Harcastle Environmental / BB-Demo – Check In
Callcompleted
Harcastle Environmental · 2026-04-22 16:30
Growth check-in with Nicola Brearley. Usage is up and connectors are healthy, but forty seats against seven or eight daily users is being questioned internally. She needs stories and a one-page summary for the people who sign.
What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26Growth check-in with Nicola Brearley. Usage is up and connectors are healthy, but forty seats against seven or eight daily users is being questioned internally. She needs stories and a one-page summary for the people who sign.
What happened: Marcus Bell showed usage and connector health to Nicola Brearley. Daily users are up, questions asked are climbing, all sources are loading and there are no tickets.
Customer view: Nicola says the value is obvious to her, but someone internally asked why they pay for forty seats with seven or eight in use. She is not the signatory.
Commercial: Growth at £44k a year, with the order form and invoices agreeing, contract to 10 Apr 2027. Marcus is not raising the renewal, and Lewis Kerr owns any commercial conversation.
Watch: Seat utilisation is the value question to answer before the renewal. Team sessions and a depot dashboard are the route to wider use.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Seat utilisation and value case
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
mixed
Voice
champion
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Marcus Bell to send Nicola a one-page summary of usage trend, questions asked, who is asking and connectors.
- Marcus Bell to test the depot dashboard with Nicola first, then book a 30-minute Yorkshire team session.
- Nicola to send examples of mixed-up customer names and warn Marcus of any route planning or driver notes change.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Internal questioning of forty paid seats against seven or eight daily users could become a value objection at renewal.
- Nicola does not sign and must make the case to budget holders who were not on the call.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Team sessions starting with the Yorkshire team could bring more account managers onto the existing seats.
- A depot-level missed collections dashboard would put the unused dashboards builder to work.
Transcript
Marcus Bell NoneHello Nicola, good afternoon. Can you hear me alright?
Nicola Brearley NoneLoud and clear, Marcus. Afternoon. Sorry, I'm only just in, I've come straight from another call.- Marcus Bell NoneNo problem at all, I was only just sitting down myself. How's the week been?
- Nicola Brearley NoneBusy. Well, let me tell you the worst one first, because it's actually a good story for you. We had a customer on Monday, a restaurant group, three sites, and one of the sites had its bins missed two collections in a row.
- Marcus Bell NoneOh, not great.
- Nicola Brearley NoneNot great, no. But here's the thing. The account manager had it open in the brain before the customer rang. She could see the missed-collection ticket, the earlier call, and the last invoice, all in one place. She rang them first. Said sorry, said what the fix was and who owned it, and booked a catch-up collection.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's exactly what you bought it for, isn't it.
- Nicola Brearley NoneIt is. A year ago that would have been three people looking at three systems and the customer finding out we'd lost track. Anyway. Which is why I let it sit for no time at all. I don't like a complaint sitting overnight.
- Marcus Bell NoneUnderstood. Right, let me share my screen, and I'll say what I wanted to cover. Can you see that?
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes, I can see the usage page.
- Marcus Bell NoneGood. So I've pulled the numbers. Three things really. How the team is using it, whether any of the connectors have given you any trouble, and then anything you'd like from us over the next few months. Happy to go wherever you want, though. It's your thirty-five minutes.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat's fine. Go on, usage first.
- Marcus Bell NoneSo, looking at the last thirty days, you've got on average seven or eight people active on a given day. That's up on the previous quarter by about a fifth, which is a proper step up. Questions asked are climbing as well, and it's not just one person doing them, which is the bit I like.
- Nicola Brearley NoneMm. That tracks. It was me and a couple of the account managers for a long time. Now there's a few more of them in there every morning before their rounds of calls.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight, and that's what I'd hoped. What are they mostly asking it?
- Nicola Brearley NoneMostly customer history. Which depot, which round, what's gone wrong in the last few weeks, what's been invoiced. Lists of three, they ask me for lists of three. Last three collections, last three tickets, last three calls. And it just gives them that.
- Marcus Bell NoneYeah, the chat does that well. And the search, are they using search, or mainly chat?
