Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine January 2021

HVACR NewsMagazine January 2021

Business & Marketing Tips

virtually before requesting a service or sales call. E. Value your company’s ability to generate a great first impression; Your company has many levels to make great first impressions. Internet profiles are a first choice for shopping services. 81% of shoppers research online prior to making a purchase. On average, consumers only view three internet profiles for less than 15 seconds each before choosing a service provider*. This reinforces the idea web sites are very important. Responding to customers once you are contacted is the second tier to good first impressions. Email, internet and phones all must be answered quickly and efficiently with thorough follow up. Building your brand with signage, vehicle wraps, and uniforms are necessary to give your company notoriety, and visibility. F. Value customer’s property while respecting individual viewpoints and ideas; You know the message. Don’t park in the driveway. Don’t walk on the grass, even if there is no grass. Leave the home cleaner than when you arrived. All great tips on customer service. However, a topic generally overlooked, opinion discussion will kill a relationship in a heartbeat. Technicians should keep conversations friendly but to the point of the repair or service. