How Martin Anderson, CEO at contact centre Lemon, runs his business

The ‘computer says No’ image of a call centre is difficult to shift for a lot of people.

There is a presumed detachment from the role and what can be seen as an obvious wish at their end for the call to be ended quickly with ‘we have a very full Q&A section online which might be able to answer your query….”

So to decide that this is the area where you want to stake your reputation and build your career, with one PC and a space above your mother-in-law’s garage, seems brave to say the least.

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But great businesses are built out of such bold decisions and a commitment - no matter what comes your way - to press on because you believe you can do it better than anyone else.

It often starts with a simple step. So when Martin Anderson and his girlfriend Lesley Wratten wanted to set up a new call handling business, they saw that two of the big names around at the time who were setting the pace were Apple and Orange. So they went for Lemon (it was going to be Sergeant Pepper at another earlier stage….)

That fruit-based logic gave them a quirky name that people might click on rather than go for ‘Preston Farm Call Centre Ltd.’ A small thing, but branding is clearly important to them.

As we speak in the company headquarters, the boardroom table we are sitting at is bright yellow, the distinctive lemon slice logo is on every wall and the email address is zest@no-sour-business.co.uk. There are two jugs on the table, water with slices of lemon or cloudy lemonade.

So that side of things is sorted. How about Martin and his team – did the early work match the branding?

“I certainly always wanted to run a business,” he confesses.

“Some people want to be footballers, or rock stars or whatever it might be, but business was just my thing. I don't really have any particular lineage that leads me to why that was, it just piqued my interest.

Martin Anderson, Chief Executive at Lemon with Business Editor Mike Hughes (Image: Press release)

“I think potentially when I was at school and then went into sixth form to do business studies, maybe it was a teacher who said something right at the right point in time that got me interested.

“Back then it was electro engineering, civil engineering - that side of things, but not running a business with multiple employees or on multiple contracts. There had never been anything like that for me.

“But the one thing I do remember is that as a local Marske lad, I didn’t really travel very far. So my granddad was an engineer who worked over in the Middle East, Bangladesh and Thailand, and I remember him bringing back little ornaments. I used to get them as a child and look at these things and think where it had come from and how it was made, because you couldn’t get this stuff in the UK, and it ignited my thoughts about the world.

“Then I found that at school I didn't have to try too hard, I could coast along and do okay. I was never going to exceed particularly well but I could get middle of the class without putting too much effort in. But I remember a particular moment in class when we were talking about going to university and I remember looking at them thinking, if you're going there, I'm not, because I thought they were clowns. I know that sounds arrogant, but I wanted something different. So instead I joined a company called Comcast during the dotcom boom era, which was a fantastic time to start as a technician.

“It was an American company and the ethos, what they were building here and the culture that they built, and the mission they were on to build this cable network, was quite infectious.

“But because of those times, a lot of the people were moving on quite fast and were going off abroad to chase money, so it allowed me to progress fairly rapidly through there. So I became a switch engineer on a decent salary working in their Network Operation Centre which was active 24-7-365.”

By now the elements were starting to come together – the plan was forming even if Martin didn’t know what the outcome would be. He’s the sort of chap who was probably always going to be a boss – the details of his life were what led him to favour one sector over another.

If the grandfather hadn’t gone abroad and brought back the ornaments, or if he was one of the pupils who went to university or the role at Comcast had been in HR, then the sliding doors would have opened on to something different.

Thankfully for more than 100 staff and more than 100 clients, the engineer in him – and love - was about to unlock an opportunity.

Martin Anderson, Chief Executive at Lemon (Image: Press release)

“The Comcast centre supported engineers resolving faults from all over the site, and we would dispatch engineers to fix them. I really enjoyed it, a fantastic experience. It didn't take away my passion for wanting to start a business at some point but I didn't have a clue what was at the end of it all.

“Then I met my partner Lesley at a mutual friend's birthday party and we talked mainly about business. Then met again at another party and the same conversation happened so we ended up getting together as a couple and thinking about our future together.

"At the time she was working with a Norwegian company providing ‘fall alarms’ into the UK which was another 24/7 environment so maybe that experience formed part of our decision-making as we decided to start our business. We just sat there and asked ourselves what we could do that would form some kind of business that people might want to buy from.

“We took what we were already doing at that point and knew that it was all we really knew a lot about. I didn’t have any other skills, we hadn’t been to university, so why don't we see if we can resell what we've been doing over the last few years and see if anyone will bite.”

The first potential line of customers was small firms who may not have the time for administration or support - but that was a wake-up call, with no takers and the realisation that young business brains were so focussed on making ideas work that they didn’t care about the admin side and just got round to it themselves when they had a gap over a weekend.

Martin says: “The lesson from that was they were quite happy doing what they want, they weren't really invested in growing into the bigger companies. Then through a contact we got introduced to a larger local engineering company and they came on board.

