From Alarms to Answers: Working with Orenco Support

In this episode, we chat with Darren Mendenhall, Customer Service Manager at Orenco, about the real-world aspects of helping various people with wastewater systems. We hear how the customer service team supports homeowners, installers, and engineers with troubleshooting, training, and plenty of patience. Darren shares how to handle calls about alarms and tricky questions, as well as those memorable calls that remind us why protecting water matters so much. 

If you have comments or questions about our podcast, you can reach us through this link. To discuss a project or talk to one of our engineers, call 800-348-9843.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 5:49 What Kinds of Calls are Typical?
• 7:20 How Do You Train your Team?
• 13:50 Do You Have Some Memorable Calls?
• 17:59 Receiving Praise for Outstanding Service
• 22:37 Things That Might Surprise You
• 25:27 Things You Enjoy Most About Customer Service
• 27:39 Living the Vision
• 29:03 Conclusion

Transcript

00:08

Hello and welcome to Make It Clear, a conversational podcast about all things related to water and wastewater. I'm your host, Angela Bounds, and I'm joined by my co-host, Shawn Rapp. In each episode, we'll tackle a relevant topic with facts and expert opinions and make things clear. 

Angela: Hello and thanks for joining us again. Today, Shawn and I are here as usual.

00:35

And we've got Darren Mendenhall with us. So Darren is our customer service manager and he runs everything customer service and all of our customer service staff. So if you call in to our 800 number and ask questions, you get Darren or someone that he works with. hi Darren. 

Darren: Hello. Thanks for having me. 

Shawn: Yeah, you bet. 

Angela: I guess I will plug customer service and what they do from the top of the episode. So,

01:05

We have a staffed customer service line.  And if you call 800-348-9843, you can get to customer service and ask them any variety of questions about our products.  If you need help with something, if you need troubleshooting, all of that stuff, they do that for you.

Shawn:  Yeah. They're an important part of what we do. So… 

Angela: Yes. 

Shawn: It's funny because I plug them on our webinars too, because people have questions. 

Angela: Yeah. 

Shawn: And it's like, if you need to get a hold of somebody, don't...

01:35

Don't wait. Call this number. Get a hold of somebody because somebody can answer your question. Even if it's not the person who answers the phone, they can get it to somebody who can answer that question. So yeah, they're an important part of what we do. So yeah, thank you for coming in to share your time. 

Darren: You're welcome. Yeah, we do have a great team and they are definitely there to help and answer questions. 

Angela: And what hours do they man the phones from? 

Darren: The manned phone system is eight to five.

02:00

But we do have Pacific Standard Time.  we do have obviously people that come in a little earlier. So if there are questions and you have to email us in, we can respond a little earlier or return phone calls. 

Angela: What he means by email is on our website, we have a contact us form.  And if you fill that out, that also typically gets routed to the customer service department and they will answer your questions digitally, should you not want to call in.

02:30

All right, let's get into the questions. Darren, do you want to give the listeners a little bit of your background? Because you were here and then you weren't and you've worked a bunch of different places and now you're back. 

Darren: Yeah, so I started kind of in the customer service realm as my career path.  I just basically was driven to helping people providing service and

02:58

Giving people a solution is really what I love about customer service from that perspective.  I started in, I guess probably about 2000 in really finding my path forward. I worked for a couple of different larger corporations that gave me the opportunity to learn different skillsets and different communication styles and how to really communicate with customers in a way that

03:27

wasn't necessarily a sales driven sort of conversation, but more consultative, if that, guess is the right word.  And so I just kind of leaned into that a lot more. And then when I was hired on at Orenco, I was hired into the customer service team as a technical sales rep.  And that really gave me the ability to learn a lot about what the customers need, what the products do,

03:55

how to really help and provide solutions from a perspective of getting the customer the answers they need rather than just being the answer itself.  that's kind of where I started. I did that for about six years and then I went into account management which was helping to develop some of our distribution partners and giving them tools and resources to help their customers.

04:22

From that point, I actually stepped away for a little while and went into operations management for a large industrial corporation and spent a little bit of time there developing their training program, helping to get their sales staff and their internal staff, the tools and skills they needed to really help customers again. They were acquired by a larger corporation. so at that point I was approached to come back to Orenco, which was

04:52

ideal for me because I loved the company, loved the culture, loved the organizational focus and vision. So it worked out really well that I was able to come back in a role that allowed me to be part of the customer service team still and focus on training and development in a little bit different way as a manager instead of just a peer. So I came back in 2021...

