Moving Case Study: New World Van Lines Boosts Productivity
%
REDUCTION
In time it takes to do a survey
%
REDUCTION
In outsourced pre-move surveys
+
MILES SAVED
In driving time
The Company
New World Van Lines (NWVL) was originally founded in 1919 as Economy Moving & Transfer Company and in 1982, Economy Moving & Transfer Company obtained interstate operating authority and became New World Van Lines. To this day, NWVL remains a family business as they are currently owned and operated by the 3rd generation of the Marx family. With 15 service locations across the United States and an office in Rotterdam for the international relocation side of the business, NWVL serves among the largest independent van line devoted exclusively to corporate and government employee relocations. NWVL pride themselves on providing exceptional, consistent, and repeatable service delivery and hold their customers in the highest regard.
Summary
With their long history and positive reputation in the industry, NWVL has always remained busy. The high demand for quality moving services brought consistent business for NWVL and at times, NWVL needed to outsource labor to help conduct move surveys. This would incrementally drive up the costs of doing service as well as take up more time out of the surveyors’ day-to-day operations. NWVL had tried to utilize different technology to help improve their survey processes; however, they found that they weren’t utilizing the tools to the fullest extent and the tools didn’t necessarily make the process easier. After implementing Yembo virtual surveys, NWVL was able to create a more centralized workflow and leverage both onsite and virtual surveys to complete more jobs.
The Challenge
As an independent moving company, NWVL didn’t have a big network to call upon to conduct surveys. Before using Yembo, NWVL surveyors would do surveys in-house for customers within a 100-mile radius of their service centers. Typically, they could find a surveyor at the survey centers to drive out to the customer’s home and conduct a survey. If they needed additional resources to keep up with demand, NWVL would hire local movers in the area to conduct the move surveys on their behalf. When NWVL outsourced pre-move surveys to keep up with incoming requests for moving services, cost and timing came into play. NWVL would have to pay different rates for the outsourced labor, and since all surveys were done onsite, surveyors would sometimes have to drive long distances throughout the day. In addition, NWVL had to address privacy concerns around frequently sharing personally identifiable transferees' information (PII) with third-party contractors. At the request of some of their customers, NWVL tried out a video survey/move management tool; however, they found that they were only using it for a small percentage of their total survey utilization. They were eager to have a better technology resource that would allow them to overhaul their survey processes and procedures, but it was a matter of figuring out which technology solution would work best for them. NWVL was keen on addressing the following challenges:
- How could they conduct surveys without worrying about cost, timing, and privacy?
- Were there other options they could provide their customers that would create better experiences for them?
- Was there a tool or resource they could leverage to revamp their outdated processes and procedures?
The Solution
Justin Walsh, Managing Director & Chief Innovation Officer, has been with NWVL for over fifteen years where change management has continued to serve as a key part of his role. Rolling out new processes and procedures to improve old practices has been a large responsibility of Justin’s and he wanted to help create an internal culture of embracing change because big changes were to come. Justin has been a big proponent of implementing the latest technologies as long as the technology continuously adds value for NWVL and streamlines how they do things.
NWVL frequently heard about Yembo within the industry, so Yembo had always been on their radar. Previous technology tools NWVL utilized often didn’t add value to the company because NWVL found themselves not using the tools as much as they could. However, Yembo’s product was unlike anything they had seen/heard of before and there were inklings that Yembo could help NWVL address the challenges they were experiencing. Once Justin had a conversation with the Executive Vice President of JK Moving, a longtime Yembo customer, Justin made the decision to explore Yembo further and see how Yembo’s AI-powered, virtual surveys could fit into NWVL’s operations.
Since NWVL started using Yembo, NWVL was able to centralize their pre-move survey process. Yembo expanded NWVL’s capabilities in terms of what they could do and what they could offer to their customers. Yembo also allowed NWVL to bring more of the surveys in-house and rely less on outsourced surveyors to do the surveys for them, saving them time and money.
As a company that had done all surveys onsite before, NWVL is now doing both onsite and virtual surveys. For larger jobs, NWVL still sends out surveyors to the customers’ homes; however, surveyors can use Yembo’s onsite survey option and use Yembo’s AI to automatically generate the visual inventory list for the customer.
Thankfully, NWVL got started with Yembo surveys before the COVID-19 pandemic began so when they couldn’t do onsite surveys anymore, they could rely heavily on virtual surveys and continue doing business. The pandemic served as an accelerator for NWVL because it encouraged NWVL to frequently reassess the situation and implement a better, more collaborative workflow that aligned in-home surveyors at the service center locations with their customer service representatives. A major change they made was how the internal teams work together. Now, customer service representatives go through the surveying process with customers, and then the surveyors do the analysis of survey results and finalize the details.
Looking forward, NWVL plans on expanding their use of Yembo’s virtual surveys across the company.
As an example, they are starting to dive more into Smart Consult, the guided virtual survey option, and customer service representatives were all equipped with webcams to support the Smart Consult experience for customers. The general reception from both NWVL’s internal team and customers have been overwhelmingly positive. Customers feel comfortable conducting surveys on their own and find Yembo’s survey technology to be intuitive as well as easy-to-use. When it comes to the relationship between NWVL and Yembo, Justin describes it as “fantastic.” He finds the team to be very supportive and has had positive experiences when it comes to the feedback loop and updates. All questions the team has are answered promptly and it became clear to NWVL that Yembo tailored its final products/services to customers like themselves. NWVL and Yembo are excited to continue the partnership and grow NWVL’s survey capabilities even more.
The Results
After NWVL used Yembo surveys to update their processes and procedures, they have experienced the following results:
- 42% reduction in the amount of time it takes New World to obtain survey results from the transferee and surveyor.
- Greater than 85% reduction in outsourced pre-move surveys.
- Transferees who conduct a virtual survey are 33% more likely to engage with New World via mobile or SMS later in the move’s lifecycle.
- New World’s utilization of Yembo, versus in-person surveys, has saved the company more than 750,000 miles driven.