Harcastle Environmental / BB-Demo – Check In
Callcompleted
Harcastle Environmental · 2026-03-20 12:15
Growth check-in with Nicola Brearley, three weeks before the renewal. Usage is up and spread across several people, no tickets. She backs the product but cannot sign, and wants a one-page value summary for her budget holder.
What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26Growth check-in with Nicola Brearley, three weeks before the renewal. Usage is up and spread across several people, no tickets. She backs the product but cannot sign, and wants a one-page value summary for her budget holder.
What happened: Marcus Bell reviewed usage, records, tickets and the renewal with Nicola Brearley. Users, questions asked and records indexed are all rising, with no tickets in thirty days.
Customer view: Nicola sees the value in catching a missed collection before the customer rings. She cannot commit money alone and expects the question "what are we getting for it".
Commercial: Growth, forty seats, £40k a year, which Marcus says matches what has been invoiced. Lewis Kerr, named as account owner, sends the renewal paperwork, and Nicola wants a conversation first.
Watch: Under a dozen depot managers may join, mostly for dashboards, nothing decided. A route planning review could change the collection data source and break a connector.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Renewal prep and adoption
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Marcus Bell to draft a one-page usage summary for Nicola before it goes anywhere else.
- Marcus Bell to brief Lewis Kerr on the renewal conversation and the depot managers.
- Marcus Bell to book a 30-minute dashboard session for the week after the depot audit.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Nicola cannot commit budget alone, so the renewal depends on a budget holder who was not on the call.
- A possible route planning change could alter the collection data source and quietly break a connector.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Under a dozen depot managers could be added, mostly for dashboards, within the forty Growth seats.
- A fourth dashboard (depot view or contract profitability) would deepen use of the dashboards builder.
Transcript
Marcus Bell NoneHi Nicola, good afternoon. Can you hear me all right?
Nicola Brearley NoneI can, yes. Sorry, I'm just getting the door shut, it's a bit lively out there today. Right, I'm here. Hello.- Marcus Bell NoneNo problem at all. Busy week?
- Nicola Brearley NoneBusy week. Do you want the worst complaint first? Because I always start with that. We had a restaurant customer, food waste, three missed collections on the same round inside a fortnight, and they only rang us on the third one. Which I hate. They should never have had to ring us at all.
- Marcus Bell NoneYeah, that's the thing you set the brain up for, isn't it. Did your account manager see it before they called?
- Nicola Brearley NoneHalf and half, honestly. She saw the second ticket sitting next to the customer's calls and the last invoice, so she rang them that same morning, before they'd had a chance to ring us again. Which is the right way round. But the first one she didn't see, because it was logged against the depot and not the customer. So, which depot, which round, that's what I was asking all Monday.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight, mm. That's a how-the-data-comes-in question more than a brain question, I think. Happy to look at how those depot tickets are being tagged if you want me to take that away.
- Nicola Brearley NonePlease. I'd rather fix it properly than have people remembering to check two places. What's the fix and who owns it, that's all I want to know.
- Marcus Bell NoneFair. I'll find out who owns it on our side and come back to you with a name, and I won't guess at timings until I've spoken to them. Is that okay?
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat's fine. Better than someone promising me Friday and then it's April.
- Marcus Bell NoneHa, yeah. Okay, so what I wanted to cover today, if it's all right: I'll share my screen, I've pulled the numbers for the last quarter, usage mainly, and then a quick word about the renewal coming up, and then anything you want to throw at me. Does that work?
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat works. Go on, share away.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight, give me a second, I've got about four windows open. There we go. Can you see it?
- Nicola Brearley NoneI can see a graph. It's a bit small. Can you make it bigger? Yes, that's better.
- Marcus Bell NoneSorry. So this is active users across the last few months. You've got forty licensed seats on Growth, and on a typical day you've got six or seven people actually in there. And the line's gone up compared with the quarter before. It's a proper step up, not just a blip.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat'll be the two new account managers who started in January. I got them in the brain in their first week, before they'd got used to the old way of doing things. Because if you let them get used to the old way, you never get them back.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat makes sense, and it shows. They're asking a lot of questions. Questions asked is the number I care about most, and it's up on the last quarter and up on the same time last year, which is the thing I like seeing.
- Nicola Brearley NoneLast year was the first few weeks, though. We'd only just gone live, so that's not a hard bar to clear.
