Every month we spotlight one of our customers to get to know them better, share their successes and tips on the job, and learn more about their experience with Platterz.
Names: Bernie & Vikki
Company: Crowe Soberman LLP
Roles: Supervisor, Facilities & Office Services (Bernie) — Office Services Assistant (Vikki)
About Bernie & Vikki
Bernie & Vikki were introduced to Platterz a couple months ago. We started working with them right before Tax Season, the busiest time for accounting firms like Crowe Soberman.
When we first started talking with Bernie & Vikki about how Platterz can help them order food to the office, we didn’t anticipate how badly they would need our help. During Tax Season, many of the accountants stay late and need dinners ordered for the week through March and April. This was a big task for Bernie and Vikki to manage on their own, and we were delighted to help make their lives easier.
I’m amazed at how cool and calm Bernie & Vikki are in their roles, even when they’re ordering food for almost 100 people every night. They have the entire operation down to a science: they know the best places to order from that makes everyone happy, what time the food needs to arrive so that it’s never late but doesn’t get cold, and how to make sure that everyone who stays late gets fed.
Halfway through Tax Season I checked in with Bernie and Vikki to get their feedback on Platterz, and to find out how they manage to keep Crowe Soberman running like a well-oiled machine amid the late nights, mounds of filing, and tons of food.
They expressed a strong admiration for Platterz, and how much easier we’ve made their lives during Tax Season. For me, it’s been rewarding to see how a lot of the new features on Platterz have modernized some very time-consuming processes that they were doing manually.
For instance, every day Bernie used to hand-write a list of 80 people in the firm, and check off whether or not they’d be showing up for dinner, which was both frustrating and time-consuming. Once we introduced him to our Polls feature that lets users easily find out who will be attending an event, and what their dietary preferences are, Bernie was quite pleased.
Below is part of our chat, condensed for brevity and clarity.
The Role
Platterz: How long have you been at Crowe Soberman?
Bernie: I’ve been here since 1997, so I’ve been with the firm for 19 years.
Vikki: I joined in 2004, so for me it’s been 13 years.
Platterz: Wow! I could tell that this wasn’t your first Tax Season. Can you walk me through your roles?
Bernie: We do a bit of everything there. We run the file room, we take care of all the supplies for the office, handle all the scanning and photocopying — which there’s a lot of — manage the off-site storage room, and generally all the other day-to-day things that keep the office running.
Vikki: It might sound simple but there are a million little things that we look after that most people wouldn’t think about. If we didn’t do these things, most of our colleagues would have a very hard time!
High Expectations
Platterz: Of all these tasks that you’re constantly taking care of, what’s the most challenging part of your role?
Bernie: Managing people’s expectations.
Vikki: Exactly. People have very high expectations that anything they need will get done the moment they ask for it. Our biggest problem is that we actually do get it done! We sort of shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes.
Bernie: It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a challenge. We sometimes get tricky last-minute requests, and it’s up to us to make sure it gets done on time.
Platterz: That’s definitely a challenge. How do you mitigate people’s expectations compared to what you can realistically accomplish?
Vikki: We’ve really learned to work as a team to make sure we’re able to accommodate everyone’s requests. We overlap our lunches so that there’s always someone on-hand to get the job done.
Great People Make All the Difference
Platterz: What do you both enjoy most about working at Crowe Soberman?
Bernie & Vikki: The people!
The people here are great. We often say that if you can’t get along with the people in the office, there’s likely something wrong with you, not everyone else.
Vikki: As hard and as demanding as our roles are, we really feel appreciated for the work that we do, and that’s what keeps us going.
Bernie: The culture here has changed, which is partially what led to our daily dinners.
Vikki: Before, each floor would eat separately, and each day of the week a different floor would get dinner. Today, all the departments come together and we all eat dinner on the same floor, every night.
Dinners During Tax Season
Platterz: So how has that transition affected you? What’s your experience like with ordering food during Tax Season?
We look at Tax Season as “Before Platterz” and “After Platterz”.
Vikki: Before we started using Platterz ordering dinner every night for this many people was challenging. We’d be spending hours every day figuring out how many people we needed to order for, trying to think of where to order from, and spending way too much time on the phone communicating these large, complicated orders.
Bernie: Another issue we were having was getting portions right. We were always worried that there wouldn’t be enough food because we didn’t know how many people would show up, so we would order way more than we needed. We would end up with way too much food, and it was just such a shame to have to throw it out the next day.
An Easier Way to Order
Platterz: So how has that changed now? Has Platterz made a difference?
Vikki: It’s night and day.
Everything is just so much easier, so much faster, and we just don’t worry as much.
Ordering every day for our entire firm was just too much work when we had to deal with individual vendors. It became way too hard to follow up individually every time; this is just so much easier.
Bernie: You guys have been extremely helpful throughout the process. You have some amazing vendors on board that we love, like Mashu Mashu and Craft Kitchen.
We used to order from a lot of these vendors on our own, but now having it all in one place just makes a tremendous difference. There really hasn’t been one dinner that we haven’t liked so far.
Platterz: That’s wonderful to hear! Do you have any advice for other people in your role who need to order food to their firms during Tax Season?
Vikki: Use Platterz!
Honestly, it’s true. Platterz is a great company, and your entire team are simply wonderful to work with. We couldn’t be more thankful.
