Customer Feature: Royop Development Corporation

Fully Managed endeavors to provide the ultimate IT service by delivering a layered approach to technology support; technical expertise and guidance coupled with amazing customer service. We have fostered and nurtured our methods through decades of IT experience and the immeasurable knowledge and skills we have gained as our company continues to grow and expand.

We recently connected with one of our Calgary customers, Elmita Lobo of Royop Development Corporation, who signed on with TWT Group in 2019 (TWT Group was acquired in 2020 and now part of the Fully Managed family). Shawn Freeman, former CEO of TWT Group, now Regional Vice President of Alberta for Fully Managed, has always promoted a unique, customer first approach when it comes to service. Shawn always encourages a calm, friendly and methodical style to address customer issues and always aims for the team to proactively prevent problems whenever possible. Read more from our interview with Elmita to learn why Shawn and the Alberta team were a natural fit with Fully Managed and support the company mission of Creating Peace of Mind for our customers!

Why did you originally approach TWT Group (now Fully Managed)?
I knew Shawn way back in the day. We worked together when he was just a young man fresh out of school. He was working at CCS, which is now called Tervita, and he came in as a summer intern. And then we instantly fell in love with him because he had such a great attitude… his customer service mindset, the way he approached people was just different than everybody else. He stayed with CCS for a while, and we eventually sent him on to some leadership training. He was just so different...a different kind of IT person, just a different kind of person all around.

Then he started his own IT company, and it was just him at first. One day he came and installed some access points for us when I was working for a different company. He brought the same kind of customer service model that he had when I first met him. So, when we were looking for a different kind of IT company, I instantly thought of him and saw the opportunity to have him bring his unique service model to our company. 

We had an IT company that we were not very happy with. They were not proactive, we were getting all kinds of spam emails, the service was not what I needed it to be or wanted it to be. Things were not functioning. We were getting spammed nonstop, our emails getting compromised – I could go on and on. They also had a lot of churn and with each new person, our trepidation increased, and customer service was not where we needed it to be.

In addition to this, we have a good culture, a fun culture, a family culture – so the people that come in and become a part of our day need to understand our culture and become part of it. They need to be able to assimilate, especially when they're working so closely on people's computers and in our offices from time to time.
 
Explain how you began the process of choosing TWT Group (now Fully Managed)?
I began by researching 5 different companies. I interviewed all 5 and whittled it down to a few.  Then our CFO met with each of them. It came down to figuring out what we were really going to get for our money. Sure price is important – and you guys were not the cheapest, but the level of expertise, what TWT said they could do for us, and that you were willing to become partners with us in our business, this added the value we were looking for and ticked all the boxes.
 
How do you think we add value in our service?
Having a previous working relationship with Shawn, I knew that he would not have people working for him that would do the kind of things that were really frustrating me with our other company. TWT Group, now Fully Managed, has a service model based on his own idea of what customer service should be.  Employees often reflect their leader’s mindset/culture. When the culture is not good, they are not intrinsically motivated, they're often not feeling respected and they're not empowered.  If all of those things are not happening within the company, then it reflects in the level of service and the way that employees treat the clients. - “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.”
 
What has your experience been with our team members?
We love Super G, aka Gerald.  It’s not just that he gives stellar customer service.  He also has this way of weaving himself into the fabric of the company – he gets to know everybody, knows their story, knew names right away and even knew who our kids were. He has such a good grasp of EQ (emotional intelligence) and EQ is hugely important and widely underrated, especially when it comes to IT!
 
What was your initial feedback after the decision to go ahead with our company?
I was worried because I really wanted this to work well for Royop, especially because we didn’t go with the cheapest offer, but the one we felt was best. Right away you could see that they resolved problems quickly. The first thing that they did is they immediately fixed our massive spam problem. We were being spammed non-stop, the phishing was unbelievable, it was a nightmare. They cleaned all that up. We have not had any further problems with it. We went from constant issues to: “hey it’s gone!”
 
What did you think of our team and how they interacted with yours?  
They came in and at the same time that they were fixing things, they were showing us how to change our passwords. Jonathan, from your team, came and did a lunchtime presentation and taught us a few things – with sandwiches! It became clear that you weren’t asking us to do things to justify your jobs, but things that needed to be done to make our lives better. They have made valuable suggestions, helped me cut costs on hardware and keep all things IT super organized and running smoothly.  Additionally, because they are so good at relationship building, they have encouraged my team to reach out to them individually so that everything doesn’t go through me.  By forging these relationships with our team, they have taken a lot of work off my plate.
 
The one thing I’d like to add is that your team knows the value of human interaction.  They understand relationships matter.  They do many things throughout the year to make their clients feel special and Murlyne (Fully Managed National Client Experience Manager) reaches out to clients regularly to make sure she’s got the pulse of every client.  You never ever feel like a number.  You feel cared for, valued and appreciated.  Shawn and his team embody everything that is right about customer service.  The quote: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” is one that Shawn, Murlyne, Gerald and the team live daily…and it shows.