- Marcus Bell NoneHa, true. Fair point. But it's not just the new people. If I split it by who's asking, it's spread across a handful of you, which is healthy. It's not one person doing everything.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWell, I'd like to think I'm not doing everything. Though I'm probably still the heaviest user. Be honest.
- Marcus Bell NoneYou're the top one, yeah. But not by miles, which is what I'd be watching for. If it were nearly all you, I'd be asking what happens when you're on holiday.
- Nicola Brearley NoneI don't really go on holiday. But no, point taken. Two of the others are in there as much as I am now, I think. One of them's quite competitive about it, actually. She's got a little scoreboard in her head.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's the best kind of adoption, honestly. Okay, and then the other bit is records. These are the records indexed over the same period, and that's been climbing steadily, no flat patches. The nightly refresh has been landing on time as far as I can see.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes, I'd have shouted. First thing every morning my team look at the overnight collections, so if it was late I'd hear within about ten minutes. And I haven't.
- Marcus Bell NoneGood. Same story on tickets, by the way. Nothing raised with us in the last thirty days, nothing high priority, nothing outstanding. Which is either a very good sign or you're all being very polite.
- Nicola Brearley NoneHa. We're not that polite. Honestly it's just been quiet. If something's broken, I'll tell you. You'll know.
- Marcus Bell NoneI believe that. Okay, so that's usage. Anything in there that surprises you, or anything you'd have expected to see that isn't?
- Nicola Brearley NoneMm. Let me think. The dashboards, maybe. I thought we'd have more of them by now. We've got the three I built, the missed collections by round, complaints by month and the invoice query one, and I keep meaning to do a fourth and then Monday happens.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight, I can see those three. And the complaints one's the most opened by a long way. What would the fourth one be, if you had a free afternoon?
- Nicola Brearley NoneContract profitability by customer, really. Which customers are costing us more to collect from than we're charging, because of the extra lifts and the re-visits. I know the information's in there somewhere, collections and invoices, I just haven't put it in one place.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's a good one, and it's exactly the sort of thing the dashboards builder is for. Shall we book 30 minutes, you and me, and I'll sit with you while you build it? I won't build it for you, but I can stop you getting stuck.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes, go on then. Not next week, we've got the depot audit. The week after.
- Marcus Bell NoneThe week after is fine. I'll send something over this afternoon and you can move it if it clashes.
- Nicola Brearley NonePerfect.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight, so the other thing I wanted to mention. The renewal. Your contract runs to 10 April 2026 and the renewal date is 11 April 2026, so it's a few weeks off. You've been with us since 11 Apr 2025, so it's a full year.
- Nicola Brearley NoneIs it a year already? God. It doesn't feel like it. It feels like about six months, and then also about five years.
- Marcus Bell NoneHa, I get that a lot. So what I've got on my side is Growth, forty seats, £39,600 a year, and that matches what's been invoiced, so no surprises there. Lewis Kerr's your account owner, and he'll be the one to send the renewal paperwork across.
- Nicola Brearley NoneLewis. Yes. Is he going to ring me or is it just a PDF?
- Marcus Bell NoneI'd expect him to get in touch properly, he'll want to talk through it with you, not just fire it over. I'll let him know today that you'd prefer a conversation first.
- Nicola Brearley NonePlease. I don't like a contract turning up out of nowhere. And just so you know, I can't commit anything on my own, anything on the money side goes past the person who signs off the budget. That's always been the way. But I'll be saying good things, put it that way.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's completely fine, that's how I'd expect it to work. I don't get into the commercial side myself anyway, that's Lewis. What I can do is give you something to take upstairs. Would a one-page summary of usage be useful? What's changed since you went live, who's using it, what's been built.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes. Yes please. That would honestly be really helpful. Because the question I'll get is, what are we getting for it, and I'd rather answer with something that isn't just me saying it's brilliant.
- Marcus Bell NoneUnderstood. Let's see it from their side, as you'd say. I'll put the questions asked, the users, the dashboards, and I'll leave the tickets in as well, because the quiet is part of the story.
- Nicola Brearley NoneHa, you've been listening. Yes, and can you put the missed collection thing in, the one from this week? Not as a complaint, as an example. The account manager rang them before they rang us. That's the whole reason I wanted this thing.
- Marcus Bell NoneI can describe it, yes. I'd want to check with you how you want it worded, so it doesn't name the customer. Is that okay?
