Client Case Study with Meachers Global Logistics

Rather read it instead? Here’s the video transcript:

INTRODUCTION:

In today’s video I’m going to be talking with Gary Whittle from Meachers Global Logistics.

They are one of the UK’s leading independent providers of international freight and transport logistics services.

Meachers has been using Melu’s human live chat service since September 2021, primarily for lead generation.

It’s been very successful from day one, so let’s get into it and hear about Gary’s experience.

Lee: So, the first question is, we do a 14-day trial, free trial for all our new clients. And once you did that trial, you then moved straight onto a paid account and continued using our service. How easy a decision was that to make once you’d seen the benefits throughout the trial?

Gary: One of the easiest decisions I’ve made, I’ve taken in terms of our marketing strategy for some time to be honest, Lee.

Lee: Excellent.

Gary: It’s pretty straightforward from our perspective. We have, as I just mentioned earlier, we trade internationally, so we’re across a million different time zones with a million different people. And as such, we have to have a service that’s able to qualify the leads at any time, day or night. And when after 14, but to be honest, after two days of working with your team, it was absolutely obvious to us that we should have done it way before then. So, very simple decision in answer to your question.

Lee: Okay. Okay. And a kind of little side question to that then, which is interesting, something you just said there. You’ve obviously not had live chat before. Was it ever something that was brought up in any kind of marketing or sales kind of meetings? You know, should we have live chat on our site?

Gary: Yes, it was. And actually, it was dismissed predominantly because of our lack of understanding of the costs associated with it. So, I think naively our view was, when I say ours, I probably mean mine. But naively my view was it would be really, a relatively expensive function and our consumers, of how qualified those leads would be and how much information we could disseminate for a third party. What was clear very quickly in talking to your good selves was how cost effective that solution was. But probably more importantly for us was the quality of leads and the initial engagement that your team provided. We didn’t think anyone could do it as well as we did, again naively, and that wasn’t the case.

Lee: Excellent. Well, that’s great. That’s a great kind of story of the thought process because I think that’s something that commonly comes up with discussions I have with businesses when they think about live chat. It’s either the cost of it by doing it internally, I think is what most people think of. Having people there around the clock, training them, covering their breaks, their holidays, all the stuff that goes with it is a huge cost for any business. And of course the bigger you are, the more of them you need because you get more chats coming through, more people on your website. So, it’s really interesting to hear your thought there because that’s kind of the exact problem that Melu tries to fix. It’s that feeling that someone else is looking after it at a very reasonable cost, but they are literally the next best thing from you doing it yourself.

Gary: Yeah, I think we have to, and we do this with almost every other strategic partner we have. Whether it be operational or from a sales and marketing perspective. And actually it’s interesting, our viewpoint was, you know, we have to trust the people that we’re employing to do these things. And in a very famous quote, you know, “Don’t get electrician in then tell him how to wire a plug up.”

Lee: Exactly.

Gary: We aren’t professional marketeers. And actually, our guys are incredibly good when they’re around to be able to respond to enquiries. But interestingly because of the range of services we offer as an organisation, I sort of alluded to those a little bit earlier. Like, they are so broad. So it’s rare that someone rings and contacts us and actually you can speak to the right person the very first time. It’s just not the nature of our organisation. And actually, it’s only such that someone sat back and said, “Well, why do we think we’re the only ones that can do everything? You know, why don’t we get people that know what they’re doing to have a look at it?” And it was just, it was so clear to us that with the proper training that your guys have got, they can disseminate that information, they can look professional, they can give us the right image and cover the kind of hours that we need covering, allowing the guys that do the specific operational work to get on with that and then dip in as and when required.

Lee: Yeah. Perfect.Well, that’s great and we’re really pleased that it works in that way and that you feel that way about it. It definitely feels like that’s the kind of value that we add to the website when you have the visitors come on. So, that’s great to hear. Thank you.

The next question, it’s kind of following on from that. If there were people coming to your website before and there wasn’t live chat, what would they do instead? Would they pick up the phone? Would they email? Would they have to send a form? How would that work normally without live chat?

Gary: So, historically what we have done is a combination of a couple of those things. So, start really trying to point people at a sort of pro forma enquiry document that they would complete. And if I’m honest, that doesn’t work fantastically well because it’s a very fine line between asking too much information in which case people were switched off by getting involved in it. They obviously bring up the application form or the information form, and realise they’ve gotta spend 25 minutes filling out some documentation that allows us to put that in the right place or just giving a free text box, which means we then have to spend god knows how long trying to disseminate whether that was actually a useful enquiry for us and who it’s to go to.

Lee: Right.

Gary: So from our perspective, we ended up with a combination of either direct sort of sales, “I’ve had a look at your website. We’re really interested in talking to you.” And then, a huge amount of email exchanges. Not always as timely as we would like which is what exactly, what is it you’re after? And then you get a little piece of information and then we have to go back with a few more questions, and then they come back with a little bit of information. So, the whole process took too long.