“At that time, we'd only set up above Lesley’s mam’s garage – a small flat not quite as big as this boardroom – with no heating and no internet, just a mobile phone, a fax machine and pen and paper.”

They couple found a PC for £40 at a reclaimed electronics site and invited the engineering firm - Pickerings Lifts - to visit.

“I remember thinking, how the hell are we going to win a contract when they are going to come to a garage on a residential estate and go up the side stairs into this tatty bedsit. But they give us a chance because we understood what they wanted and they bought in to the passion that we had to deliver a service.”

That was the proof of concept – the critical first step when someone looked at the two of them and saw they were decent people who could do a job for them. It was a customer on the books so the only way then was to add the second, then the third….

Lemon started to step up its marketing to the engineering and tech market, picking up more clients particularly in the lift sector. Then a simple phone call came in that changed the business again.

This time it was a senior manager from the funerals side of the Co-op. With such delicate and personal work to do, there was an issue of availability to take calls when so many staff were out at services or with families. Voicemail isn’t what any customer want to hear in any business.

“We didn’t see that one coming, and had no inbuilt knowledge of the sector,” said Martin.

“But we could see, and so could the client, that the basic need wasn't too dissimilar than the other work we had, learning about the business, answering the phone, doing a process and following something up to a high standard.

Martin Anderson, Chief Executive at Lemon (Image: Press release)

“The funeral industry has evolved so much now and has brilliant people in there who have a lot of experience and really cared passionately about everything that did. Back then, it took a lot for them to trust us because they were giving us some ownership of their business.

“I remember being in some meetings where it was like an angry village hall - they did not want us to be there or provide their service. But we worked through that and they are now among our biggest supporters.”

So lifts were on board – Lemon now has around a third of that market – and funerals trusted them which helped establish the ‘engineering, technical & care’ description of the company. When the Working Time Directive was being discussed, limiting the amount of time people can be asked to work, there were concerns in some industries about being able to maintain contracts, so the need grew to outsource to someone who could bridge the gaps until your own staff returned to their desks.

Then if the job was done really well, why not keep them on and be able to divert your own staff to other areas….

Lemon now deal with everything from engineering to telecoms, including a satellite data centre in Switzerland which works with governments, NGOs, super yachts and oil rigs. And in Germany, one client operates thousands of garage forecourts across the world. Incidentally, that present the new challenge of languages, so Lemon is working with a company who do translation support and can be on the phone within 30 seconds to make a real-time three-way conversation.

Now that those early standards had been proven, Lemon had to grow to be able to keep on top of the number of contracts it now had, and the nature of its business meant that new staff had to be recruited who were able to help move the sector away from that monotone ‘computer says no’ when you can almost hear the kettle going on and the biscuits being unwrapped as you talk about needing urgent help.

Lemon needed to be sweet.

Martyn says: “It’s about having those personal skills, I guess it's like the bedside manner in a way and some people just have it. It doesn't matter whether you’ve got a degree or not - it's about having active listening skills and being empathetic and understanding.

“We have to put ourselves in the shoes of the person we are talking to and care about them because they're going through a traumatic period or just because they've got a fault that needs fixing. On Christmas Day when someone calls us they may be reporting an issue, but actually, they may just want to have a chat. So we've got to be conscious of the fact that we maybe the only person they’re speaking to that day. So everyone, every call, needs to be tracked with that same level of empathy.

“If we treat people well, then it makes the technical side and the process side of it quite easy.

“We do lot of training to get that right, understanding things like the whirlpool of grief when people are so upset and understanding that how they're behaving isn't a direct attack on you, even if they're shouting, swearing, potentially angry, or had a drink. You're there to help them through that situation, so when we are recruiting it’s about bringing people on who have a similar kind of ethos, values and principles to ourselves.

“The other side of that is that we know our own company has to be the right place for people to build careers as well. This is not the first rung on the ladder before you move off – although we are always very proud to see staff taking their own direction - but a lot of our team have been with us now for 13 or 14 years. People stay for that kind of journey because they bought into what we were trying to do and because of the variety of clients and sectors.”

The problem Lemon has avoided is being too scripted in their conversations. Many larger companies have no choice but to set out a series of flowcharts and sometimes its clear they can't veer away from that and have to force the conversation their way.

The Lemon version is a flat database screen with boxes that need to be ticked, of course, but much less insistence on how to get from one box to the other. That’s up to the operator.

“So the conversation should be much more natural,” says Martin.

“The operator can be trained to lead the conversation softly not bluntly so they obtain the relevant information, but they don't have to ask this before they ask that and that before they ask this. They are going to have a conversation and fill the blanks in as they need to at the end, which develops into a more natural empathetic way of working rather than a scripted environment.”

Keeping that ethos solid as they head for £5million turnover and 150 staff will be a challenge. Lemon has to stay personal but it has to become bigger, so Martin and Lesley will have to dig deep to keep the heart of their business in that room above the garage as the smart Preston Farm offices are filled with people giving Lemon aid to those who need it.

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