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Adapting Services During COVID-19

Posted: 9/3/20

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Like many companies, “business as usual” changed significantly for Heritage with the arrival of COVID-19. Our Interactive team developed some new solutions to save customers money and efficiently provide services due to these changes.

One of our customers in the oil and gas industry had a very large upcoming project. During a more normal time, one of our account managers would have flown to the site and walked it in person to ensure a full understanding of both the scope and location of the waste needing to be removed. Due to COVID-19 this wasn’t possible, so as an alternative, one of our employees proposed a virtual tour, which was extremely well received.

This went far beyond walking the site with a smartphone.  The proposed idea included the customer sending over the technical drawings for the site that could be compared with satellite images. This in conjunction with a site contact walking to each part of the facility via live stream provided an extremely in-depth review. In addition to being able to visualize the site via the satellite images and the live stream, we were also able the see technical details such as the storage tanks, where the piping was and where we could store the waste.

As a result of this virtual visit, our team was able to provide insights for the upcoming project that would not have been possible without the combination of the technical drawing, satellite images and live stream. The customer was impressed with the efficiency of this method and suggested this process to other locations.

Site walks weren’t the only aspect of our business that we adapted during the pandemic. As more people started to work from home and everyone was traveling less, we found that our customers were not in need of our services as often due to cutbacks or decreased production. Especially with customers in industries like oil and gas, where production was being scaled back to compensate for lower demand, our services were needed on a smaller or less frequent scale. We decided to evaluate our on-site services to determine which could potentially be scaled back and save our customers money.

After reviewing and estimating potential cost savings for each site for a few of our key customers, we reached out to our site contacts to explain our idea. Our customers were overjoyed that we had taken the extra step to find them additional saving when they most needed.

As a result of scaling back services such as trash pickups (we also removed unneeded containers providing monthly rental savings), parts washer servicing, used oil/antifreeze pick up, and pit and trenching cleaning, we were able to provide significant savings, especially at the larger facilities.

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