Lee: True.

Gary: It was then incredibly difficult for our internal sales team to appoint the right individual to answer the enquiry. When an inquiry was quite broad, certainly on the free tech side of it, it would be, “I wanna talk to someone about logistics.” Well, I’ve got 40 people you could talk to. Which ones and what’s the engagement here? What does it look like for us? So, it was a combination of two. So, a form that I don’t think everyone completed.

Lee: Yeah.

Gary: In this modern day people aren’t willing and necessarily wanting to spend 20 minutes completing a broad document for a speculative enquiry. So, we had some that came through there. Some that just emailed us direct and I have absolutely no doubt we had some that just didn’t bother to communicate.

Lee: Sure, sure. And I think that’s the one we’re trying to catch here, isn’t it? Because everyone has different preferences to the way they communicate. You know, there are phone people, there are email people. If I can do a lot more, I would say this of course, but me personally, I would jump on a live chat ahead of making a phone call because it’s more convenient for me and you can do other things while you’re doing it. So, maybe there’s some people there that just weren’t prepared to make a phone call, weren’t prepared as you say, fill in that form. And therefore, they were a lost opportunity because it could have been something.

Gary: Absolutely. And the stats that we have to support that are you know, we have 60, 70 chats per month roughly through your service. And I wonder of those 60 or 70 that didn’t engage in that particular way historically, how many of those would’ve ended up? And certainly our stats prove that the retention rate of those enquiries are a lot higher since we’ve been using your service. Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re always going to end up in terms of some sort of sales activity, but that’s not really what you’re designed to do. That’s us, up to us to sell our wares.

Lee: Yep.

Gary: The other thing I would say has been a huge benefit to us, Lee, is actually that dissemination internally. We’ve stopped a lot of internal discussions. When an enquiry comes in through a live chat and your guys have gone through their due process, we know it’s a UK warehousing requirement for bonded goods in a particular type of facility. So, I can narrow that down very quickly so I don’t have to involve 4, 5, 6 people across three or four emails internally to get back to the customer, both in terms of the timing that takes to get back to the customer and keep them engaged. But also as importantly, tying up five or six people for 20 minutes on an enquiry that’s of no interest to them.

Lee: Sure.

Gary: So we’ve become a lot slicker, a lot quicker, a lot more professional in terms of how we respond.

Lee: Amazing. Well, that’s a really good hidden benefit there. The fact that it’s helped you streamline that kind of process internally. So, fantastic. Final question. So, well actually we just kind of, we’ve touched on that. So, the time that we are there for you. Originally, we did 24 hours. So, we trialed your first 14 days in the next couple of months. We are with you for 24/7 to try and capture that fact that you do have clients in different countries and different time zones, and they might visit completely outside of normal hours. We’re now back to the standard 8 till 10, seven days a week. That I presume is a good benefit because of the fact that there are people there at the very end of the day, and beyond into the evening.

Gary: Correct. Absolutely. And again, we’ve seen a significant increase in European enquiries for obvious political reasons which we don’t need to enter into in this chat. So, we have seen a proliferation of European road conversations. And again, what you’ve managed to do is help us filter a lot of those. Before, that would be an awful lot of enquiries coming through the, we couldn’t necessarily point in the right direction because people didn’t really know what it is they wanted. So, having that focus time allows us to do that and manage that, I think, either end of the working day for us which is quite useful because operationally we’re busy 24/7.

Lee: Of course. Perfect. That is brilliant. Well, that’s the questions done. So, really all I wanted to do now, Gary, is just ask you just for some general feedback, would you recommend other businesses use live chat in general? Would you recommend Melu to other businesses? How’d you feel, your overall feeling about the service?

Gary: I think I hopefully summed it up throughout this conversation. And as to your questions. Yes I would, yes I would and yes I have, so. All joking aside, Lee. No, it’s been a real, if I’m honest, we entered into it not really knowing what we were signing up to. It felt like it was the right thing to do but we weren’t really sure the benefits or the cost. What’s absolutely clear to us, this is going to be part of our ongoing sales and marketing strategy for years to come because it works incredibly well. I would suggest that we, you need to make sure that the partner you work with understands your business and I think you guys spend a lot of time up front doing that.

Lee: Yep.

Gary: And I think that reaped its rewards. I think understanding the complexities of how we work and what that looks like, but also from our expectation, I think that that needed to be sensible. I think it needs to understand what it is you deliver. You are not going to deliver lots of sales for us. That’s not your job. And I think sometimes internally the marketing team were, well that’d be a much more business would be one, but that’s got nothing to do with Melu, that’s down to us. Their job is just to filter that process and smooth that out for us, which has been incredibly successful.

Lee: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you being a client and it’s great to hear that you want to continue using our service into the future. So once again, thanks for your time and we’ll speak again soon, Gary.

Gary: My pleasure. Thank you, Lee.