LoadProof Video Testimonial – David Conover, Kenco

All right, so I’ll get started. Thank you, David, for taking the time to help us with this video interview. So, you know, where were you guys before? I mean, let’s start from the beginning. Before you guys started, where were you and what was the problem that you had? What were some of the frustrations? Also, if you could please start with the question of your business and your facility. That’ll be great.

Okay, so I’m major at the channel location, which handles pretty much all the Southeast except for most of Florida. We do service delivery, set up appliances and TVs, and take the old ones out and put the new ones in. So that’s kind of what we do. We started in March of last year. I was familiar with MercuryGate, which is a TMS, and was able to kind of use that to do our paperwork, basically reports and such. But they had a thing called Trucker Tools, which was a system we could use to track the trucks. They also could do delivery receipts through that, but it was very tricky with the connections on Wi-Fi sometimes.

The app was kind of weird. My system required me to go two or three layers into MercuryGate to find the link that actually was the courier receipt. I had to copy, paste, and send it. In a lot of situations, they’d have proof of a return that they got. It was time-consuming for operations to do that. So yes, that’s kind of what we did before.

When LoadProof came around, I know the King Co was involved in that. I talked to the Innovation Lab, and it helped out a lot because the drivers have the app on their phones. They can enter the information and get real-time pictures, and all that information is linked straight to ourselves. We can track where our drivers are and see full-time delivery receipts, real pictures of the new and old appliances and TVs. We have to get pictures and proof, so it really helps out.

We have real-time data, which allows us to know where the driver is, where he delivered, and it also gives us access to those pictures and delivery receipts. In return situations, they send a check to a customer, and they can only do that if they have a real delivery receipt. They can put in the order number or spreadsheet and find which deliveries had that order number, so it makes the customer get their check faster. The guys really love it. We use it every day, and it’s a great tool.

What was something that happened that made you think, “Oh man, we gotta have this”? You obviously have to justify the expense to the customer, right? What happened that made you decide to start using it? Well, we were literally having to manage everything manually. We started with one location in Chattanooga and Orlando, then moved to Denver and Portland. Now we have the East Coast and are looking to expand to Dallas, Chicago, and maybe Los Angeles.

Starting small, we had to manually go into each order and click multiple buttons to find the delivery receipt and attach it to an email for each person. There was no way we could have ever continued that way. When we realized how fast LoadProof could get us that information, it became clear that it was essential.

It helps immensely because we can see real-time data. If a driver has five stops, I can track where he is, so if he took a picture at one o’clock in Alabama, I know he’ll be in Tennessee by four o’clock. Being able to get that information in real time and issue checks quicker without all the processing was a big win for us.

Another issue we faced was with Trucker Tools. There were times the process of getting pictures and information from the driver just wasn’t reliable. I often missed pictures and would have to ask the drivers to email them to me.

We also talked to several other customers who found value in taking pictures of products when they showed up damaged. This way, we can document everything right before leaving the shipping dock. There’s a lot of time spent discussing how to prevent issues. We often had to research who worked on shipments and how things went wrong.

One thing we do is take pictures of all the old TVs we pick up. We send pictures to prove we didn’t damage them. Once every month or two, we’ll take about a hundred pictures and enter them into a couple of transactions. We can show the customer a picture of the screen when it left Chattanooga to prove we didn’t damage it.

The system makes it really easy to store those pictures and have them available for our customers. Luckily, we haven’t had to deal with damages much, but if there is ever a problem, we can easily enter that information.

Miss Wilson’s House
That, as you know, Miss Wilson’s house was scratched, and here’s some pictures. Put that under miscellaneous.

So, every block we use that also we were supposed to. So yeah, that’s just the—oh, I guess the EE of not being able to capture all that data in one place and be able to retrieve it. You know, I don’t like to be able to click, find a whole week of deliveries. I could click, put chatting again there, and show just mine, Mr. Orlando’s. They can spot date; you know, you can put it on Excel and print an Excel sheet with everything on there.

Yes, I just—there’s so many different ways that it helps out, I guess, you know, in the course of everything that we use it for.

Okay, so you guys took the old TVs and disposed of whatever it might be. You guys want the responsible disposing of the older TVs? Well, we think they only pick the old ones up. We have to take the old TV, bag it up, and then we get them together. They kind of redo this when it gets back up to some warehouse in Jersey. They end up recycling the screens, garden glass—my most important corn.

So that’s what we’re kind of proving to them, that hey, when it’s shipping out of Chattanooga, go back to Jersey. That screen looks good; it’s what it looks like. So, time claim process, you know, and as far as money’s concerned, we’re just kind of double ensuring our sales. Like, we didn’t damage the screen. So I said, you know, they’ve back to me and said, “Hey, can I get a picture of the screen of the house?” And yes, here it is.

Or like we did, we take pictures of the old and new serial numbers. You know, you’re supposed to verify which serial number they’re picking up, right? Because if we’re going to have three TVs, we can’t give you the wrong one. Well, remotes—a lot of the drivers get the wrong TV, or something happens. So I can always go back and look and see, “Oh, perv, you know, okay, John Smith’s TV.” I want to go back and see exactly what they picked up when they were there and look at the serial number. So I’ve used it for that also, you know, in the course of what I do in management.

