This one’s more than a podcast—it’s a story of how a mission trip, a tragic accident, and a plane ride over the Gulf of Mexico led to a better way to serve our customers.
In this episode of the OnAire Podcast, we sit down with Rob Nelson, Director of Services at SonicAire, and unpack the wild, winding journey that shaped how we show up for our customers today.
You’ll laugh (think gator metaphors and old church photos), you’ll get inspired (real talk on change management), and you’ll learn:
- Why great service means more than fixing what’s broken
- How proactive maintenance helps customers avoid costly surprises
- Why your dust problem should never be your problem
- And yes, what SonicAire’s chatbot is named (hint: it’s very on brand)
BONUS: Watch the full video to see the 20-year-old photos from Rob and Jordan’s mission trip to Mexico that sparked a lifelong connection—and an entirely new approach to customer care.
Want to work with a team that actually gets what you’re dealing with?
Head to https://www.sonicaire.com and let’s solve your dust challenge—for good.
OnAire Episode 5 Transcript:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the OnAire podcast with SonicAire. I’m Jordan.
And I’m Taylor.
That’s right. And so here we are once again, we are on podcast number four, five, six, something like that. I don’t know.
There’s probably a math equation that will land us somewhere between zero and 10.
Yeah. Somewhere in that range. So, thanks for joining us once again. So, today we got an awesome guests coming in. He’s out in the green room right now, but he is none other than Rob Nelson, our Director of Services.
The Department of Defense.
That’s right. The DOD. So, we are glad to have Rob as part of our SonicAire team. And so, we’re going to, we’re going to unpack some things. We’re going to talk about his history and how he got here. A little planes, trains, and automobiles.
And even maybe alligators.
Alligators might creep into the conversation here. Yeah. It’s a fun one. It’s a good one. So, stick around and check it out. Thanks for being here.
Hey, we’re back and today on our episode we’ve got none other than Rob Nellie Nelson, our Director of Services. Welcome to the podcast, Rob.
Thank you. Thank you.
Also known as the Department of Defense.
That’s true. The DOD, as we affectionately call it here at SonicAire. So, we want to hear about your journey and where you’re from, how it all started, how you got here. And, you know, it goes a long ways back, at least you and I do. And our story. So, I’ve got my side of the story, but I’ll let you tell yours today.
Yeah. Do we get to hear your side?
No, no, the floor’s all yours. The mic is yours today.
I get to make it whatever I want to.
That’s right. I will not refute anything you used to say today.
Yeah. It’s been crazy. So, when we were, when we were talking about this and prepping for it, I actually pulled out some of the pictures from 20 years ago.
And we look just the same, don’t we?
Exactly. Nothing’s changed.
I’m sure we’ll see. I have a sneaky suspicion. We’re going to take a look, but yeah. 20 years is, man, that flew by.
Taylor. What were you doing 20 years ago?
I was in my fifth grade classroom. We were talking about fifth grade last night, actually. I was reminiscing on writing a DARE report. So that’s what I was doing 20 years ago.
DARE. That’s been a minute. Did it work?
Yeah. I think it did a pretty good job. Yeah. It’s still around.
So, two decades ago. Let me go back in my mind. So, I, we actually had an event that happened about eight years prior where my sister and her husband were killed coming back from a mission trip. And that was kind of like taboo to talk about. The family didn’t really talk about it and friends didn’t talk about it. And so, from my perspective, like the leap of faith of going on this mission trip when we went to Rio Bravo 20 years ago was like obviously a really huge deal. Not just in like being nervous and going, it was my first mission trip, but just opening the door of talking about that. And for whatever reason, you and I were acquaintances at that point.
Yeah. We got buddied up.
We did. We got buddied up on the buddy system, but we really didn’t know each other.
No, not really at all.
And for whatever reason, I felt comfortable talking to you about just being nervous and some of the historical stuff that had happened there.
Yeah. And, and if I remember correctly, when you told me that story, we were sitting in the very last row in the backseat of a plane over probably the Gulf of Mexico headed to Mexico or something. And you start telling me that and I’m putting the pieces together because at the time I was working for a forensic engineering firm that investigated plane crashes and the company I was working for had actually been part of that investigation. And so we were putting all these pieces together and, I mean, I still get chill bumps on my arms thinking about how we were having this conversation and how it all was tied together.
And that’s one of the cool things too, when you look back conversations like that, I mean, two decades ago, I could have never guessed that we’d be here talking about it in 20. Yeah.
I didn’t know in my fifth grade class either. Just for reference. I did not know that we would be here either.
Taylor, what did you want to do when you were in fifth grade?
I don’t know. You know, I think I hadn’t really picked anything important at that point. My grandpa did some cool things with the city and working for the Coliseum and would set up for events and whatnot. And so, doing stuff like that, monster trucks or hockey or basketball was about it, but I wasn’t good at any of those things. So naturally it didn’t go that way, but yeah, I don’t know. Maybe still a firefighter at that point.
Weren’t you on the astronaut track at one point?
