Harrowden Foods / BB-Demo – Onboarding
Callcompleted
Harrowden Foods · 2026-02-25 13:30
Gemma Holt reported the brain cut a retailer review pack to under an hour and asked to bring customer service on. Hamza Akhtar held the invite until the Zendesk records are confirmed complete.
What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26Gemma Holt reported the brain cut a retailer review pack to under an hour and asked to bring customer service on. Hamza Akhtar held the invite until the Zendesk records are confirmed complete.
What happened: On the 25 Feb 2026 onboarding call, Gemma opened with a win: account managers built a retailer review pack in under an hour. Hamza then walked the connector list: Salesforce live, Zendesk configured and under watch, Microsoft 365 partly done, Xero waiting on a finance owner.
Customer view: Gemma wants Kelly Sharpe's customer service team on the brain and was relieved it should cost nothing extra on Growth. She is wary of the Zendesk gap because Kelly will judge it on first use.
Commercial: Growth covers 40 users and about five are active, so the service team fits inside the licence. The ordering system is the next connector Gemma wants, which would deepen use within the tier.
Watch: Gemma is the only admin, and Xero has no finance owner yet.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Onboarding, service team rollout
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Hamza Akhtar to confirm the Zendesk records are complete and give Gemma a clear yes or no.
- Hamza to email the folder list and second admin request for Gemma's IT colleague.
- Gemma to find who administers the ordering system and how many people Kelly has, by the end of the following week.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- The Zendesk connector had missing tickets and is still unconfirmed, so a poor first experience could lose the customer service team.
- Gemma is the only admin, so nobody else can add users or change a connector if she is away or moves on.
- Xero has no finance owner and Microsoft 365 is only partly connected, so the planned scope is not yet live.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Bringing Kelly Sharpe's customer service team onto the brain fits inside the Growth user licence and would widen adoption.
- The ordering system is the next connector Gemma wants, so complaints and orders could sit together.
Transcript
Gemma Holt NoneHello, hello. Can you hear me okay? I've got the headset on today because the office is, well, it's a bit lively.
Hamza Akhtar NoneLoud and clear. Afternoon, Gemma. Can you see my screen yet or shall I wait until we need it?- Gemma Holt NoneNot yet, no, just your face. Which is fine. Hamza, before we start, I have to tell you something. The account managers used the brain on Monday to pull together the retailer review pack for one of our big supermarket customers. Usually that takes someone most of a day.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOh, that's good to hear. How long did it take them this time?
- Gemma Holt NoneUnder an hour, and they actually trusted it. They'd got complaints, orders and the service-level misses all in one answer. Honestly the account managers love it. I've been grinning all week.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneBrilliant. That's exactly what we hoped it would do for you. Right, so, today. I've put together a short plan for the onboarding. We've got you on the Growth tier, so you've got up to eight connectors and forty users. I'd like to walk through which connectors are live, which are still to do, and who owns what on your side. Does that sound sensible?
- Gemma Holt NoneSounds sensible. Fire away.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay, I'll share my screen. Give me a second. There we go. Can you see the connector list?
- Gemma Holt NoneYep, I can see it. Salesforce at the top, then a few greyed out ones.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneRight. So Salesforce is live and it's loading nicely, that's where your retailer accounts and contacts come from. Zendesk is configured, but I want to check it with you because I think that's the one with the ticket you raised last week. Is that right?
- Gemma Holt NoneYes, that was me. I flagged it high priority because it looked like some of the customer service tickets weren't coming through, and I didn't want anyone to look at the numbers and think we had no complaints. Which would be lovely, but no.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHa, no. Fair enough. And you were right to flag it. As far as I can see from here it's been picked up, and the records have started to move again. I'll confirm that properly with the team before we leave this call, because I don't want to tell you it's fixed and then have you find a gap on Friday.
