Remember that the number one emotion of your first time customer as they wait for the technician(s) is FEAR. Anything you can do to pre-orient the homeowner will make the job go much smoother and help create a raving Cheerleader. For example …
Put your employee’s pictures up in the office and use them in your advertising. In fact, why not allow each employee their very own “family profile” page on your company web-site? (Obviously supervised, of course!) This promotes a comfortable, fun, “family atmosphere” for both employees and customers alike.
This is one of those great “win-win” ideas. You well remember that customers base their Value Decision on their relationship with the people doing the work. What better way to “pre-condition” your customers than for them to see the faces of your employees. (Hopefully smiling and without nose rings, black eyes, Hell’s Angels tattoos, etc.)
In addition, it is no secret that carpet cleaning is a “low prestige” profession. Any way you can boost the ego of your Technicians will obviously help. Seeing your picture is a great ego boost. If you doubt me, just check with Madonna or Tom Cruise!
Steve
PS One gentle request. Remember that this free QuickTIPS service depends on all our members sharing their Techniques, Ideas, Procedures and Systems. (Cute acronym, huh?) So please, drop us a line at this form.
For you that are in the restoration business I recently had the opportunity to add another reason for industry contacts. I was involved with a water damage on a Friday. When the call came in it was explained a woman had a overflow from a sump pump and would someone please come out and just remove a small portion of carpet, as it was starting to smell. Long story-short, I’m sure you all have been in this situation when a customer’s perception turns out to be so much more. After using a moisture probe, 2/3’s of the finished basement was totally involved, and after 30 yrs of living there the accumulation in the basement was let’s say MASSIVE. Just to move the furniture and contents to cut, bag and remove this 15yr old berber carpet and fiber pad was going to take a few hours at the very least.
I then went back to the office picked up much more equipment and the one person that was available to help.
I was racking my brain trying to think of who might be able to help with this large project and it came to me that maybe one of the carpet retailers I have a good relationship with would have some workers that needed the work. I called him and he absolutely had some people he was trying to keep busy in this slow economy.
I had 2 excellent guys within 1 hr. and he later thanked me for thinking of him. Sorry for this being so long, but my point is you must develop these relationships if you want to survive. As it turned out after 6hrs with 4 people working we were able to get the area staged for dry-down, separating and saving the owners damaged contents and installing equipment for dry-down.
Lesson #1–try to get all the info when it comes in,(this was a referral from another company)
Lesson #2–inventory your contact list, there might be some other services they can provide in an emergency.
Thanks in Advance
Jack Newcomb
ServiceMaster by Newcomb
330-495-1679
A Proud Member of the Pro-Cleaners Network
(look forward to seeing you in the room)
Wow, Jack, an excellent comment that is much appreciated. As this site gets better known we hope to hear more from you folks down in the trenches! In fact, with your permission we just might convert your story into yet another QuickTIP!
Steve
PS Yes, I am looking forward to hanging out with you folks on http://www.ProCleanersNetwork.com. I’m pretty sure it will be on Tuesday, July 28th but we are still working out the details. I’ll be back with you soon on this and thanks again for your input.
This is a great idea Steve. I will be working on this over the next few days. Besides letting customers know who will be in there house it is also a way to get a couple of extra pages of content on your website. We know google loves content so this will help out on SEO also.