Yeah, yeah. I always thought that was cool. And then that was probably like middle and high school because I just thought space was cool. And then I found out it’s not just hop in the rocket ship and go up there to the moon or anything. Also, we haven’t been back. So, I’m kind of glad I didn’t go that route, but yeah, just kind of weird. All of that takes off and then you end up in a dust manufacturing space.
Yeah. In a podcast.
Yeah. They weren’t even really doing those. I don’t think that was a big thing. I think people were still just ripping music off of LimeWire and all of that stuff. Napster. I didn’t even have an iPod at this point, you know?
But look at us now. It’s crazy. Yeah. Look at us now. We made it.
Someone’s been ripping this off. Do you think? No, no.
Anyway, so we’re on a plane and all the pieces are coming together.
Yeah. So, that was liberating to be able to just have those connections and be able to kind of talk through that. And I remember the mission trip being really hot. Really hot. A lot of hard work. We did, we did manual mixing of, of cement, and we were laying the ground floor of a school for the deaf. And of course, you know, I’m going into this thing thinking, wow, this is great, mission trip. I’m going to help so much, as much as I can. And ultimately what happens in those situations is, you end up getting fed a whole lot more than you feed. Right. I mean, just hanging out with the kids and being able to do that type of work and hanging around the group that we had there was absolutely amazing. The worship services were great. The work was great. The food was great. And I think probably the biggest thing was just the perspective. You get dropped into a place like Rio Bravo and there’s not a Walmart or McDonald’s anywhere around, and you go down some of those streets and you realize how much we take for granted here. And so just the eye-opening perspective was probably one of the biggest things from that. Crazy to think that daily life there is like, when you’re going to go to the store, you’re planning for that for a couple of weeks, and it’s a journey to go somewhere and like pick up your stuff for the next couple of weeks. Whereas we just run down the street.
We’re upset when we have to go to Costco and get the extra large box that’s got to take up room in the pantry or whatever. But yeah, perspective for sure, gets shaped through experiences like that.
It does. It does.
It’s humbling for sure.
So, when we got back, I was actually the co-owner of a local computer shop. And when we got back, you were still at State. Is that correct?
Yeah, I was in college.
Yeah, you were in college. And so, it was a little bit of time between you starting to actually go to New Hope, right? As I remember, there was a gap there in terms of you finished college and then…
I finished college, stayed in Raleigh for a few years, working for Underwriters Laboratories. Then moved back when I started here in 2010.
Yeah. And I was a co-owner of a local computer shop, and we built servers and computers and did networking and for doctor’s offices and small venues and schools. And I remember us having a conversation, you were talking about some of the engineering drawings and some of the things that you guys were getting into, and you weren’t sure like what to do with all this stuff. And so, we built a server for you guys, came over and installed it. You weren’t in this location. You were over in a different location. And I think you might have had three employees, four employees at that point?
Something like that. Not many.
Yeah. It wasn’t many. So, we built a server, got it installed. And I think over the next, we might’ve even been at New Hope, we might’ve even been still meeting at the funeral home. I don’t know that we had built like the community center yet.
Yeah. Nothing says like the life of a church meeting at a funeral home.
You got your horizontal guests there.
Sometimes you have to move the visitors out of the way for the actual visitors.
Speaking of perspective. So yeah, I think after you got in town and we were both at New Hope for a handful of years, I had moved on from that local computer shop to a large electrical contractor. I was going down an IT track, and I started with them as an IT coordinator. And so, I was kind of in an office like this and was trying to troubleshoot technological issues out in the field, whether it be passwords or air cards or whatnot. And I remember the first time that I had the opportunity to go out into the field and start trying to not just troubleshoot, but try to develop the software that was needed. And I was trying to understand what it is that we needed to build for these solutions out in the field. And that was the first time that from a professional servicing heart, the first time that I kind of got it, like I had this aha moment out in the field where it went from trying to support something that you didn’t really understand. You were just trying to fix the problem on the other end of the phone, to really trying to jump into whatever the issues were and understand what needed to be built, what needed to be solved. And that took it to a whole different level in terms of perspective again.
And I think when you can make the connection between the equipment and the people, that that’s huge because it’s so easy even for us to think about the machine, the fan, you know, and the box that it’s in. But when you understand it’s not just about that. Yeah, it does a thing, but it it’s who’s it doing it for, and why is it doing it for them? And what do they really need the machine to do? And same thing you were, you were dealing with there in the IT space.
