My lean mean hairdresser

I visited my hairdresser yesterday for my normal appointment. I’ve been going to her for years and it was a regular visit. She had some exciting news to share. She told me I can now schedule my appointments with her on-line. I simply create an account with the on-line appointment service, click on her name and schedule my appointments. This morning I scheduled my hair appointments for the rest of the year. Pretty cool.

As we chatted yesterday, she told me that one of her biggest problems since she doesn’t have an assistant is the scheduling of appointments. She tried to schedule the next appointment before a customer left but, inevitably, someone needed to re-schedule or didn’t know their schedule and would call back. That led to playing phone tag. The process was frustrating and inefficient.

Using an on-line appointment scheduling service allows her to delegate that task and put it squarely in the hands of her customer. The service even syncs with the customer’s Outlook or Google calendar and sends the customer an automatic appointment reminder e-mail.

In this “new economy,” businesses must find new ways to become leaner yet more efficient at the same time. That may seem like an oxymoron but it is not. There are many tasks we do that can be handed off and not always to another person in our own organization. Many on-line services have cropped up that can handle anything from setting appointments to reminding us of birthdays and anniversaries.

Look at the processes in your own organization, especially the ones that take up the most time and are the most inefficient. Now, get on-line and start researching. Talk to other service providers to see how they handle these same issues. I bet there are other people out there who have conquered the same things that are driving you crazy.

Keep In Touch

So you’ve sold a job but the actual work won’t begin for a month, maybe two or three. You might be waiting on custom materials or the weather or something else. Do you stay in touch with your customer?

Yes! You may need to meet to finalize some of the allowances. Or maybe you send out some follow-up materials. Call or e-mail with a status of the material order (you’re expecting the cabinets in next week, etc.)

Customers don’t want to think you’ve forgotten about them. Give them a little love periodically and keep them happy.

How to deal with your client's increasing stress levels

A new survey reveals that homeowners are becoming more stressed as the result of their remodeling projects. Read on to learn how tension surfaces in a family situation and what you, the contractor, can do about it.

Survey Shows Remodeling is Stressful: "Survey Shows Remodeling is Stressful
Routines disrupted and relationships put on edge

A recent survey shows that remodeling often increases tension between family members.
ServiceMagic.com

GOLDEN, Colo. -- October 29, 2009 -- A national survey released by ServiceMagic.com indicates a rising trend in boosted tension and heightened stress levels within the family during a home remodel within the last year. In a time when remodeling is on the rise, up 13.5% from Q3 2008, ServiceMagic.com experts looked at the current trends and found surprising results from an exclusive homeowner survey."

For the rest of the article, click here.

So how do you deal with stress from a remodeling project to ensure that you are not on the receiving end of the client's frustrations? As the article stated, there are three main sources of frustration within the family:

1. Projects took too long.
2. Contractors were messy.
3. Projects went over budget.

You can easily deal with these three sources of frustration by managing the client's expectations and a little jobsite clean-up.

First, plan the job accurately and completely. Account for all phases of a job and put it down on paper. Make sure that your production team buys in on the schedule. Then, share that schedule with your client. Be sure to explain the schedule to your client, including events that could change the schedule (such as change orders). This is just as important for small jobs as it is for large ones. Never undertake a job without a written plan!

Second, clean up every day! Your production crews should put away their tools, neatly contain materials and broom sweep on a daily basis. If you are working inside the home, use plastic to contain dust and carpet/floor protection to keep flooring clean. Explain to the customer up front that any remodel will create dust but you will keep it to a minimum. And then do it! You may even consider paying for a cleaning service at the end of a job.

Third, present clients with change orders immediately if they wish to change the scope of the project. Detail the change, the cost and the impact on the schedule. If the client decides to accept the change order, make sure it is signed immediately.

The three main sources of stress for any family undertaking a remodeling project can easily be managed by you and your staff.

How to verify an e-mail address

It’s easy to verify snail mail addresses and phone numbers through reverse directories or phone books. But what if you have a contact list full of old e-mail addresses? Maybe you’ve sent an e-mail and haven't yet received a reply.

You can check to make sure the e-mail address is still valid. (Whether or not the recipient will open the e-mail is another story entirely!)

Go to verify-email.org and enter the address. The system will tell you if the e-mail address still exists.

Your customer wants to connect with you

You may think that customers want to do business with your business. But what they really want is to do business with you.

Customers are individuals and they want nothing more than to connect with other individuals.

Give your customers that close personal attention and make a personal connection

Chinese-Made Drywall is Causing Corrosion

Have you read about the drywall manufactured in China that is corroding pipes, vents, and wiring hidden behind walls in Southwest Florida homes? Click here to read a recent article.