- Gemma Holt NoneThank you. I'd rather know. I never mind a problem, I just hate not knowing about it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneUnderstood. Then next on the list is Microsoft 365, which gives us the mailboxes and shared drive documents you agreed in the scoping. That's partly done. We've got the commercial insights folders in, but not the wider shared drive yet. Is that deliberate, or did we just run out of road?
- Gemma Holt NoneA bit of both, I think. Our IT person was nervous about opening up the whole drive. There's a lot of stuff in there from before my time, supplier contracts, HR bits, you name it. I'd rather keep it to the commercial and customer folders for now.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat makes sense, and it's a sensible way to start. We can always widen it later. What I'd suggest is that your IT colleague gives us a list of the folders we're allowed to read, and we only connect to those. Then there's nothing ambiguous.
- Gemma Holt NoneYeah, that'd keep him happy. I'll ask him today. Actually, will you send me a note of exactly what you need? He likes things in writing.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOf course. I'll send a short email after this call with the folder question and the permissions we need. Plain English, no jargon. Now, Xero. This is the one I want to understand better. Your contract mentions finance data, but nobody has told me who on your side looks after that.
- Gemma Holt NoneRight. So that would be our finance team, and I'm not the owner of it. Rajesh would need to be involved in that conversation as well, because it's his budget area and he'll want to know what the brain can see. I can introduce you, but I'd rather not say yes on his behalf.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNo, that's absolutely fine. I'd prefer it that way. So I'll mark Xero as waiting on a finance owner, and you'll get me an introduction. Would it help if I wrote a couple of lines you could forward, explaining what we'd read and what we wouldn't?
- Gemma Holt NoneThat would help loads. He's quite quick if you give him the short version.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneShort version it is. Right, so that's Salesforce live, Zendesk configured and under watch, Microsoft 365 partly done, Xero waiting on finance. That's four. We've got room for more under Growth, so I'm interested in what else you'd actually use.
- Gemma Holt NoneOkay, so the big gap for us is orders. We've got the ordering system that the planners use, and that's where we see what each supermarket actually ordered against what we delivered. Without it we can see the complaint but not whether we shipped short.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneRight, that's a real gap, because the whole idea is that complaints, service levels and orders sit together. Who looks after the ordering system?
- Gemma Holt NoneIt's the operations side, one of the planning leads, I'd have to find out who has admin. I'm fairly sure it's not me. Can I come back to you on that?
- Hamza Akhtar NoneYes, please. That's probably the most valuable thing we can add next, so if you can get a name by the end of next week, I can start the technical check with them. I'll put you down as the person chasing it.
- Gemma Holt NoneThat's fine. I'm good at chasing. Ask anyone.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneI believe you. Now, the thing I wanted to ask about users. At the moment the usage numbers are quite small. On average about five people are active in a given day. That's roughly the account managers and you, right?
- Gemma Holt NoneYeah, that's us. The account managers, me, and one of the analysts who's started dipping in. And that's actually what I wanted to raise. Can we get customer service on?
- Hamza Akhtar NoneI was hoping you'd say that.
- Gemma Holt NoneKelly Sharpe runs customer service and she's been asking me about it since the first demo. Her team spends half their day jumping between the helpdesk and spreadsheets to answer a supermarket's question about a late delivery. If they could just ask the brain, it would change their week. So what would it cost to add them?
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHere's the good news. You're licensed for forty users on Growth, and as you've only got about five active, there's plenty of room. So adding Kelly's team shouldn't cost you anything extra on the subscription. It would only come to a cost question if you went over forty.
- Gemma Holt NoneOh, that's really good. I'd assumed we'd have to go back and ask for more money. How many people has Kelly got? I think it's about a dozen, but let me check. I don't want to say a number and be wrong.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNo, please check. Roughly a dozen is easily inside the limit anyway. The bit that matters more is the Zendesk connector, because that's what makes the brain useful for them. That's the one we need to be sure about before we invite them. If their first experience is missing tickets, they won't come back.