100%, 100%. And so, I spent the next few years on some software development teams trying to develop solutions for field crews. And just absolutely love being part of that effort. Let’s see. At one point, the entire IT department was relocated to Fort Mill, South Carolina, outside of Charlotte. And so, we moved to South Carolina. And over the years, you and I are still keeping up, we’re still seeing each other at church until we got relocated. And I took a different position as a business relationship manager for the same company down in Fort Mill. And I was working on my master’s and finished up my master’s. And about two and a half years into that, my wife and I just decided that Winston was home for us. Like, she had some family back here, my family was back here. And we just wanted to figure out how to get back to Winston. So, we kind of made the decision, again, just leap of faith kind of went, okay, we know where we feel like we need to be. I don’t know how we’re going to do this, but we’re just gonna do it. And years prior, you were actually at our wedding. And that was a great weekend. We always say that it was a weekend party and a wedding broke out. But so, we were having an anniversary event. And it happened to be across the street from this location. I didn’t know you guys had moved. Like I said, you and I had been texting over the years, just kind of checking in, hey, how you doing? What’s going on with the fam, that whole thing. And I’ll never forget when you and Meredith showed up at that anniversary. My wife likes to describe it as a Toyota jump. When you found out that we had moved back into town, you didn’t know we were back in town. You showed up, you’re like, Hey, how are things going? And I said something about we moved back and you’re like, What, you moved back? And she said that you did a Toyota jump. And I think at that point, I don’t know if you saw it, or through discussions, I kind of felt like we were back here, but we didn’t know what was next. We were on the other side of COVID. And I didn’t know how long the remote thing was going to last. Obviously, you know, our IT department was not here. And so, I was being allowed to work remote, but I didn’t know how long that was going to last. And so somehow you and I, I don’t know if you called or I called, but we ended up meeting for lunch. And I remember at that anniversary, when you and I were talking at some point, maybe it’s when you realized I was trying to figure things out. The best way to describe it is you, in my mind, you almost looked like you were a little bit in pain. Like you were thinking through something, but I didn’t know what it was.
That’s just my normal face.
Looking at some of those pictures from Mexico, I agree. That may have just been your normal face.
So, at lunch, I think you kind of uncovered that for me. You were like, the leadership team had been talking about trying to parse out a services department. And we’re just not quite sure how to do that. But we knew we needed someone to kind of lead the charge on that. You know, service contracts, and you’ve been in the service world. And certainly there’s going to be some IT components that I think could probably continue to scratch the itch. And we continued to start talking about what that would look like. And how we would go forward with something like that.
Yeah, that night, I remember leaving the driveway. And my wheels were turning. And I was talking to Meredith, this could work. This could work. I don’t know. I don’t know how. I don’t know if it’ll work. It may be a crazy idea, but it could work.
And he immediately came back, whatever day this was on, our leadership team meetings are on Thursdays. And so, the next Thursday, number one issue, top vote. He’s like, we have to talk about this right now. And so I think that’s where we were like, I mean, go see if he’s even available. Like, I want to meet this guy as much as you’re hyping him up and everything, like we need to figure this out.
I just felt like through the conversations, it didn’t take long for me to realize there was a lot here in terms of the culture. And there was a lot to do here. My first inclination was like, my background was completely IT. I was submersed in IT. And so, it was a little odd for me to think about coming to SonicAire where the projects were not a hundred percent IT. Turns out, IT touches everything. And so, there was enough here that between CRM and ERP and just different platforms that we use here and development, and we’ll probably talk about it a little bit later, but even with the IOT with the upcoming fan products, there’s a lot here that is centered around IT. Like I said, I get to still play in my playground, but I think the coolest thing is from a service standpoint, going back to when I was talking about, I was out in the field trying to look for solutions and the connection you talked about, Jordan, with people and the solution itself, that was here as well. I quickly realized that there was a lot of innovation happening. There was a lot of progressive thinking. There was an absolutely incredible culture. But the thing that really drew me here was the opportunity to be able to again, get in that situation where you can marry the people with the solutions and figure that out and work on that and be able to create like awesome customer experiences and continue to innovate products and continue. Like, it was not a fan company.
Yeah, and I think kind of getting to that point, I think that was the realization, especially as we started talking to you about it and everything, because service was under the operations umbrella. And I think, because of that, and just kind of the nature of pulling product in, doing design, getting product out, we were treating service the same way, very transactional. I mean, we went above and beyond for some customers, we went and did some things and changed out a bunch of equipment on our dime and whatnot, but we had never thought about, How can we curate this so that it’s not just putting a fan up? How do we connect the dots from the time that we’ve had the first conversation about, Hey, I’ve got a dust problem to, okay, we’re going to design a solution, and we ship it. And then we kind of wipe our hands clean. And then there’s this big gap until the fan breaks, right? Until they hit it with a forklift, or a bird flies in it, or whatever. And so, what is the opportunity in that gap? And I think that’s really where services took off because we were just cutting quotes for missing parts or like, Hey, the fan broke. Okay, we’ll fix it. Here’s a PO. Here’s an order. That kind of thing. And we recently read Unreasonable Hospitality. It has really shifted the mindset in not just services, but how we do everything here, and treating it as a customer experience and creating these moments for them to be like, Wow, that’s what they did.
Yeah. 100%.
It was kind of like working as an EMT or like an ambulance service. Like you wait around for the phone to ring and when it does, you rush and try to fix what’s broken, but you assume no news is good news, and everything’s great and call us when you need us kind of thing, but very, very reactive.