05:17

22-ish and I've been doing this ever since and it's just super valuable to me. I find a lot of reward from where I'm at and people that I've been able to not only work with but hire in and bring onto the team. So it's been very fruitful. 

Angela: I think we're seeing your impact as well. Yeah. So, all right, let's talk a little bit about the team, what you guys do, all of that. So

05:41

Your team talks to a wide range of people. I mean, we take calls from installers, engineers, homeowners, service providers, the whole gamut. What kinds of questions do you hear most often in those day-to-day phone calls that come in? 

Darren: The typical call is usually from homeowners that are having trouble with their alarms. That tends to be our biggest call. And it's not necessarily that there's a

06:09

problem or an issue, it's just the alarm sounding and they don't know what to do. So we get a lot of those types of calls where it's just a basic explanation of what the system does, why it's there, what the alarm could be sounding for. And then we walk them through those steps of either silencing it and getting the service provider connected to them or just helping them figure out

06:35

what the actual cause of it is and they can help themselves to fix it. But we get a lot of those types of calls. We also have designers calling in for questions on our residential treatment systems where they may need drawings or capacity figures, float settings, timer setting questions. So a little bit of everything.

06:58

Our staff of engineers are also available and we do take calls that we sometimes refer to them if it's a little bit more complicated. So as our team as a whole is set, we kind of take those frontline calls from just about any caller that comes in and then our team either helps or gets them to the right person as a source of resource.  

Angela: Yeah. So with taking calls from different

07:29

education levels, different levels of understanding is probably a better way to put that. How do you train your team or prepare them for that balance, right? To be able to talk to a homeowner who maybe doesn't have the same knowledge base as an installer or an engineer. 

Darren: Yeah, it can be very tricky.  Obviously, you have to understand

07:56

basic communication, I guess, at some certain levels, you know, not talking down to people, but also not talking too far above their education or understanding as well. The way we've really established our team is to have a lot of training. Our team varies. We have 14 trained customer service staff members on our team. That ranges from some people that we've just brought on within the last year or two to 20 plus year veterans.

08:26

That gives us the capability and that knowledge level to really help the new people come on board and understand what they're saying and how they're saying it. And also how to approach those conversations with different types of callers that are coming in. Cause obviously you want an approach, a conversation with an engineer, same that you do with a homeowner. So just understanding that, taking it from a perspective of every call is important and they're going to have different things that they need to know

08:54

and things that you're going to need to explain to them and how we approach that depends on each call and what the customer is asking.  I think the other side of it too is just teaching the importance of listening and asking good questions. That really tends to be one of the things that once you get good at listening, you start to become better at questioning.  And that helps us to expedite some of the service that we offer on the phones.

09:22

Angela: I think it is unique. So you guys actually do sales training, right? Like you do, you do a significant amount of not just sales. So you do training on two different planes, right? You guys train them on the products, on troubleshooting, on installation. You do all of the, the educational training for the industry education, right? That we all know. 

09:53

the education's not out there in the general public sector or school. So you guys do a lot of work training people on products and processes. But aside from that, you're also, you have an entire program set up to train people essentially how to talk to people, how to listen, how to understand what

10:22

people are saying to you, how to process that, how to deal with difficult personalities. Like you have an entire program that you put them through. 

Darren: Yeah, yeah. We have a very intensive training process and when we onboard new hires, we really do give them a lot of product specific training, but then we take it to the next level of, you know, how to interact with customers, how to talk, how to question things.

10:49

what types of things to be listening to from the customer side to actually be able to determine what next steps to take.  we do have a very intensive training program that's oriented towards selling and how to have those conversations, what to do if you have different personality types and how to interact with those personality types. 

Angela: I think that's what's different about that sales training. Like we've all been through sales trainings, right? That you're like, you need to do this so that you can close, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

11:18

But that's not exactly, that's not what you're doing. What you're doing is, it's couched as a sales training, but you're teaching them how to interact with people.  

Shawn: It’s more customer focused than product focused. 

Angela: it's very customer focused 

Darren: and very consultive. It's kind of the focus is we don't want to just approach customers to sell them a product, 

Shawn and Angela: Right. 

Darren: Provide a solution and consult

11:46

with them on what their needs are before we get to that point. 

Angela: That's what I mean. It's very unique in that manner. 