- Gemma Holt NoneYes. Yes, absolutely. Kelly's the kind of person who'll try it once and decide. So let's make sure it's right first.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneAgreed. So here's what I'd propose. We hold the customer service invitation until I've confirmed the helpdesk records are complete. I'll come back to you with a clear yes or no. Then I'd do a short training session just for Kelly's team, built around their own tickets, not a generic demo.
- Gemma Holt NoneLove that. Can I sit in on it? I'd like to see how they react, and I can help answer the 'what's it for' questions.
- Hamza Akhtar NonePlease do. You'd be the best person in the room. Okay, let me switch the screen to the user list and I'll show you what's there at the moment, and then we can talk about who should be an admin.
- Gemma Holt NoneGo for it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneSo at the moment you're the only admin. Which is fine today, but if you're on holiday or you move on to another role, nobody can add users or change a connector. I'd recommend a second admin. Ideally someone technical, perhaps the IT colleague you mentioned.
- Gemma Holt NoneHmm. He'd probably be willing. He's careful, so he'd be good at it. I'm just worried he'll treat it as a big deal and want a meeting about it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHa. Well, it's not a big deal, it's mostly adding people and keeping an eye on connectors. I can put it in the same email as the folder question, so he sees it all at once.
- Gemma Holt NoneThat's sneaky, but fine. Yes, do that.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneRight. Let me just look at what else we've got. Records indexed look healthy for Salesforce and they're climbing for the mailboxes. Zendesk is the one I'll watch. And, sorry, one more thing. Do you have a regular day when your systems change? Like a release or a clean-up? Because when somebody changes a field name in the CRM, a connector can quietly stop loading.
- Gemma Holt NoneHmm, I don't think there's a regular day. Our CRM admin just does things when they're needed. But I can ask her to tell us before she changes anything big. I'll mention it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat would help a lot. Even a quick message to you, and you pass it to me. Then I can check the brain afterwards instead of finding out three weeks later from a complaint.
- Gemma Holt NoneDone. I'll tell her this afternoon. Can I ask a different question? What happens with the nightly refresh? Because the account managers asked me last week whether the brain was live or a day behind.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGood question, and the honest answer is a day behind, in a controlled way. There's a refresh overnight, and it should be complete by seven in the morning your time on business days. So if someone asks at nine, they're looking at yesterday's close of business. It's not minute by minute.
- Gemma Holt NoneRight, that's fine. That's what I assumed, I just wanted to say it properly to them. For the retailer reviews it doesn't matter. For customer service, hmm, they might care if a call came in this morning.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's worth saying to Kelly upfront. For today's call they'd still use the helpdesk itself, and the brain is for the patterns and the history. If it's set up as the place to look things up, rather than the place to log them, I think it works well.
- Gemma Holt NoneYeah, that makes sense. Look things up, not log them. I'll use that line.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneUse it freely. Okay, I think we've covered most of it. Let me read back what I've got, and tell me if I've got anything wrong. One, I confirm the Zendesk records with our team and come back to you. Two, I send you an email with the folder list request and the second admin request for your IT colleague. Three, I write the two lines about Xero for you to send to finance.
- Gemma Holt NoneYep. And four, I find out who owns the ordering system, and I check how many people Kelly has.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneExactly. And five, we plan a training session for customer service once the helpdesk data is confirmed. I'll suggest a couple of slots next week and you can pick what suits Kelly.
- Gemma Holt NonePerfect. And I'll mention it to Lewis as well if he calls. Is that okay? He'll want to know customer service is joining.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOf course. Lewis is your account owner on our side and Amara is your customer success contact, so they'll both be pleased. I'll let Amara know too, so she can plan the first check-in around the wider rollout.
- Gemma Holt NoneGreat. Thanks, Hamza, this has been really useful. I feel a lot clearer on what happens next.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGlad to hear it. Speak soon, Gemma, and well done on the retailer pack. Take care.
- Gemma Holt NoneCheers, Hamza. Bye for now.
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