Yeah. And service by nature is going to be reactive. Like if you just leave service alone, it is a reactive animal. I think that one of the cool things, one of the things I probably have the most fun at is transitioning from reactive to proactive as much as you can. I mean, you know, at its default, you’re still going to have to deal with reactive in any service setting, but there’s a lot you can do to set up as far as people and processes that can create proactive service. And then you’re dealing with minimal reaction as opposed to the whole thing, knee jerk.
And I think that’s, when we got started talking, that’s what I was able to see is like, sure, you didn’t know anything about fans, but you understood service, you understood project management, and a great manager and great leader can work in any organization. It doesn’t matter what the widget is you’re doing. And once you understand widgets, service, customer service, and the customer interaction, you can, you can learn about the widget, So that was your unique gifts and abilities that I think we all saw when we got to know you a little bit better and got you in here.
In a million years, I would have never thought that the industry would be dust.
Yeah. Me neither. Me neither.
Yeah. Everybody asks how I got into this. And I’m like, I don’t know. I showed up and they told me it was about dust and I was like, all right, let’s go do it. Then very quickly, you just find out, even in talking to our suppliers and vendors and even just people outside, they’re like, how’s work or whatever. And they’re like, you do what? And they’re like, Oh yeah, we have one of those. I’m like, no, you don’t. Go look up, you probably have a collector or something like that, but just go look up in your ceiling, and then just think about what all that could do. And then give me a call.
Yeah. And, and of course when we started trending toward this move to SonicAire, my wife is somewhat of a clean freak. So, anything having to do with solving dust issues, she was all over it. She was like, this is awesome.
So, you’ve been here two years now.
I have.
And we’ve been around for 20 years. So, for about the first 18 years, like Taylor was saying, we weren’t proactive with service. It kind of evolved. It started with one of our guys being at one of our very large customer’s facilities. And he walked through and saw some dead non-operating fans on the floor and said, what’s wrong with these? How can we get these going again? And we worked out a deal with them, very low cost. Hey, you guys ship them back to us. We’ll fix them for a flat fee, just a few hundred bucks, and we’ll send them back to you, get them going again. Because it was a bad look for the customer. It was a bad look for us. And it wasn’t good customer service. And so that’s how it all started several years ago. But then, then that kind of slowly evolved and grew, and not in a proactive way for us as a strategic move, just as it needed to happen. Customers had a need, and we needed to respond to help them out. And so, by bringing you on board now, it’s become this, we need to do this seriously. We need to do this well. And if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And so, we need to be intentional about it. And so, talk about how…that’s a service call, you might want to answer that. But talk about what that looks like to you now, as we become more intentional about service and taking care of our customers, and that kind of evolution that you’ve seen just in the last two years.
I could completely see where service was a component of: as product was getting older, it had to be addressed. Obviously a customer doesn’t want to have a CapEx project to replace fans every three years or five years. There’s, there’s an ongoing support system that needs to be put in place there. So, from a raw service standpoint, it made sense to me. The thing that intrigued me I think the most was, at the time we were calling them commissionings, F coms and D coms and I coms, these different kinds of commissionings. And as I understand it, that really came out of a necessary component of CYA, right? I mean, we would sell a product and then a customer wouldn’t necessarily understand fully what that product was or how it operates or the science behind it.
Yeah. It was a challenge for customers because they get a fan in a box, and they have to learn what it is, and it’s generally not the person you’ve dealt with so far along with the project, and they’ve handed it off to somebody who’s going to install it, a contractor or an in-house electrician. They’ve got to quickly learn what the fan is, understand its purpose, understand the ins and outs of it, the setup of the mechanisms and things like that. And just, just some nuances as hard as we work to create user guides and stickers and tags and things like that on the fan, no matter what, someone would figure out a way to do it incorrectly. It would damage, break the fan, and it doesn’t look bad on the installer. It looks bad on us, the equipment manufacturer. And so, what we found is that if the fans were installed correctly and set up correctly, they had a much, much, much higher rate of survival and a much lower likelihood of having any issues out of the gate.
It’s a long game of telephone from the person we were explaining the application to the, well, at this point it was…
The person you meet at the trade to, right?
To the actual installer. And yeah, it doesn’t matter who messes it up. It’s got a big SonicAire sticker on it. And so we’re at fault, liable, whatever you want to call it for whatever goes wrong. And we had somebody ask us yesterday when we were visiting a vendor and they were saying, Well, how long do your fans last? And I was like, Well, if they’re installed correctly, for a really long time. Probably five, 10, 15, 20 years or whatever. But I was like, if it’s installed incorrectly, maybe five minutes, just because you can cause a catastrophic failure if it’s not set up correctly.
The right answer to that, Taylor, is forever.
Yeah, ongoing, permanent defense, get your extended warranty here today.
