Harcastle Environmental / BG-Demo – Check In
Callcompleted
Harcastle Environmental · 31 Oct 2025 09:00
Nicola Brearley says the brain is working and wants to keep it past April, though she will not commit budget. Usage is up, about a fifth of seats are used daily, and she wants the North East account managers brought on.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Nicola Brearley says the brain is working and wants to keep it past April, though she will not commit budget. Usage is up, about a fifth of seats are used daily, and she wants the North East account managers brought on.
What happened: Marcus Bell walked Nicola through usage, connectors and support. Questions asked and daily users are up, all connectors load, and there were no tickets in the last month.
Customer view: Nicola told the café group story as proof of value. Her worry is adoption, not the tool: forty seats are licensed and the daily number is a bit under eight, with North East account managers barely using it.
Commercial: The term runs to 10 Apr 2026 and renewal is 11 Apr 2026, with £40k a year on the order form matching invoices. Nicola said she is not committing budget and would take it to the budget holders.
Watch: Her wish to keep going past April is explicitly not a commitment. Marcus offered a North East session and a dashboard build, and will bring Lewis in nearer the renewal.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Adoption and renewal horizon
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Marcus Bell to send Tuesday or Wednesday slots after 10:00 for a thirty minute North East session and a twenty minute dashboard build.
- Marcus Bell to send the usage summary with the order form figure that afternoon.
- Marcus Bell to bring Lewis in nearer the renewal, giving Nicola a heads up first.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Only about a fifth of the forty licensed seats are active on a good day, and North East account managers barely use it.
- Nicola is not committing budget and would need to take the renewal to the people who hold it.
- Nicola fears usage depends on a few people, though Marcus said the numbers do not show that now.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A North East session on their own accounts could widen adoption within the forty seats.
- Building a complaints by customer type dashboard deepens the customer's own investment in the brain.
- Nicola wants to keep the brain going past April, which supports a renewal conversation.
Transcript
Marcus BellMorning, Nicola. Can you hear me alright?
Nicola BrearleyMorning Marcus, yes, loud and clear. Sorry, I've literally just come off another call. Give me ten seconds, I'm shutting the door.- Marcus BellNo rush at all. It's Friday, nobody's expecting anything sensible before nine.
- Nicola BrearleyHa. Right, I'm here. Do you want the week's worst complaint before we start, because I've got one, and it's a good one for you actually.
- Marcus BellGo on, I'd like that. Happy to hear it.
- Nicola BrearleySo. A café group, four sites, one of them had a missed collection on Tuesday. Bins out on the pavement all day, owner furious, ready to ring us and shout. Except the account manager had already seen it. She'd got the missed-collection ticket, the last two calls and the invoice all on one screen, and she rang them before they rang us.
- Marcus BellThat's exactly what you bought it for, isn't it.
- Nicola BrearleyIt is. Which depot, which round, what's the fix and who owns it, all in one go. She had the answer before she picked up the phone. Two years ago she'd have been in three systems and still guessing.
- Marcus BellBrilliant. Honestly, I'll take that as the headline for today. Is it all right if I share my screen? I've pulled the numbers and I want to walk you through a few things.
- Nicola BrearleyPlease do. I'm assuming it's good news, you sound too cheerful for it not to be.
- Marcus BellIt's mostly good. Let me get this up. Can you see the usage page?
- Nicola BrearleyNot yet. Just your desktop. Oh, there it is. Yes, I've got it.
- Marcus BellGreat. So what I want to cover is three things. How people are using it, whether anything's been stuck on the connector side, and then what you want from the next few months. Sound all right?
- Nicola BrearleyThat's a list of three, I approve. Go.
- Marcus BellOkay, usage first. Over the last month you've had a bit under eight people active on an average day. Compared with the quarter before, that's up by more than a third. So it's moving the right way.
- Nicola BrearleyThat tracks. We moved a few more of the account managers over in September. They'd been holding out, to be fair, because they thought it was another report they'd have to read.
- Marcus BellAnd the questions asked are up too. That's the number I care about most, because it tells me people are actually asking the thing things rather than just logging in and looking at a page.
- Nicola BrearleyWho's asking most? Is it me? Please don't say it's me.
- Marcus BellHa. You're near the top, I won't pretend otherwise. But it's not just you. There's a spread now, a few account managers are in the top group, and one of your route planning people is quite regular.
- Nicola BrearleyThat'll be the planning lead. He asks it about rounds that overrun, which is slightly different from what I had in mind but I'm not going to stop him.
