better job.
Yeah, couldn't agree more. I think there's been huge technological advancements, huge improvements in how we can collect data, leverage data, access data, but most companies, I think I read the stats somewhere. Most companies don't even use. 10% of their data effectively. Right? So there's a, there's huge opportunity for us as a space to leverage our own information more, to better serve our, our customer.
And of course, utilize all the technology available and keep up with the trends. I mean, remember the times when to do. Any, any single task you had to call someone or sign a piece of paper and then upload it somewhere. Now it's a matter of clicks on your cell phone, right? It's funny. At least it feels to me like in, and maybe there are other industries that are the same, but it feels like facilities when it comes to technology.
It's always, there's this lag time. Right? So iPhone comes out in 2007, smartphone explosion, the data network's getting better. I feel like we should be further along than we are. Yeah. And so I know that I know there's a lot of opportunity there to be, to be better and really take advantage of this. We still have programs where I think in the landscaping programs, when, if you're working with a management company doing landscape, they probably have a third or more transactions that aren't being tracked.
Because folks aren't using the, the technology the way they're supposed to. Right? So there's some, there's some opportunity to, to make some of these transactions easier for the vendors, making it easier and to check in and out of the jobs and give us the information that we need. and I'm really looking forward to seeing more advances in U utilizing sensors and predictive maintenance and, and being able to provide, uh, a technician with a work order that also is accompanied by very useful information.
History of what's been done with the device potentially like. Pulling together manuals and parts diagrams, and you know, everything that we can do to help that person be effective when they arrive to make a repair, like I wanna be able to do for that person, whether it's our own internal technician or an outside vendor, doesn't matter.
The end goal is I wanna make you effective when you're there, because I want my equipment running. I want my store manager taking care of it. I want, I wanna sell things to the, to the customer. So. Knowing how long it takes to develop things in this space. We'll do this until we're, we're retired. , we'll be working on refining this process.
things are moving fast. Who knows? Right? I mean, either to your point, we need to be proactive in our space. I mean, as a, as an industry thing traditionally, or just in general, right? It you are, it's a reactive business, but there are things that you can do to stay ahead to your point, invest in smart assets, leverage IOT, and leverage your business intelligence to get ahead of the issues that may arise in the future, because you can bring some predictability into it.
But I think also. Augmented reality and can, can have a big role to play, especially considering this depleting talent workforce that, that we have. Right. Someone's gonna figure out how to leverage those technologies to make a. The apprentices or the technicians that are in the field have access to better information.
And also, I think master techs who might be sitting somewhere in the office, but helping out 10 other techs in, in the field, right. Yeah, there's, there's really so much opportunity there to capture this knowledge from the senior folks or capture knowledge from the OEMs or any source, really, and make that information available to the, to the people who are, who are doing the work.
There's a lot, lot of opportunity, you know, I don't know, in this day and age with the networks that we have and the smart devices and everything at, at a certain point, it's gonna be unacceptable to not do it. Like when I show up and I'm gonna work on an ice maker. At a convenience store and I'm a technician that has never been to that site before.
And I work for a refrigeration company and EG America sends my company a work order and I get sent to go do the job. Why would we wanna send that person in their blind? When they pull that ticket up, it should be like, okay, you're going to, you know, EG America store number.dot. You're gonna be working on this asset.
This is how old it is. These are all the things that have been done to it recently. So it's performing and, and here are the, the applicable manuals for it. Here's a parts diagram. Here's some notes that prior technicians have left regarding this specific piece of equip. Uh, everything we can, we can throw at it that would help that person cuz not only would it make the repair go faster.
I think statistically, I think if you could do that, you would, you would see a big lift in first time fix not only that you're basically creating an environment where the folks in the field are in a position, especially the, the junior level or entry level. Technicians having all this information. It's like, um, you're learning all your learning materials are coming to you like predictively and dynamically as you need them.
And, you know, you're learning and getting better. So there's, I just don't see any downside to it, but it's gonna be working together as an industry, I guess, and trying to figure out how to get it. Love it, powerful stuff. All right. Any rising trends in consumer behavior or COVID related shift that you think are here to stay?