Lifetime warranty. Yeah. So, I think that is being proactive. So, part of the service, the field and factory service, again, I think that was out of like, things are going to break and we had to have some kind of support system there. That makes sense. Where you guys started being proactive about it was seeing that customers were struggling with the installation piece and at least offered something saying, Hey, look. If you’re going to install this, at least allow us to come audit your work, tell you how it needs to be installed, kind of walk with you through that process. And if you’re willing to purchase that piece of service, proactive service, then we’ll give you an additional warranty. So, I think that was a great idea to kind of kick off. I think that was the precipice behind a lot of the installation services that we offer now. Because what happened next was the customer started saying, Hey, will you guys just come install this for me?
We would get that question a lot. It was like, all right, I’m buying the fan, and who’s going to install it? And we’re like, I don’t care.
Yeah. We’ve always been asked that at the trade shows. Okay. You’re going to come install it for me? Nope. We’re going to ship it to you with some great instructions. Good luck. Call us if you need us, you know, kind of thing.
We’ll fix it if they break it.
It was, it was challenging to get to a place where we can say, yeah, we’ll take care of that for you. We gotcha. Yeah. It’s phenomenal.
So, I think probably the next step, and this was starting to happen right as I came on board was a name for these services, right? I thought it was really important to make sure that sales was speaking the same language as marketing, which was speaking the same language as service, and that these offerings were packaged in a way that when you said Bronze, that meant a commissioning. When you said Silver, that meant a consulting, we’re going to come in and we’re not going to turn the wrenches, but we’re going to be on site and walk you through the installation. Then Gold was a mechanical installation and a Platinum was a turnkey, mechanical, electrical, the whole thing. One of the things that I tried to do when I came on board was not just make sure that the language was the same cross departmentally. But I want to take advantage of hybrid jobs as much as we could. I think we had only installed one, maybe two projects when I came on board? And so, I thought, to really utilize the fact that we’re the experts of the product, not only from a product development standpoint, but engineering and layouts and the installation. We should be the ones that really are the expert from start to finish, and the support expert afterwards. And so we packaged this Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum package for customers, installation services, along with a hybrid where if a customer had their own electrician, or we can source an electrician, but we could handle the entire installation.
I think people probably got a little tired of, after we put this in place, I would be talking with someone here in the building and they would say something about an F-Com or something about a D-Com and I would say, what? And they would say, an F-Com. And I would go, what’s that? And then after probably 10 or 12 times, they would realize that I wasn’t hearing you when you said F-Com anymore. Like there was no…it was a Bronze. And it took a while to get people to understand that we all had to speak the same language. And so that’s fun when you’re trying to drill something home, and you don’t want to be brash about it or anything, but we’re trying to do something. We’re trying to row in the same direction here.
It’s evolution, one source of truth.
It is, yeah. So, from an installation standpoint, I think that, last year we installed more fans than any of our contractors in house. First time that’s happened.
Oh, for sure. Yeah.
You know, we’re really, really proud of that. That’s something that’s moved the needle for us in terms of being able to offer these installation services.
It’s cost effective. It’s for our customers, it’s efficient, and it’s the highest quality. And I mean, it’s just better. It’s better for everybody.
Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of faith in our contractors and we certify them and bring them in once a year and recertify them and give them all the new updates and things. But there is something special about the ownership that goes into the installation, especially when it’s a SonicAire inside job. Where, we can explain to our installers and our partners and things like that, like you’re representing us, but when it is truly us, there’s a different sense of pride and work ethic and ownership, especially that goes into it. And so, yeah, for sure. I think it’s been amazing to watch those things kind of like tilt and shift from, we’ve been outsourcing, outsourcing, and then starting to bring everything in house and tip the scales for our customers in a great fashion.
Yeah. And a lot of the catalyst behind that is really trying to provide the absolute best customer experience. Doesn’t matter if you’re calling in to ask a question, doesn’t matter if you’re hitting our website, doesn’t matter if you need a part, doesn’t matter if you need an installation, a preventative maintenance program. I mean, all of it, what we’re aiming to do is really partner with our customers, not just sell fans or not just install fans, but we’re trying to understand what the solution is and then be the absolute best at creating that solution and getting it integrated with what you need.
So that’s kind of the what and, and a little bit of the how, but let’s talk about your departmental structure. So, how’s your department structured and the seats on that bus and what is the customer experience when they work with SonicAire service?
Yeah. So probably another, we’ll call it a bump in the road. When I came on board, obviously the formality of a service department was not really there. It was there, but it wasn’t there. And so I’m coming in and I’m trying to create this customer expectation and this different language and put processes around things. And I think that that’s probably a little bit difficult when you’re coming in and you have people that have been doing things the same way over and over. And so, now all of a sudden they’re being challenged to think about things in a different way.
By the new guy. There’s no trust foundation there.
And so in short, I pretty much lost my entire team. That was fun. It was challenging. What was great about that though is we got to rebuild it, and we got to rebuild it in a manner that made sense for what we were trying to do. And I can quickly go through…it’s a team of five. Like with Michael, we call him Mabbey, Michael Abbey. He’s been in engineering, he’s been in customer service. He’s now service technician.