- Marcus BellNo, that's good. That's what I'd want to see, people finding their own use for it.
- Nicola BrearleyMm. So the thing I always worry about is that it's me and two other people and the day I'm off sick it goes quiet.
- Marcus BellThat's a fair worry, and it's not what the numbers show at the moment. If I take you out of the picture, the shape is still healthy. I'd still keep an eye on it, that's all.
- Nicola BrearleyFine. Keep an eye on it and tell me if I start to dominate.
- Marcus BellWill do. Right, connectors. Let me scroll down. So these are all loading as expected. Collections, the ticketing side, the call recorder, the CRM and the accounting system. Records indexed have gone up steadily, nothing flat, nothing that looks like a source has gone quiet.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. I'd have expected someone to shout if that was broken, but you never know. We changed a field name in the collections system a while back and I did wonder.
- Marcus BellYeah, that's the sort of change that can cause a connector to stop loading properly. It hasn't here, so whoever did it must have flagged it through the proper route. Or got lucky.
- Nicola BrearleyProbably lucky. I'll find out who it was and tell them to keep doing it.
- Marcus BellAnd on the support side there's nothing to report. No tickets from you in the last month, nothing high priority, nothing overdue. Which is either a very good sign or means you've all gone silent on me.
- Nicola BrearleyNo, no, it's a good sign. If it broke I'd have been on to you within the hour, you know that. I don't let things sit overnight.
- Marcus BellI do know that. Just wanted to say it out loud for the record.
- Nicola BrearleyRight. So, the thing I actually wanted to ask. You've got forty seats on there, and we're using, what, a fifth of them on a good day?
- Marcus BellRoughly that, yes. Forty licensed, and the daily number is a bit under eight. Though more than that have logged in at some point this month, so the actual named group is bigger.
- Nicola BrearleyThat's where I want to push. We've got account managers in the North East who've barely touched it. Different depots, different habits. They've got the same complaints coming in and they're still ringing the office to ask what happened.
- Marcus BellRight. So what do you think is holding them back? Is it that they don't know it's there, or they don't trust it, or it's not in the way of how they work?
- Nicola BrearleyBit of all three, honestly. Let's see it from their side. They've done the job for years. Someone tells them there's a new screen, they nod, they carry on doing it the old way. Nobody's shown them a case where it saved them an afternoon.
- Marcus BellSo the café group story is the case.
- Nicola BrearleyThat's the case. I'm going to tell that one at the team meeting on Monday, to be honest.
- Marcus BellCan I help with that? Happy to jump on a call with the North East team, thirty minutes, show them on their own customers. Not a generic demo, I'd rather pick three or four of their real accounts and walk through what the brain shows.
- Nicola BrearleyYes. Yes please. That would land much better than me telling them. Can you do it before the end of next week?
- Marcus BellI think so. Let me look at my diary and I'll send you a couple of slots this afternoon. Would mornings suit them?
- Nicola BrearleyMornings are better. After ten, before the first lot of complaints really build up. Tuesday or Wednesday would be best, Thursdays are depot visits.
- Marcus BellNoted, Tuesday or Wednesday after ten. I'll put it in writing so it's not just on a call.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. Now the other thing, and I'm slightly nervous raising it. Contract. We're coming up on the April date, aren't we?
- Marcus BellWe are. The term runs to 10 Apr 2026 and the renewal date is 11 Apr 2026. That's still a way off, but it's worth saying out loud that it's on the horizon.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd who do I talk to about that? You, or Lewis?
- Marcus BellBoth, but in different ways. I'll pull together the usage and the value side, what's changed since you started, what people are asking, that sort of thing. Lewis owns the commercial terms, so anything on the contract itself goes through him.
- Nicola BrearleyOkay. Because I'm going to be asked what it costs and what we get for it, and I'd rather have the answer ready than be caught out.
- Marcus BellUnderstood. Just so we're on the same page, it's £39,600 a year on the order form, and that matches what's been invoiced. I won't get into anything beyond that, because that's Lewis's side, but I'll make sure you've got the figure and the usage together.
- Nicola BrearleyThat's fine. That's all I need for now. I'm not committing any budget on this call, I'd have to take it to the people who hold it anyway.
- Marcus BellOf course. No pressure from my end. It's more that I'd like you to see it coming, and for there to be a picture you're happy with when you do.
- Nicola BrearleyI appreciate that. Most suppliers ring me a month before and act surprised I've got questions.