We talked about the reduced traffic counts. I'm hoping to see people out there. We have, we have good weather and, and some really good opportunities for people to get out and get back to normal and do their traveling and do the things. That they traditionally have done. So we, we can be there to serve them.
That certainly is something I'm hoping for, but COVID trends. I, I would say that I think people are conscious about cleanliness. We brought up earlier traveling after hours. That's something I think that people have always looked for. It's like clean well lit facility, but now it's, we wanna see that food safety, cleanliness, those sorts of things I think are important and people are expecting.
fortunately for us, we had all of those things in place before the pandemic, you know, we already had a process to, to offer these products safely to the customers. So that's right. Yeah. I mean, consumer expectations, I think have never been higher and rightfully so the consumers should expect higher standards and the businesses.
Service the customer well will, will succeed and, and see tremendous growth. What advice would you give to facilities teams out there that are maybe not as mature as a program? What should they do to have the biggest impact on their brand? Yeah, that's a really good question. Stay organized so that the, the, the workload can become very high.
So it's very important to stay organized. And I imagine if we're talking about a retail multi-location facilities type operation, you know, cause I've, I've in a previous job, I worked for a smaller community store chain. When I started there, they had. 60 65 locations. Uh, and I've, so I've lived through say the beginnings of a program.
So I had an office, I had a wall of phone books on shelves behind me. The stores were told when you get a new phone book, send the old one to facilities, cuz we would need it to look up a vendor. So we could find people to fix stuff that was the first facilities program I'd ever seen. So, you know, prior, prior to that I was a technician, but then I walked into this job and they said, okay, here's what you do.
You got here's your phone books. We had these fancy pads printed pads where you could tear off a sheet and each one was like a work order. . And there was a, there was a slot on a wall for every store. And so I'd get a phone call and write it on a piece of paper. And I'd, if I knew what vendor I wanted to use, I'd call 'em up.
If I didn't, I'd get out a yellow page. And we had little piece of paper in every slot and CK match, very, um, manual process. I had an answering machine on my desk that had a tape. The old cassette tape answering machine. So if I was away from my desk, you would leave a message on a cassette tape. So, I mean, that's, that's where I come.
That was my first job in facilities. so I learned the value of staying organized pretty quick. That wasn't really sustainable. Even what 60 stores, it was hard to meet our obligations against we're supposed to be on top of all these repairs. So that led us towards moving to a work order management system and, and getting more organized.
So I would say you gotta stay organized and you have to be able to manage the, if you're going to be using outside vendors to perform services, you need to be able to monitor their performance and you need a program that you gotta do it in a way that's scalable that you can handle changing workload.
Very very important. I, I think you also said it before, invest in your people, right. Get the right people in place and empower them. That's and then they'll do the rest for you. Right? That's the most important thing, you know, the team that we have now. At EG is amazing. We've got Jonathan SEAK that runs our call center.
He's customer service is his middle name. nice. He's absolutely fantastic. Truly cares about all the people that he's serves. And rich Thompson is our director. That's oversees all of our in-house. And he does an amazing job, huge team of technicians to support and manage and grow and, and everything. And, and we have so many other people, but it's, it's, it really is.
That's what makes it all work. If all the other stuff breaks and the computers don't work, these guys will get it done. I love it. Well with that, Tom, I wanna say thank you. I've known you for a long time and we've had some great conversations over the years, and this has been no different. I really appreciate you being here and for all of you in the audience, thank you for joining us.
Tom, where can anyone reach you or find you if they're interested in reaching out, LinkedIn would be a good place to start I'm on there and be more than happy to, to talk to anybody. Love it all with that. Great. Just wanna say thank you again, Tom. All right. Thanks said great talking to you. Thank you and, um, to all in our audience.
Thank you for being here and we'll see you next time. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of elevating work and mortar, a podcast brought to you by service channel partner with service channel for peak facilities, performance, go to service, channel.com to learn more. And if you like what you're hearing, please give us a rate interview.