He worked on the production line, too.
That’s right. He worked on the production line. So, he’s kind of just a great utility guy. He’s our panel meister. Knows the panels backwards and forward. Very detail oriented. Emalee, gosh, she started at the front desk. And she was office manager. When, when I came in to meet you for lunch, she was the first person I met. Very happy go lucky. I had no idea that when we moved her, I knew that she had a certification in project management. But I had no idea what kind of…she is very tenacious and very diligent. And she’s now a project coordinator. She just gets it, in terms of how to communicate with contractors, how to run efficient projects, how to communicate with customers, just does an outstanding job. She’s also full-time right now at ECU. And, and so she’s getting it on both sides of the ball. I mean, she’s able to go through classes and then apply new knowledge, which is always a great thing when you have people that are fired up and they’re learning new stuff and then they’re able to immediately apply that in their daily work. So she’s doing a great job as a project coordinator. Logan, he is a quick start. He came in and just immediately started soaking up knowledge like a sponge, in terms of our product line, in terms of troubleshooting, in terms of installation and mounts. Logan’s done an incredible job. He’s been here probably about a year and a half now, is my guess. Coleman, he’s our lead technician. Talk about just knowledge of the nuts and bolts and troubleshooting and installation. He does a great job. He’s been here the longest on the service team in that role. I think Michael Abby’s probably been here the longest out of the folks that are on the team, but he’s bounced around a little bit. Coleman’s been a service technician since he got here. And then Will, the most recent hire, he’s a UNC grad.
*Applause*
He’s got some marketing in the background. And he gets it. You want to talk about somebody that really strives for a great customer experience. It doesn’t matter if he’s on the phone with somebody or emailing somebody or on a Teams meeting. He’s one of these guys that really, really wants to please the customer and find out a way to make that happen. Even in challenging situations, like rather than them being problems, we’ve talked about this, they’re challenges, they’re not problems. They’re challenges.
Opportunities.
And we mean that. We’re not just trying to sugarcoat something. We actually do mean that.
Yeah. And he embraces that. Like, he really does embrace that. Will’s done an amazing job. I will also say that, touching back on the technology piece, with our CRM and some of the workflows that we’re setting up and some of the new avenues that we’re creating streamlining processes through our CRM, really Emalee and Will have been my change agents and been very instrumental in terms of helping push those projects and continue to help development and continue to help get those things integrated. Not just put them in place, but they’re great change agents in terms of getting the word out and being able to train people and help people understand what it is that we’re trying to do here and what the end result is, what the end goal is.
Yeah. Very instrumental in that. So, when an existing customer reaches out to us, either through the contact us or the support on the webpage, or they pick up the phone and call us, 99% chance they’re talking to Will.
Yep. Absolutely. And we are implementing some AI, a chat bot on our website. We’ve got a low key version of that right now, but we’re going to be continuing to ramp that up to be able to, to hit knowledge base articles and be able to hit transcriptions from different videos, YAWA videos and things of that nature. We’ll implement some AI there to wherever a customer asks a question, AI is going to look at that question and look at the keywords and it’s going to go scrub things that we fed it, and it’s going to be able to say, Oh, it could possibly be one of three things and it’s going to spit out intelligent answers for possible solutions.
Most importantly, he has the greatest name of all time.
It came so easy for you to, I don’t know why I’d miss that. We’re sitting around talking about this chat bot. And it was at an offsite, right? And I forget what it was we were calling him at that point.
Sonix I think was the original 1.0.
And Jordan says, Dusty.
Name him Dusty.
And it was just like, done. Change approved.
Okay. There it is. Dusty. Yep. Change approved. Yeah. So, Dusty the chat bot. Yeah. And that’s great for after hours, weekends, nights, things like that. When we’re not available. And if it’s something simple, if it’s a quick self-help kind of thing. But then of course, we’ll as always available during normal hours to reach out to Will. Yeah. Will’s always backing it up.
Dusty doesn’t take sick days. He doesn’t take PTO. He’s never gone for continuing education. He’s always here just to serve you.
Right. Always on the job. Just like a SonicAire fan.
Yeah, that’s right. Completely automated. Dust is done.
That’s right.
So, Rob talking about how customers get in contact with us. What is the customer experience going to be? How are they going to get routed through, who are they going to talk to? What’s their life cycle going to look like with SonicAire?
So, one of the things that we worked on was, we know that there’s different vehicles for customers to be able to get in touch with us. They’re going to call us. They’re going to email us. Going forward, there’s going to be a chat bot that is going to be something that can use messaging.
And so, what we’ve done is, in our CRM, on the help desk side of things, we’ve set up some workflow automation. So, if you’re calling in, more than likely you’re going to get Will, and he’s going to kind of start that that conversation. A ticket’s going to be created, and then that ticket, depending on what the request is, whether it’s a part that is needed or if it’s a customer that’s needing a future installation, or if they need an onsite visit for a service, that’s routed to the appropriate person automatically. So, once that ticket is put in and assigned, then it goes to the correct place in service so it can be picked up by the person that’s responsible for that particular portion of the service.
