Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, Steven, appreciate your time coming out here. I know we've worked together for a couple years now, so I've got to finally meet you here at the conference. So thanks for taking time to come over to the show. And so we'd like to learn a little bit more about your business and what you do and how it's relevant obviously for RV park owners.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Nice to put a face to it. It was nice meeting you. We've worked with you for a while. Noticed your parks are at least 3G has a lot of last minute travelers and it's nice to be able to capture them when they're on the road.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah. On their way to Ruidoso. A lot of them. Yeah.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
Yeah. It was exciting that, that one time we were slam packed full. That was pretty rewarding, I think.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It's been an ebb and flow with that west Texas park, but yeah, that's part of the industry.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Because I always feel like you got to make constant adjustments and everything.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: So why don't you tell folks about your business and what you guys do and problems you solve and how you can be helpful for parks.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm with campground support. We launched two years ago and we're an ARV call center that specializes in RV parks and campgrounds. I've managed a park in southern Utah. It's 180 space park for. I'm on my 10th year now and about five years ago after dealing with seasonality because it is a year round park but there's off seasons and peak seasons and it took me a couple years to understand the employment needs. So during year round you're gonna have to have someone in the office. But during the peak season, the phone calls, we would get as many as 150 in a day.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Oh, geez.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: During peak season.
So we would have to beef up employment. Yeah, it's a very high volume park. And after. And then sometimes you hire work campers and they travel from. And this is a true story. They traveled from 10 states away. Come to find out it's not the right fit for the manager.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: And then you.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Oh, this is awkward.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it was a challenge. So I, I figured, you know, what if you had your base of employees year round and then you get just supplemental help on the phones. And so I googled it and it didn't exist. So yeah, here we are today.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's how I found you. Just googling it. And there was not any competition.
It was obviously a need Because I like to compare RV parks. Like real estate agents. They don't answer the freaking phone. A lot of them.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: I agree. Yeah, they don't.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: That's the one thing you can be doing or need to be doing. Pick up the damn phone.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Absolutely. I've noticed too, I would say that our park in southern Utah, our target demographic is older. So about 50% of our reservations do come in online.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: And the other 50% are coming in over the phone still.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Wow. And 50% over the phone is crazy.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it is a lot. And. But that's more than normal, I would say. I think a lot of the travelers are becoming younger and some of the people that were traveling that were a little older that prefer to talk on the phone. Yeah, some of those are not traveling as much anymore. So we're seeing a little bit more of a shift. And for the parks that do have a target market of a younger demographic, we're seeing as high as 80% online and 20% over the phone.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I like when they can call and ask their few questions, make sure they're happy and hey, is it cool if I text you and Lynn, you can book it from here. If not, we're happy to take it over the phone, but that usually solves it. Make sure they're comfortable and they want to come to the park and like, let me just text you a link and you pick a spot. How's that sound?
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Absolutely. But I think the key component to that is you answering the phone.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Yeah. You don't answer, you're not going to answer those random questions. What about my dog this? Or what about we have this? Whatever. It's always something with park.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: It is. Yeah. And I would say too, even if park owners are.
It's just so important to answer the phone even if you can't help them right away. Even if you just say, hey, I'm right in the middle of something, can I call you back in three minutes? Because if you don't answer and they hit the voicemail, they're going to call the next park and book somewhere else.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Go on the next. So here's the tough one. All this talk about AI. What's your take about AI answering some of these phone calls?
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah, great question. I think it is very useful. I support AI. I use it on a day to day basis, various tasks. I think it's very effective for simple tasks.
But I always go back to the reason why people are calling is that they want to continue to talk on the phone and provide a card over the phone. And right now there's no solution for AI to take a credit card over the phone. It texts them a link.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: And then we're going back to that same. If you've got 55 plus demographic, they're less likely. Your conversion rate is lower.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: If you're texting a link versus taking the payment over, they're.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: I got time for this crap. I'm just gonna call the next one because they're like, I'm driving my motorhome, my wife's bitching at and I just want to kind of just give you my car.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: So there's. There will always be the percentage of people. Yeah. I don't think AI is the answer for that.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: No. I'm at this point in time, I'm
[00:04:29] Speaker A: kind of a fan of hey, it's after hours.
We where this is the answering service. If we can answer any questions for you. If not, we can get the manager to call back in the morning.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I kind of like that. But I don't know, I've got mixed feelings about it because I do feel like there's a lot of people that just want to call and talk to human. What's the weather like? I heard it's really windy.
AI is going to be like, yes, the weather is 55 miles per hour. Come on, dude.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's not quite as natural yet. It's getting better. I am very impressed with where it's at.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: But you, when you talk to them, you can tell. Yeah, it does sound like a human, but just not natural.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: And it's almost over friendly. But I think it could be a good solution for simple tasks. Yeah, I really do. But for us, I think at this point in time, humans are more effective.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: So that's where we're going to be focusing on.
In addition, I think what we're seeing a lot of too is AI could be a supplement to an already existing group of staff members.
Whereas our solution, campground support could be a solution if you don't have anyone in the office and you need someone to be able to handle more complex problems too.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: I would say all the different scenarios, there's always a dozen different possible scenarios for each park.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And they're all unique. Yeah, absolutely. And what we see too is when I first originally started the business was what I had mentioned, just overflow phone calls. But about half of our parks now are going to more of a remote manager model where if you're only getting three or four calls a day, payroll is going to Be extremely high to have someone sit and answer the phone and sit in the office.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I was working on taking over this park in Houston and they were paying this guy like 50 hours a week just to be in the office. And it was a monthly park. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he's not really going and cleaning or checking on anything else. He just hang out in the office watching the news. I'm like, you guys are missing the freaking boat right here. This guy's doing nothing. They're getting a couple calls a day. And it was just. And they didn't see it. And I was just like, this is crazy.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And then if you think about how much, even if you're only paying them 15 an hour, that's 40,000 a year. 40,000 a year plus the liability.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I think it's crazy. I think it's important to like, hey, what's the workload of this person? And then create a pay package, whether they're living on site or whatever, according to what you actually need them to do.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Don't fill a blank spot and not have a plan. What's your plan here?
[00:06:51] Speaker B: A good strategy for that too, I think is a employment contract. And if you have a lower volume monthly park. A lot of our clients do employment contract where in exchange for a free site, they're getting 20 hours a week of work, which doesn't overload the manager. It's a fair deal for both sides. And then you're coming out of pocket $0 other than the site.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm a big fan of that.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Just figure out what the cost exchange is.15, $20 an hour versus their free stay and be like, let's come up with a plan. Especially if I have the real estate and hell yeah, come on, bring another person. That's going to be my eyes on there. It's going to keep the showers clean. That's going to go flip the breakers for people.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah. The boots on the ground is really important.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: It's awesome, man. We got a little tight interviews. I think we're supposed to get a lot of guests coming in at 11:30 here pretty soon.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: And so I appreciate your time and enjoy talking with you, meeting you in person. And I'll be a break a leg tomorrow on your hour long presentation.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Appreciate it.
Pleasure meeting you.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: Yes, sir. Thank you.