- Marcus BellHa, yeah, I'd rather not be that. So, plan is, I'll write up the usage summary after today and send it over, and we'll use it as the base when we talk to Lewis nearer the time. Is it all right if I loop him in at that point?
- Nicola BrearleyYes, loop him in. He's very nice, I just never know when he's going to ring.
- Marcus BellI'll tell him to give you a heads up first. Right, can I show you one more thing on the screen? I wanted to flag the dashboards, because you've built a couple and I wasn't sure if anyone was using them.
- Nicola BrearleyOh, the missed-collection one? That's mine. And there's another one that the planning lead made, I think, about overruns.
- Marcus BellThat's the one. They've both had a fair few views in the last few weeks. That's a sign people are using them, not just you.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. I'd quite like one that shows complaints by customer type, so we can see whether it's the big contracts or the little ones that keep ringing. Is that something I can do myself?
- Marcus BellYou can, yes, the builder's there for that. It's a case of picking the ticket data and the customer segment. If you want, I'll sit with you for twenty minutes and we'll build it live. Might be easier than me describing it.
- Nicola BrearleyTwenty minutes I can find. Let's put it in the same slot as the North East session, or just after.
- Marcus BellPerfect. I'll offer both together so it's one invite.
- Nicola BrearleyNow, can I ask something slightly awkward?
- Marcus BellGo for it.
- Nicola BrearleyIf I did bring more account managers on, would that be a problem? We're at forty seats. I don't know how many I'd actually add, but if it went beyond that, what happens?
- Marcus BellIt wouldn't be a problem today, you're nowhere near it. Forty is the number included, and you've got plenty of room. If it ever got close, that would be a conversation with Lewis about options, and I'd flag it early so it isn't a surprise.
- Nicola BrearleyOkay. I just didn't want to roll it out to the whole team and then find out I'd tripped something.
- Marcus BellNo, you haven't and you won't for a while. Honestly the bigger question is the one you've already raised, getting the people who have a seat to actually use it.
- Nicola BrearleyAgreed. Seats are easy. Habits are hard.
- Marcus BellRight. Is there anything on the data side you've noticed that doesn't look right? Anything that's felt stale, or an answer that didn't match what you knew?
- Nicola BrearleyNot really. There was one answer a few weeks ago where the call summary was a day behind, but I think that was me asking before the overnight refresh had finished. By the afternoon it was fine.
- Marcus BellThat sounds right. The refresh completes first thing on working days, so if you ask very early you can catch it halfway. If it happens again in the afternoon, tell me straight away and I'll look.
- Nicola BrearleyWill do. Honestly I think the biggest risk to this isn't the tool, it's us getting busy and not looking at it.
- Marcus BellThat's pretty much the only thing I worry about too. Which is why I'd like to keep the check-ins regular, and use them for what you're actually trying to do rather than just reading numbers at you.
- Nicola BrearleyI'd like that. This was useful. Better than the last supplier call I had, where somebody read me a slide for forty minutes.
- Marcus BellHa, I'll try not to do that. Let me recap so we both know who's doing what. Is that okay?
- Nicola BrearleyPlease. I'll write it down.
- Marcus BellOne. I'll send you a couple of slots on Tuesday or Wednesday after ten for the North East session, using their own accounts, thirty minutes. Two. Straight after that, or in the same invite, we sit down for twenty minutes and build the complaints by customer type dashboard together.
- Nicola BrearleyYes. And three?
- Marcus BellThree. I'll send the usage summary this afternoon, with the order form figure alongside it, so you've got it ready for when anyone asks. And when we're nearer the renewal I'll bring Lewis in, with a heads up to you first.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. And on my side, I'll tell the account managers about the café group on Monday, and I'll find out who changed that field name so we can make sure it's logged properly next time.
- Marcus BellThat's all of it as far as I can see. Anything I've missed?
- Nicola BrearleyOnly that I'd like to keep this going past April. Not a commitment, before you quote me. But the account managers would be lost without it now, whatever they say.
- Marcus BellThat's good to hear, and I won't quote you. I'll just make sure the summary says what the numbers say. If it's a good picture, it'll speak for itself.
- Nicola BrearleyRight. I'd better go and see what the week's done to the depots. Thanks, Marcus, this was a good one.
- Marcus BellThanks, Nicola. Have a good weekend, and I hope the bins stay on the lorries.
- Nicola BrearleyFrom your mouth. Speak soon. Bye.
- Marcus BellBye.
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