So, same thing happens with emails. If a customer emails something in, again, it gets automated. There’s a ticket that’s created, and then depending on what that request is, it’s going to be routed and picked up.
We’ve got it to where, Will, from a standpoint of picking up the phone, is excellent at kind of starting that conversation. And if it’s in his Will house, he’ll certainly run with it. But, we’ve got enough process in place to where it quickly gets to the right place in service if it’s not Will that’s going to be the person that that’s solving the issue for you.
And that’s not always been a strength of ours. And since Will’s come on board, I’ve heard it repeatedly, almost monthly from our sales team. I’ve heard it from customers. Hey, Will is super responsive. And I know if I ask him something, I can’t forget about it because Will’s going to take care of it. And so, that’s great news for our customers to know that we’re going to support them in that way.
Yeah. One of the things that I’ll try to do in our quarterly meetings, I will try to highlight some of the feedback that we get from customers. And I’ve noticed with our entire service department, we get feedback from our customers about how great their communication is, how professional they are on site, just how willing that they were to jump into the issue and solve the issue. Super, super blessed to have the folks that we have on service, all of them get it, all of them get it.
And that’s, that goes into the who not how. So, if you get the right who’s, they’ll figure out the how and they’ll make it happen.
So where are we going? You built this department, and…
We’re actively trying to find an electrician, a master electrician to bring them on board now. That’s going to be huge in terms of being able to start certain turnkey servicing. Southeast Mid Atlantic, maybe even some of the Northeast. I think when we get that in place, it’s going to be the starting point of trying to grow and start putting crews where our current territory sales managers are. So I think that we’ll be growing resources. I think we see, and it benefits our customers, to have more resource for that support piece and the installation piece. So, I think we’re definitely heading that direction. Preventive maintenance is definitely something that we’ve been, for the last year, trying to develop. Preventive maintenance is one of those things that with customer education, a lot of our customers don’t know that it even exists. They just assume they get one of these systems installed and they just have to keep an eye on it. Well, it’s hard to see how a fan is responding or if it’s doing its job from 65 feet down. So, preventive maintenance, I think we are just now starting to get the word out that a proactive mindset or proactive approach and a predictable maintenance budget: those are two things that any company would look at and go, Yeah, I want that. And so that’s what we’re trying to tee up with the PMs. We’re trying to create programs that companies can be confident that they can pretty much set it and forget it. I mean, we can put it in place and make sure that it’s the right solution. And then once it’s in place, we’re not walking away. We’re showing up at least once a year, and we’re giving you touch points, and we’re adjusting it. We’re making sure that everything’s running copacetic, and we’re giving your reports saying here’s the proof that your stuff’s good. And, I think it’s just that ongoing long-term relationship. So, PMs, we’ll continue to hit those hard and continue to try to educate customers on how important they are.
While you’re talking about PMs, a lot of our customers have told us that their SonicAire fans are now part of their fire protection program. And they’re now outlined in their DHA. It’s part of their dust hazard analysis. It’s part of their plan. And so, it’s important that they work and that they stay working and that makes their insurance companies happy. It makes the fire marshals happy. It makes the OSHA inspectors happy. And it meets the compliance guarantee that we have as well. We guarantee you’ll be in compliance with those NFPA dust regulations, but we got to make sure the fans are operating and doing what they’re supposed to do. And so, this is a great way to guarantee that. And like you said, take it off the customer’s plate. They don’t have to think about it. They don’t have to worry about it. We got it. We got your back. And that’s completely automated, or automated intelligence. That’s what we’ve been calling it here lately, that’s a new AI, maybe even better AI there.
Yeah. I think the goal is to…I mean, customers got a limited set of resources. And they’re using their resources to do whatever it is they do best. And so, we want to allow them to be able to get back to doing that, whatever that is.
Absolutely.
The fans are more robust than ever. They’re rated for these nasty, hot, moist, whatever environments that are awful to work in. They’re rated for that, and they’re really robust, but they are machines, and they run in most cases, 24/7. So, they need a little love once in a while. They need a checkup. I mean, you wouldn’t drive your car for a year straight and not check the oil in it, or change it or something, put some washer fluid in it. So, why would you expect your fan to work in those kinds of environments, 24/7, 365, and not at least check on it once in a while.
And I think that’s one of the things that we’ve learned a lot this year, being at the different trade shows, is even in spite of the national emphasis programs and things like that, where you have to pay attention to the problem, they are starting to say like, this is an ongoing thing. You can’t just check the box. You can’t put in the filter. You can’t put in the fans. You can’t put in the bearing monitors, whatever. You have to make sure that they’re upkept, and we have to have records of that so that we can check it and make sure that when we’re doing our inspections, that we’re safe too. So, it is a big piece. And I think that’s one of the greatest things about the PM program is that we’re taking that burden away from the customer. Like you’re saying, you’re good at whatever you’re doing. We’re good at fans. Let us take care of the fans and you go do what you’re good at.