Darren: So that's what we spend a lot of time on. The other advantage that we have is we have a staff that does operations and maintenance. So we also send out a lot of our team to go out into the field and really get their hands dirty, which I know we don't like to talk about being dirty… 

Angela: it is. we're in the dirt. You know, septic tanks. It's not...

12:16

It's not pristine.  

Darren: Yeah, so that's something that we've started to, as we've gone through some of these things, is to help that team, but also gives us the hands-on training to see what the equipment looks like in the ground, how it works, how to do some intensive troubleshooting. And also it gives us a perspective of what that operator or service provider is going through as well. Because for many years when I was in that seat, I was just at a desk.

12:44

I had really not a lot of experience with what was going on outside the walls around us. If you're having somebody that you're explaining the process to and they're standing in two feet of snow out in the wind and you're trying to get them to do something and you're getting frustrated because they're not hearing you, it's pretty easy to sit in a chair in an office comfy, not knowing what they're going with.

13:08

I've tried to really instill that side of things into our team of… 

Angela: compassion. 

Darren: Yeah. See what it's like be out in the field to know what these people are going through and then have a little bit of understanding. So that's kind of one of our other tools that we've really started to implement as we train and develop and then, you know, presenting, speaking, things like that that we're doing just to better equip our team to be better for our customers and our company. 

Angela: To communicate. 

Darren: Exactly. 

Angela: Yeah.

13:38

All right. So you've taken a lot of calls over the years. A lot of calls. And we all know some stories. So some safe for work, some not. So what are, what have been some of your most memorable calls? 

Darren: You know, after a while they all start to kind of run together, but I couldn't remember just one. So I actually had kind of polled the team a little bit and

14:08

one of our customer service reps, Brandon, he had a touching story that I think kind of gives a little bit more compassionate feel or vision into what our team does. And so he was sharing with me a story of one of the customers that he had taken a call from. And it's not very atypical that we don't get really positive feedback and some of the things that we deal with on the phones. But in this particular instance, an older gentleman had just lost his wife to cancer. He was kind of depressed and upset.

14:37

Now he's having to deal with an alarm going off and some repairs that has to be done for his system in order for him to ultimately what he was having to do was sell his house. very difficult, you know, and a lot of times we can get into that mode of just, it's another call. We're going to just walk through this and do this. And Brandon kind of started to talk to this gentleman and really listening to him, helping him and

15:01

figuring out what the problem was, how to fix it. And he walked him through it and provided a solution, provided him some support and contacts as well locally. But at the end of the call, he was able to solve the problem for the gentleman, get him going. And he ended up, you know, getting the problem resolved, but also giving this guy a voice of compassion and feeling of like, you matter, we're going to take care of you and help you. And we know your situation and we want to make it right for

15:30

getting you the next step.  those types of stories are really the ones that make me feel the best and how we approach customers with a uh real compassion of, know it's stressful. We know that things are going to happen and you're not going to know what to do.  call us and let us help you find that solution or at least get you in contact with somebody who can.  

Angela: I think that actually, so I don't know if I've ever told you this story. I think Shawn's heard it before.

16:00

I think that resonates through the industry more than we know. So my aunt passed away and I became the executor of her estate.  And we had to sell her home in Washington. And so you have to do a point-of-sale inspection, right? And so I had to get somebody out just to inspect the septic system. And they were actually doing some water work as well.

16:30

And so I called the guy from my phone and we get through everything and agree, you know, here's the address. You can get the keys from the… da, da, da.  And he goes, can I ask you a question? And I was like, sure. Yeah.  And he goes, why does your phone say Orenco systems?  And so I kind of, you know, explained to him why at the time my phone said Orenco systems and

17:00

He said, I have to tell you that, and I mean, this is up in like the middle of nowhere, right? Not the middle of nowhere, but very rural, rural Washington. And he said, I have to tell you that I've had to call you guys a couple of times and it's so great that you guys have your customer service team.  They're always so helpful and it is so nice to be able to call this number and get somebody on the phone.

17:26

who's really gonna help you with things.  And that has just really, it's stuck with me because you do this job and you try to be compassionate to people and you get good calls and you get bad calls and you get people who are happy and you get people who are unhappy. But to just call someone randomly, literally just on the recommendation of a real estate agent, call this person to come and do some work at some place that is

17:54

hundreds and hundreds of miles from where we are and have them talk about our customer service team in such high regard was really nice to hear. 