Lennar Homes, the builder in question, commissioned a study which found that the drywall is indeed causing the corrosion but claims that there is no risk to the health of the homes' occupants.

I'm sure that we have not heard the last of this. I wonder how far reaching this problem could be. How was the drywall distributed? Was the defective drywall sold in any other parts of the country? Was it used in commercial projects? Remodels? Schools? Lots of questions come to mind.

I'll let you know when I hear more.

Don't do business without a contract

I hope you have a legal contract that you use for all of your remodeling and home improvement work.

If you don’t, put down your tools and go right to your attorney’s office to get one. Otherwise you may end up there for not using a contract.

A contract protects not only the homeowner but you in case something goes wrong. It sets forth the full specifications of the job as well as what is expected from each party.

And if there is a change to the initial contract, make sure that you do an addendum. This can be a change order or additional work authorization or whatever you want to call it. But you have changed the initial contract and that, too, needs to be in writing, signed by both parties.

Do you guarantee your work?

We do!

That’s right, we give a 3 year labor warranty on just about all of our remodeling work.

Our state requires us to give a 1 year labor warranty. We decided, though, long ago that if we really wanted to stand out and if we really believed in our work, we would give a longer warranty than was required.

How has this worked for us? Great!

You may think that we are constantly being called to fix things. Nope. Most of the time we do the job right the first time around. But things definitely do happen. And when they do, we immediately make them right again.

I actually like knowing when we have a labor breakdown. That way I can track if we need to change our construction methods, our products or just be a bit more careful. I can also get an idea if an employee or subcontractor is not up to par.

A labor warranty works in another way, too. It gets you back in front of a past customer. And once you fix the issue, you have a happy customer. Many times there is more work just waiting for you.

Happy Selling!
John

Are you one of the best contractors?

I’m a personal subscriber to Angie’s List. I joined about a year ago so that I could track what information was being disseminated to subscribers about contractors.

I was excited to read that, according to a recent poll, most Angie’s List members have outstanding experiences with home improvement contractors. In the same breath, though, most of those same members have had at least one bad job in the past. That’s too bad. And it’s a negative mark on our industry.

Unfortunately, the media dwells on the bad over the good in the construction industry. And Angie’s List does, too, except that they also include a Best Contractors list.

I found their Best and Worst Contractors List of 2008 to be interesting, not from the point of view of the horror stories, but from the point of view of the positive stories about the Best Contractors. The Best Contractors were chosen because of their superior service, charity or community work, and child and pet friendliness.

Do you have what it takes to be on a list of the Best Contractors? Do what it takes to ensure that your customers have an outstanding experience.

Fire Your Worst Customers

It may seem counter-intuitive to fire a customer. Especially now when the economy is in a downturn and remodeling is not on the top of everyone’s buying list.

But firing a customer may be just the thing you need to create room in your business for more happy customers.

Now I’m not talking about the person who has a few questions or asks you to fix an item that they don’t think is correct. Using good communication skills, you should be able to deal with just about all customer concerns and questions.

But you’ll run into one or two people who aren’t happy people. No matter what you do or how you do it, they aren’t satisfied. Or they are just down people. They like to complain. They bring everyone around them down. And they take up an awful lot of your time and your company’s time. Plus they are not going to give you referrals.

We had a customer that we did several jobs for. All of the projects came out great and she was satisfied with everything. But she is just not a happy person. I’m sure that there are reasons behind her unhappiness but we found her attitude was wearing on everyone in our company. So we made a decision to remove her from our mailing lists. She doesn’t receive any marketing that we send out to our past customers. Of course, we will cover any warranty issues that she may have. But we most likely would not do any more work for her, no matter how large or small the project.

Firing a customer can be a liberating feeling once it’s done. But before you make that decision, make sure that you and your staff have done everything you possibly can to create a satisfied customer.

Learning from a not-so-good customer survey

We send out a customer survey at the end of each and every job that we do. The information that we receive is invaluable in helping gauge our level of customer service. I just received a survey back from a customer on a small wood railing repair job. Now we don’t normally do this type of work but it was a friend of a friend and the job seemed easy enough. Nothing that we couldn’t handle. Unfortunately, that’s the wrong thinking in this situation!

First, I definitely mis-estimated the job. We went way over budgeted hours which actually caused us to pay to have to do this job. This is not something that happens often here (thank goodness!) but it does occasionally. I’d be a liar if I said that it didn’t. Luckily, it is normally a very small job such as this (this one was under $1,000). And it shows me that I really have to watch my numbers and my estimates. And the type of jobs that I take on!

When we finally finished the job, we sent out our normal thank you letter along with a customer survey. Now you would think that we would have done a bang up job for this customer and he was ecstatic. Far from the truth as I found out when he returned the survey!