Yeah. Go make some money.
Yep. 100%. So, we will continue to hit PMs hard. I think the innovation for the IOT projects, like I’m really excited about that. Again, that falls right in my alley in terms of wanting to see where that solution matches what the issue is. And it ties into PM perfectly, because when we can start putting some intelligence into the fans where they’re monitoring and we’re giving active feedback to customers and we’ve got systems in place to where if you have a facility with a hundred fans in it and they’re 80 feet in the air and you’re getting feedback on a daily basis in terms of amperage or vibration or air quality or whatever it is that we want to monitor there, that takes it to a whole different level in terms of proactivity. Through predictive analysis, you can start looking at the probabilities of a fan having an issue as opposed to waiting for it to break and then going, Is it still running? You can’t even see 80 feet in the air.
We can call the customer before they realize that the fan is down, would be the ultimate goal.
So, I think that’s going to be one of the next iterations. And then internationally, like Europe is now, what’s the percentage?
Probably 20%.
20%. That’s what I was going to say is about 20%.
And growing, should be more.
So, I think after we get more facilities, more resources and people that are able to handle US, I think we start looking at international, getting that more robust.
Yeah. The needs are the same all over the world. The challenges are the same.
You know, you, you brought a book last year, as a plug for the book, 10x Is Easier Than 2x. You mentioned Unreasonable Hospitality. That was a great book in terms of customer experience mindset. 10x Is Easier Than 2x was another great mindset in terms of just
really looking at the who’s, and what’s going to move the needle. What is going to make our business be able to have a larger impact with customers and product and services. And that book has done great things in terms of me just sitting down and like whiteboarding things out. And maybe we won’t get to it for, you know, two, three years. But it’s on a whiteboard somewhere. It’s been transferred to somewhere where I can revisit it when we get to a place where I can go, Oh, that’s right, we do have a plan here. It’s a slow role at this point.
If I can brag on Rob for a little bit, I think this book more than anything just put a name to what he was already doing. Because I remember from the first interview, when we were talking to you and you know, we have a massive emphasis on culture here and it’s very protective and it’s who we are. It’s our lifeblood. It’s why we’re good and why we want to be good at things is because of our culture first and foremost. And, when it’s like, Hey, Rob, do you have any questions for us? He’s like, yeah, what are you going to do when you go from a 30 person organization to a 300 person organization? He’s like, you’re talking about these outings and the good times that you have and how you take care of each other, but how are you going to scale that to make sure? And he was literally 10Xing it before we had a name for it. And it was something that I immediately stole from him. I think before he even got hired, one of the things I started ripping from him was asking my team the question like, okay, yes, this is a problem. No, we can’t just skip over it today. Because as we scale, and as we grow, and we’re not experiencing this once a month, once a year, once every other year, and we start multiplying and growing in size, this is going to be an everyday problem. So, we need to kill it now. And so yeah, I think this, more than anything, was just lighting the fire under you and you’re like, Oh, this is putting a name to what I’ve been thinking about. And so, it’s been great as, as a whole team, as a whole company, all the departments and divisions buying in to this mindset.
It changes how you solve problems.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Yeah. To pull on that thread. I do the same thing with my team. Like we’ll see an issue and the comment will be made. Well, that only happens once a year.
Until it doesn’t.
As we grow, you’re going to see it, it’s going to be once every six months and it’s going to be once every three months. And it’s just going to continue to be more frequent. And so, we were at the C12 conference a couple of weeks ago and Taylor, you and I were in a session where the fella had been with Toyota for like 17 years and he was talking about eggs and medium gators and large gators.
Which ones do you attack first? Yeah. A great analogy for, if the big problem’s already there, the big problem’s already there. You’re going to solve it. You have to fix it, but let’s work on squashing the daily grind before it becomes and grows into a massive alligator.
I think one of the things that I thought was great was, this fella that was talking, he was from South Africa if I remember right. So, he kind of had an accent and it was just entertaining to listen to. And he brought it back full circle. Like when you’re talking about eggs and medium gators and large gators, and you can obviously apply that to business. But he said, it’s not just business. He said, if you’re leaving for work one day and your wife’s got a look on her face, then you probably have an egg. And if you don’t deal with it, you might have a gator when you get home.
Accurate.
The point is it’s a mindset, right? Whether you’re talking about professional or personal, there are eggs and medium gators and large gators. And so, when you catch onto that mindset, it just changes everything.
Well, there you have it folks, SonicAire solving your gator problems. Don’t let your dust, it’s a little egg right now. Don’t let it become a big gator.
All right. I think that about does it for today, Rob. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for taking some time to tell us your story and the SonicAire services story. I’m really excited about the next chapters and where this is going to go. Yes. And the result for the customer. Ultimately, what’s it all about.
Pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Thank you. All right. That’s it for another episode of the OnAire podcast. Thanks for following. Thanks for sticking around. Be sure to like and subscribe and follow us wherever you get your podcast. Rob beatbox us out of here.