Darren: Yeah, and as the customer service manager, you know, that's what I like to get.  Obviously, we all like to get those kind of praises and stuff. But for me, it's not necessarily about me as a person. It's about the team and the work that we put into.  We have

18:22

historically gotten a lot of calls and emails of praise and consistently comes in. And I think that's the most rewarding part for me is sharing that with the person who gets it and the team, because that's, know, the team works as uh a whole to really get to this point of being the best they can and making sure their coworkers are the best they can be. And so as a team, we really take that praise to heart and share it with everybody on the team so that they know and

18:51

you know, getting that praise and being able to share it is such a great feeling. And I, I'd like to take credit for it, obviously, because I'm the manager and I'd to train these people. But honestly,  vision and culture that we've been able to build over the years by people who are passionate about this, of what we do, work that they do, and they strive to do that every day and they bring their best selves to this every day and take these calls, even the difficult ones. And it really makes it

19:20

the job easy and rewarding and to get that feedback and share it really keeps them motivated and striving to do the best they can. 

Angela: I think it shows them that the work that they're putting in not only to educate themselves about product and processes, which is essential, but also educating themselves on how to deal with different personalities and people. I think it's super important and it's

19:49

really rewarding when you hear back that, wait, this work that you've put in, it's paying off. People are noticing it. 

Darren: Yeah. 

Angela: Right. 

Darren: Exactly. 

Shawn: Just real quick. I just thought you guys might find this to be funny.  I got a call one time when I was working in customer service. Woman calls up and she's kind of wanting to get a bunch of questions answered because she has absolutely no idea what this box is, why this alarm's going off. So I'm talking her through it, all of it.

20:18

You know, you need to open it up, check this, check that. And we get to the end of the conversation. She's like, you've been really nice and very helpful. Are you single? 

Angela: Well… 

Darren: I haven't had those calls. 

Shawn: I thought that was kind of funny. And it was one of the, another example of just listening to the customer and talking to them like a person.

20:46

Darren: Yeah. 

Shawn: You know, treating them well with respect. 

Darren: Yeah. 

Shawn: and getting that kind of reaction was kind of fun. 

Darren: I think the other side of it too is in this day and age where everything's either AI generated or computer based, to get a real person that is kind of startling to some degree because people don't expect it. But then they see that, this isn't just somebody at a desk answering a phone. They actually do know what they're doing. They can give me the solution that I need or

21:13

direct me to the right person that can. And I think that's where our customer service at Orenco differentiates itself from pretty much any other customer service, honestly, that I've dealt with just because we have that level of expectation and we instill that in everybody we bring in. 

Angela: I actually think that all three of us have worked the customer service line. 

Darren: I was thinking about that as I was kind of preparing for this. it's like a lot of our

21:41

senior level people that are really high up in power or I shouldn't say power, but in the organization. Yeah. They've probably spent time in the customer service loop and done that and kind of worked up from there. And I think that's the other part that really helps…

Angela: The entirety of R & D. 

Shawn: Oh It's foundational. 

Angela: Yeah. 

Shawn: That's where you really learn about the product. When you're in manufacturing, you learn about what you're making. You don't necessarily learn about what he's doing over there or what they're doing over there. But when you're in the customer service,

22:11

section, you have to learn all of that.  So it's really foundational for a bunch of other jobs in the company.  

Darren: And I think it motivates people to want to succeed because then they can see that track record of, well, this isn't just customer service. This is a pathway to what I want to do further down the line.  so that's been really helpful, too, to see that in our company as we've grown and developed people from customer service on up. 

Angela: Yeah. So what do you…

22:40

What are some things that might surprise people about our customer service team or your job? 

Darren: I think probably one of the more surprising things is just like what we just talked about, the technical elements that we really have to know. It's not just sitting at the desk and picking up a phone. We do have to know product codes, how to process orders, how the products work together. 

Angela: We have some pretty extensive

23:10

Expectations for our customer service line.  

