Published on August 9th 2021
In in our 'Meet the Team' series, we'll get to know a member of the ReFLEX Orkney team and their 'why' in helping to build a smart local energy system in Orkney.
Job role: Customer Engagement Officer
Home base: Burray
What role do you play amongst your team? The calming influence
What’s your role within the customer service team?
I’ve been focused on the EVs, doing leasing, test driving, and more recently the buy-to-order used electric car sales, since Eco cars became part of ReFLEX.
The customer service team have all trained to do everything, and it’s only more recently that we’ve specialised. Our day-to-day involves trying to find what people’s needs are and what solutions we have to offer the customer. I love doing that. It’s great chatting to people and working out how you can help.
What did you do before you joined the ReFLEX team?
I worked for 14 years for a furniture retail company down on the south coast. While I was working, I did two years of night school training to be an electrician’s mate. I finished all the academic side of it, and I still have all that knowledge. It gives me an insight and understanding when speaking with customers about their energy use.
What brought you to Orkney?
We came to Orkney to visit the in-laws, and I just fell in love with it here. We gave it a go, and I’ll never move back south. We've been in Orkney for the last seven years. I first took a job working for Pentland Ferries in the customer service department and was there until joining ReFLEX.
What’s your favourite thing about living in Orkney?
The pace of life. I like that when you want to go somewhere, you get in the car and get there. I used to crawl through traffic for an hour to get to work—time that’s just lost.
I have three boys aged between 7 and 11. They love Orkney. They’ll go to the park and they’ll see all their friends there or arrange to all meet up at the beach, it’s lovely.
What has been the biggest challenge working or starting this job during the pandemic?
Getting set up to work from home and learning a new job remotely was totally different to anything I had done before, so that was a challenge. But in the end (and after a few weeks in the office before second lockdown) it worked fine. We got through that as a team.
Were you an electric vehicle fan prior to ReFLEX?
It was always in my mind that I liked the idea of an electric car. In the last year there’s been a real explosion of different options on the market so in that sense it’s really good timing for the project coming along now. There is so much to choose from and so many different styles of car, so it’s just finding what people are after and matching them to the right one.
What is your favourite electric vehicle to drive?
Early on, DriveElectric sent the team a Renault Zoe to borrow for a month so that we could each have a go. I really enjoyed driving it, and it was horrible getting back in my own car afterward—so clunky and noisy.
The Leaf is quite a nice all-rounder. In fact, my wife and I have now leased a red Leaf through ReFLEX as our family car. We have only had the car a couple of weeks but we all love it already.
What’s the best part of your work day?
My absolute favourite thing is taking people out on the test drive. I love it, it’s magical. You get people in the car and set off, and you’re usually still in sight of the building when you can see the look on their face: this moment where it all just drops into place and they go “oh hold on, this is really easy, this is great.”
What’s one thing you’ve learned since joining ReFLEX?
It was quite an eye-opener when we attended an online workshop with people all over Scotland discussing fuel poverty and saw the trap that people were getting stuck in when they couldn’t afford to heat the whole house. It’s a horrible situation to be in.
There is help. There are organisations we can steer people toward that can help them with grants to get the property improved, and then hopefully they can afford to heat the whole property to avoid ending up with a house that’s not safe to live in because of mould, etc.
What are you most looking forward to seeing develop as the company grows?
I’m looking forward to seeing more of our cars out on the roads in Orkney. We have delivered 50-plus cars so far [as of 8 August, 2021], and passing them on the roads knowing we helped make that happen is a great feeling.
Why does being a part of developing a smart, localised energy system matter to you. How do you hope to see this serve the Orkney community?
Just being a part of something that’s new and innovative is fantastic. It makes sense, with cars sitting around most of the day, to plug them in and turn them into a battery for the house. Getting smarter homes where you’ll have solar on the roof and a battery to store that energy so you have it when you need it—I think it’s fantastic to be integrating all that together and building something really positive.
It will be great to hopefully see how the project rolls out to other places in the UK, and across other countries as well. People are taking notice.