So how would you describe the transformation? Right? I mean, what was the status before? How much time were you guys spending on dealing with this jellyfish, and then after you started using low propolis, how is life better? You know, what exactly could you please describe the transformation? You know, I guess the—well, you know, it’s just the other system we used would close a load out and order out in the system automatically.

You know, the way we look at trucker tools, we can kind of tell where a customer or driver is in the course of the route. You don’t want to close down; that’s a good school to use. I think just the whole aspect of it was probably 10 to 20 percent of orders they have or return onlys. It was just coming a real hassle to try to find the picture, which was literally embedded in Mercury Gate. Like, literally now, I don’t even have to do anything. Not sending emails; literally look them up themselves.

Oh, you know, it’s just, you know, two o’clock if we pick that TV up. Yeah, you know, I took delivery seats on the internet and get it like an enum that same day. You know, the lady’s behind on her emails or she’s not there that day. You know, it could make three or four days before they actually see that email to look at that delivery. And yeah, I think that’s the major thing. I think what I do got it.

So that’s made a significant difference for you guys. Basically, setting them as a cache, yes, leaving the map used to the pictures and the load details. It just—right—wait for any email. There is no email to come back and forth; they just go on, you know, log in and see.

How likely do you guys recommend Merlot for something else? Right? And if someone is on the fence thinking about that, it looks like it might help me—why should they act on it? When using is just, you know, I guess it’s whatever business scenario. Beginners, different businesses do different things. You know, I guess anything to do with actually recording data, you know, on top of, like I said, damages or that or, you know, capturing signatures.

You know, if a home inspector went out to a home, he could go out there and say, “This is David Conover’s home, and here’s his picture of his burrow, his picture of his sidewalk.” You know, no scratch an OD. It’s, you know, there’s just so many, I guess, things like that.

You know, I had a class last week, and one of the guys is a manager of the forklift division. We did an innovational visit, and low-proof was talked about. They talked about how he came and said he thought with his forklift division that he could use that to, like, say when they’re working on a forklift, and there’s a question maybe with a part or a situation. You can take a picture of it, or maybe at a customer’s house—”This is what the forklift looked like when we came; this is when we left.” You know, there’s just so many ways that you could use it. It just kind of pins into, you know, on the certain job and what details they have of it. Got it? Got it? Got it?

So what was your ROI like? You know, I mean, we have that reported, “Hey, be safe.” $10,000 under—it’s got to cost something. That’s like, you know, $100,000 plus for the entire year. You know, I mean, if that’s not a big deal, you know, what was your ROI like as far as money? As far as the money side, exactly—money saved or, you know, prevention. You know, you didn’t have to do the extra work. Also, in terms of labor, you know, you don’t have to go and redo checking, you know, talk to people, spend more time in meetings figuring out things and all that.

Yeah, you know, literally, I would say that he saved us—you know, if I did that, you know, I have made a hell; she works with me here and helps do a lot of our stuff. But when I was by myself, you know, it would take a week’s time, you know, to do that process of trying to find the receipts and all that kind of stuff. You know, it would probably be two or three hours a week that she was being working on that. Now, I don’t have to do it because love it so less. And plus, just the headache of doing it, and you know, times feeling when you could have been doing something else—example, product waiting on emails. Like you mentioned, at the other end, if that person is not there, then you’re just waiting for what happened, and that’s not going to sonam’s.

You know, especially, and I’m not telling them under the bus, but it’s not always good about answering emails back fast. So you know that person’s really waiting on their television. You know, it could be a week before they even see the email. You know, that’s just a whole another week before they get their money. And so, yeah, so it’s just, you know, I’m sure that whoever does that up there can just pull a spreadsheet and see the order by the order number, whatever. Know which guy? Here it is, here it is, here it is—own the checks reissue. Perfect.

But would you be able to, you know, put a number to the savings? Monthly basis or a yearly basis approximately, which is ballpark you see come out with Kymco with your white glove? Yeah, I say $20,000 plus. Like I said, it—you know, being able to really, you know, I guess the sky’s the limit. When you have damages, because like I said, if you had a picture of the television and something happened in the other system, the television didn’t come through good or something happened in the process. You know, with low proof, it’s 99% effective. Then you’re going to have that picture. So, you know, you might be talking about a $3,000 television here, and if I don’t have it, if I can’t find that picture to give that lady, there picked up the house from the serial number or whatever, you could be a pretty good claim. This isn’t having that photo of what we’re supposed to be doing.

Okay, so you guys will show the picture of, “Hey, you know, we did our job right. We delivered; we put on everything was great, and something a customer did, and they’re claiming it as claims even though, like, you know, I would fault.”

Right, right—very interesting. All right, I mean, they’ll see using—we also use it when going to a house. You know, we check off like, “Okay, well, here’s—she makes sure everything looks good in the house. You know, there’s no damages when we should go to up in when we left.” It’s the same. I asked her that she’d also prove, you know, “Hey, this is, you know, a signed receipt saying, ‘Hey, your house—you said that your house was fine.'” You know, that’s just another tool to be able to, like I say, we had 10,000 orders or just a huge pile of service. You know, if you had 40 claims, you know, where some of the house—you know, first we could go on the internet really quickly and find those, you know, those actual copies of that, you know, the house inspection, because here’s what show the lease for—you know, just, I guess, the speed of, you know, of process and, you know, in technology is really helpful.

Perfect, perfect. All right, thank you very much. I’ll Gordon stop recording this video.