Darren: And you know, when we interview people, that's kind of one of the things that we say is we're really the front lines of what comes into the company at the basic level, because we field most of the phone calls, we're directing traffic. We have to know who to talk to, where to get information, how to, you know, explain the technical aspects of how the treatment systems work, how the controls work. It's, it's very

23:39

kind of an all-encompassing position that you have to know a little bit of everything and be good at everything to really be successful. And you're constantly learning. I think that's one of the other things that's probably a little bit surprising is people don't know what they don't know until they don't know it. So we're constantly learning. And every time something comes in on the phone, we all kind of gather around now in the cubes and kind of talk through it. And we're giving other opinions of what to do and how to do it

24:07

You know, I would have taken this person this way or I would have done this or, you know, so we are doing a lot of training and developing and just communicating and learning as we go and teaching and developing that aspect of it. But I think the other surprising thing people probably would not really think about is maybe customer service, but it's super fun. We have fun. I mean, it's enjoyable. We all kind of are a tight knit family and the company as a whole, but in our group,

24:35

you know, we get that ability to really come together as one. the really fun thing for me is getting to know each of the personality types and being able to harass them a little bit, you know. I don't have grandkids, but I have a couple of our teammates that have new babies. So I get to kind of be a quasi-grandparent and watch them grow and, you know, help in that respect. So it's fun. I think that's probably a little bit more of the

25:03

personality side of the team that maybe people don't understand. We're not all just sitting here in our own little field of space that we don't interact. We're all pretty outgoing in that respect. And we do after hours things and bowling and stuff like that, that gets us outside of work so we can connect and help and grow each other a little bit in the social side of things too and not just be completely work centered. 

Angela: Yeah.  Good. Good. So

25:32

What do you enjoy most about your job? 

Darren: I enjoy all of it, honestly. 

Angela: Yeah. 

Darren: I mean, it's just super rewarding to be a part of a company that's leading in the water space, I guess.  You know, my passion has always been about conserving water projects that help other countries develop water sustainability and things. to be a part of that was really just something that was super rewarding to me. And then

26:02

to be a part of the customer service team, I think the biggest reward that I get is just training and development.  I really like to see people grow and find ways to develop their career path and skills. so to me, that's been the most rewarding part is getting to have a little bit of say in the training curriculums that we do. 

Angela: I think that's all shining through just so you know. 

Darren: Thank you. I feel like we've

26:31

really taken a lot of leaps and bounds over the last couple of years of how we're training and developing and working with the staff that we have here on some of the curriculum that we're putting together and what we can do for that aspect of getting to a little bit more capabilities for how we train and make it a little bit more efficient and easier for the team to participate in has been really great. And it challenges them also to help train each other.

26:59

That's been another really success that I think is very much rewarding to me is seeing people take ownership of that.  it creates that team dynamic that you don't necessarily get if you're like a hierarchy of manager, trainee. so by, by delegating and giving authority and space for them to do that, I think it's created a much bigger, stronger team effort than we could have had before. 

Shawn: I know you and I have been working a lot more closely together, trying to develop some of that stuff.

27:29

Darren: Yeah, it's been really great. And what we've been able to kind of brainstorm and come up with has been extremely helpful.  

Angela: All right. Well, is there anything else you want to add? 

Darren: You know, I think one of the things I would add is just that there was something that was mentioned about keeping everybody motivated and how we do that. And I feel like the one thing that keeps us motivated the most is just being a part of something bigger than a product.  

Angela: Oh yeah. 

Darren: And I think here at Orenco, we've really established that idea that, we're

27:59

selling the highest quality treatment systems and solutions, but it's bigger than just a product. We're doing something that actually truly is making a difference in the world. And…

Angela: we really are protecting the world's water. 

Darren: Yeah. And Hal and Terry created the company to protect the local rivers. And that evolved into our vision of to protect the world's water.  And our team truly has fully embraced that vision.  And they know that every customer we talk to, every designer we help,

28:28

every community we provide a solution to is one step closer to that.  And they've fully bought in and are committed to that vision. And I think that's really what's keeping us motivated to grow and develop and push that even further as we bring new people on. They catch the vision. We just pour that into them consistently. And I think that's one of the things that really sets us apart in how we do this.  It's not just a slogan that we put on our

28:57

postcards or our letterhead. We truly do live this out every single day. 

Angela: I agree. Of course. All right. Well, thank you so much, Darren, for talking with us today. 

Darren: Thank you. It's been fun. 

Angela: Yeah. 

Shawn: Good. 

Angela: And thank you all for listening. 

We want to thank you again for joining us today. Before you go, don't forget to subscribe where you listen to podcasts so you're notified when new episodes are posted.

29:26

Also, you can leave your comments or suggestions through the contact link on our website, www.orenco.com.  Until next time, have a great day.