- Nicola Brearley NoneMainly chat. Search a bit, for finding a particular email or a contract. Pages, hardly anyone. I think they don't realise what's in there.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's useful to know. I can show people the pages in a session if you like. I'll come back to that.
- Nicola Brearley NonePlease.
- Marcus Bell NoneSo the other number on this screen is licences. You've got forty on Growth, and as you can see, you're using a fraction of that on a normal day.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes. I've been meaning to talk about that, actually. I know we're not using all forty. It's a bit of a sore point internally, if I'm honest. Someone asked me last month why we pay for forty and have seven or eight on it.
- Marcus Bell NoneFair question. I wouldn't read it as a problem, to be honest, I'd read it as room. You've got the seats, nobody's hit a limit, and the people who are on it are using it more each month. The job is getting the rest of the account managers on.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat's how I'd want to put it to them. So what's the best way? I don't want to send an email saying please log in. Nobody reads those.
- Marcus Bell NoneNo. What tends to work is small sessions, by team, using their own customers. Thirty minutes. Pick an account manager, pull up one of their real accounts, ask the brain the questions they'd normally spend twenty minutes chasing. Then they get it.
- Nicola Brearley NoneLet's see it from the customer's side, yes. So they see their own bad customer, not a demo.
- Marcus Bell NoneExactly that. I'm happy to jump on a call with each group. Shall we book thirty minutes, say, for the first one, and see how it goes?
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes. Let's. I'd say start with the Yorkshire team, they're the ones who have the most missed-collection tickets, so they've got the most to gain. The North East ones can follow.
- Marcus Bell NonePerfect. I'll do that. Do you want to be on the first one, or would you rather it was just them?
- Nicola Brearley NoneI'll be on the first, say a few words at the start, then leave you to it. Then they know I'm behind it.
- Marcus Bell NoneGood. That helps a lot, honestly. People use it when their boss does.
- Nicola Brearley NoneHa, yes. Well, that's the plan. So that's usage. What about the connectors?
- Marcus Bell NoneSo, scrolling down. All the sources you've connected are loading, records indexed are moving the way they should week to week, and there's nothing flat that ought not to be. No tickets from you in the last month at all, which, you know, I'm never going to complain about.
- Nicola Brearley NoneNo, it's been quiet. I'd say no news is good news there. The data's there when they sit down in the morning, I'd have heard otherwise. They'd tell me very quickly.
- Marcus Bell NoneI'm sure they would. And the overnight refresh, that's finishing before seven, so it's there before they start.
- Nicola Brearley NoneRight. Because that was the thing. If an account manager opens it at half seven and it's yesterday's picture, they'll never go back. That's what I worried about at the start.
- Marcus Bell NoneYeah, and it's been fine. Any systems changing on your side that I should know about? A new ticketing tool, a change to the way routes are held, anything like that? Because that's usually what breaks a connector, someone upgrades something and nobody tells us.
- Nicola Brearley NoneHmm. Not that I know of. Route planning is staying as it is for now. There was talk of changing how we log driver notes, but that's a long way off. If it moves I'll tell you.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat'd be great. Just a heads up is all I need, and we'll look at it before it bites.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWill do.
- Marcus Bell NoneOkay. So that's the health side, and honestly it's all pointing the right way. Is there anything you'd like that you're not getting at the moment? Anything frustrating, anything you've worked around?
- Nicola Brearley NoneThere is one thing, actually. Dashboards. We've got the dashboards builder on Growth and I've hardly touched it. What I'd love is one view by depot. Missed collections this week, by round, with the customers who've called in, and the ones who haven't, but we know have been missed.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight, the ones you know about before they ring.
- Nicola Brearley NoneExactly. That's the gold. If I can see which depot, which round, on a Monday morning, I can fix a pattern rather than apologise a hundred times.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's a good use of it. I think the builder will do a fair amount of that already, depending on how the ticket categories come through. I'd want to sit with it for half an hour before I promise you the exact shape.
- Nicola Brearley NoneSure. Whatever you can do. What's the fix and who owns it, that's my question, it's always my question. If it needs something from my team, I'd rather know.