You see, he liked the salesperson (me) and our office staff but was not happy with the production on this job. This perplexed me since our best carpenter and best painter worked on this job! Of course, I was still suffering from the sting of the job cost report which showed a negative profit, so my first instinct was to blame production. The customer had some very specific issues and listed them in the survey.

Luckily, the customer also called me the day he mailed the survey to me. I say luckily because I would rather someone tell me they have an issue and allow me to fix it then to not tell me and let it eat away at them. Then they have a tendency to tell their friends what a horrible job we did. I don’t know about you but I don’t like or need negative pr from my customers. I want happy customers who love us.

Anyway, that prepared me for the negative survey but it also gave me the opportunity to sit back and think about the job and what could have gone wrong. I already knew that I had under-estimated the hours required for the job. What else could have gone wrong? I wondered if this was an existing condition that the client found, something that we did not touch in our work.

I sent our carpenter out to check on the job and meet with the customer. Sure enough, the major item in question was something that was done by the original builder of the home and was not in the scope of our work. The minor item in question, some touch-up painting, was definitely something we should have taken care of at the time. We quickly cleared up the confusion and scheduled the touch-up painting with the customer.

And do you know what the customer said at the end of the meeting? He said, “I’m sure glad that this wasn’t something you did. You have restored my faith in your company!”

Now I have a happy customer, albeit at the expense of my job numbers. But as I see it my job numbers looked bad right from the start, I just didn’t know it yet.

Some things I learned and re-learned from this job:

• Check my estimated labor hours carefully. And if I’m not sure, add more.
• Respond quickly to an unhappy customer.
• The customer isn’t always right but I don’t have to tell him that up front!
• When the customer isn’t right, I have to be diplomatic in telling him so.
• Production isn’t always to blame.
• Instruct production to search for existing conditions on a job.
• Instruct production to point out existing conditions to clients right away.
• Give the client the opportunity to add to the scope of the work, if they so choose. Always in writing with an Additional Work Authorization, of course.
• Schedule any necessary follow-up work immediately.
• Follow-up with the customer to make sure they are happy.
• Even if you don’t make your numbers on the job, you must still provide excellent customer service. It is not the customer’s fault that you messed up!

Creating Bad Will

In August of 2006, Starbucks sent out a promotional e-mail to their employees in a small region of the country inviting them to forward to their friends and family the coupon for a free iced coffee. Sounds like a great idea. Spread the word. Locally.

Unfortunately the word spread far wider than Starbucks anticipated. Remember this promotion was only valid in a specific geographic area. But soon the coupon spread to every area of the country thanks to the internet.

So what did Starbucks do when they realized that the coupon meant for a small geographic area was now being used all over the country?

They shut down the promotion. Yup, that’s right. Instead of creating good will among their already loyal customers by honoring the coupon, they instead pulled the coupon from everywhere.

What they were left with was a lot of unhappy customers who were once excited to try a new drink (and maybe become a loyal drinker) and a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit.

I had a similar experience in a local franchise pizza place. My family and I liked the pizza, the shop is right up the street and we were looking for a quick Friday night meal. And I had one of those coupons you receive in the mail. Sounds like a perfect answer to Friday night’s dinner!

But when I tried to use the coupon, even though it was within the expiration date, I was told that “corporate had pulled the coupon”. What did that mean to me? That I had to pay full price, even though I was holding an unexpired coupon.

I paid, took my pizza and never went back. I learned how to make my own pizza.

Bad will. People have long memories.

When something goes awry in a marketing campaign, figure out how to minimize your losses but keep good will uppermost in mind. It’s hard to repair once it’s been tarnished.

Happy Customers Keep Coming Back

In the past month, I have replaced three cell phones for our remodeling company. The phones were old (at least two years old) and had worn out. It was time to upgrade. Of course, not all three phones went out at the same time! So I made three separate trips to my local Verizon store.

A problem developed with one of the new phones. The talk time was way too short for our Production Coordinator who uses her cell phone constantly throughout the day. She found herself re-charging the battery at least twice a day. She asked if there was anything that could be done to fix this problem.

So I took her phone back down to the local Verizon store. When I purchased the phone, the sales person told me about a 30 day exchange program. If we didn’t like the phone, bring it back within 30 days and they will exchange it for no charge other than the additional cost of the new phone, if any.

The problem was it was day 38.

I politely explained the situation to the store manager and asked what could be done to alleviate the problem.

To my surprise, he acknowledged that the 30 day limit had passed but, since I was a regular customer, he would make the exchange anyway. So I ended up buying a better phone.

Sometimes good customer service means bending the rules. Not a lot, just a little. Happy customers come back and tell their friends. Do what you can to keep your customers happy.