- Nicola Brearley NoneNo names, no. Just the shape of it. Second missed collection, spotted next to the calls and the invoice, called the same morning.
- Marcus Bell NoneGot it. I'll draft that and send it to you before it goes anywhere else.
- Nicola Brearley NoneGood. Can I ask something a bit different?
- Marcus Bell NoneOf course. Go ahead.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWe're thinking about getting the depot managers in. Not all of them, the ones who run the bigger depots. At the moment they get a printout, a spreadsheet, whatever, and by the time it reaches them it's a day old. Would that blow through the forty?
- Marcus Bell NoneLet me look. So you've got forty licensed and you're not using anything like that at the moment, so you've got a lot of room. Even if you added every depot manager you've got, you'd be well inside it, I'd think. How many are we talking about, roughly?
- Nicola Brearley NoneUnder a dozen. Maybe a handful of those would really use it.
- Marcus Bell NoneThen you're fine. It's worth thinking about what they'd actually look at, though. If they're only going to want the one view of their own depot, a dashboard might be better than giving them the full chat and search and watching them get lost.
- Nicola Brearley NoneMm, that's fair. They're not going to want to ask it questions. They want a number and a red or green. Honestly I think that's the fourth dashboard, isn't it. Not profitability. Depot view first.
- Marcus Bell NoneCould be both. We can start with the depot one in that session and see how far we get. And if you do bring more people in across several teams, that's the sort of thing that's worth mentioning to Lewis ahead of the renewal conversation, so it's all in one go.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes. I'll do that. Actually, no, you tell him. You're better at explaining it than I am, and I'll only say something wrong and then he'll quote it back to me.
- Marcus Bell NoneHa, okay, I'll tell him. I'll keep it factual: depot managers, under a dozen, mostly dashboards, nothing decided. Is that right?
- Nicola Brearley NoneNothing decided. Exactly. Don't let him get excited.
- Marcus Bell NoneI'll try. Anything else on the product side? Anything annoying you that you haven't told me about?
- Nicola Brearley NoneAnnoying me. Let me think. The search is great when you know the customer name. When you only know the address, or the site, it's a bit hit and miss. Yesterday I was looking for a site on an industrial estate and I had to go via the account manager's notes.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight. That's useful. I'll write that down properly rather than just nodding. Do you remember roughly which customer, or was it more a general thing?
- Nicola Brearley NoneGeneral. I can find the actual one and send it to you, if that helps. I'll forward it with the depot thing.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat would help, yeah. Then I can show our team a real example, not me waving my hands.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWaving hands is how most of my meetings go, so.
- Marcus Bell NoneHa. Okay. Is there anything on your side that's changing in the next couple of months that I should know about? New systems, people leaving, anything like that? Just so I'm not caught out.
- Nicola Brearley NoneNothing leaving. We've had a bit of a reshuffle in the customer service team, but the same people are there, they've just got different titles. And we're looking at the route planning side, but that's later in the year, it's nowhere near a decision.
- Marcus Bell NoneOkay. If that ends up changing which system the collection data comes from, give me a shout early, because that's the thing that can quietly break a connector, and I'd rather we planned it than found it three weeks later.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes, understood. I'll shout. I've learned that one. Tell you before, not after.
- Marcus Bell NonePerfect. Right, I think that's most of what I had. Let me just run it back. I'll send a calendar invite for the dashboard session, the week after your depot audit. I'll find out who owns the depot ticket tagging and come back to you with a name. I'll draft the one-page summary and send it to you before anyone else sees it. And I'll have a word with Lewis about the renewal conversation and the depot managers.
- Nicola Brearley NoneAnd I'll send you the address search example and the depot managers' names. Well, the number of them. Not the names. You don't need their names.
- Marcus Bell NoneNumber's fine. Thank you.
- Nicola Brearley NoneCan I just say one more thing, and then I'll let you go?
- Marcus Bell NoneCourse.
- Nicola Brearley NoneIt's good that you ring and show me the numbers. The last time I had a supplier do a check-in it was twenty minutes of them reading out their own slides. This is much better. I actually know what I'm paying for.
- Marcus Bell NoneThanks, that's kind. I'd rather be useful than salesy, really. And if the numbers don't show anything, I'd rather say so.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWhich is why I trust them. Right. Go and put the kettle on, I've got a round to sort out.
- Marcus Bell NoneWill do. Have a good weekend, Nicola. Speak soon.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYou too. Thanks, Marcus. Bye.
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