- Marcus Bell NoneYes. I'll have a go, and I'll tell you honestly what it can and can't do. If something's missing from the data, I'll say so. I won't promise anything on the product side that I can't back up.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat's all I ask.
- Marcus Bell NoneAnd do you want me to do that in the same session with the Yorkshire team? Or separately, with you?
- Nicola Brearley NoneSeparately, with me first. If it's not right I don't want to waste their time. Then once it's working we show them.
- Marcus Bell NoneMakes sense. So I'll do the dashboard thing with you first, and then the team session.
- Nicola Brearley NoneGood.
- Marcus Bell NoneOne more thing, and it's more housekeeping than anything. Just so you've got it in front of you. You're on Growth, forty-four thousand a year, order form and invoices both say the same, so there's nothing to reconcile there. And the contract runs to 10 Apr 2027.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes. April next year. Which feels a long way off but it's not, is it.
- Marcus Bell NoneIt never is. I'm not raising anything today, it's just that I'll come back to you in good time, with a proper look at what you've got out of it, before we get anywhere near it. And any commercial conversation would go through Lewis, he's your account owner, not me.
- Nicola Brearley NoneOkay. Look, I'll be straight with you. For me the value's obvious. It's the one view. But I'm not the one who signs, and I can't commit budget myself, so at some point I'll have to show it to the people who do.
- Marcus Bell NoneOf course. And that's really helpful for me to know. What would help you make that case? What would they want to see?
- Nicola Brearley NoneHonestly? Examples. Not graphs. Stories like the restaurant group on Monday. Here's a customer we'd have lost, here's what we did. And a sense of how many people use it. Which is why the licences thing matters.
- Marcus Bell NoneYes, I can see that. So what I'll do is put together a short summary for you. Usage trend, questions asked, who's asking them, and the connectors, all on one page. You can pair it with your own stories.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat'd be brilliant. One page. Please. They won't read more.
- Marcus Bell NoneOne page. I'll keep it plain.
- Nicola Brearley NoneOh, and one more thing, since you've asked what's frustrating. It's small. When people ask the chat about a customer with a similar name to another, it sometimes mixes them up. Two businesses on the same trading estate, for instance.
- Marcus Bell NoneHm. That's useful. Do you have an example I can look at? Names, if you can, and roughly when.
- Nicola Brearley NoneI'll find a couple and send them over. I don't want to guess from memory, I'd get the wrong ones.
- Marcus Bell NonePerfect. If I've got actual examples I can see whether it's how the records are matched on your side or something we can tune. I can't say which until I see it.
- Nicola Brearley NoneFine. That's fair.
- Marcus Bell NoneAnything else on your list? Otherwise I think we've covered what I came with.
- Nicola Brearley NoneNo, I think that's it. Actually, no, wait. Are there other businesses like us on it? Waste, or logistics, anything with rounds?
- Marcus Bell NoneFair question. I'd rather not name anyone, that's their business, but there are a few with similar shapes, lots of customers, lots of field operations, and they tend to find the same things useful. Ticket history and invoices together. I can ask Lewis whether anyone would be happy to chat, if that'd help you.
- Nicola Brearley NoneIt might. Not urgent. Let's see how the team sessions go first.
- Marcus Bell NoneOkay. Let me recap, then. I'll send you the one-page summary. I'll look at the depot dashboard and come back to you with a time to go through it. I'll get thirty minutes in the diary for the Yorkshire team, with you saying a few words at the start. You're going to send me a couple of examples where the names got mixed up, and a heads up if anything changes with route planning or the driver notes.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat's all of it. And I'll send you a list of the account managers, Yorkshire first, so you know who's coming.
- Marcus Bell NoneGreat. Then I think we're done, and we've actually finished with a bit of time to spare.
- Nicola Brearley NoneHa, brilliant, I'll take that. Don't tell anyone, they'll think I've got nothing to do.
- Marcus Bell NoneYour secret's safe. Thanks, Nicola. Speak soon.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThanks, Marcus. Speak soon. Bye.
Callsmade from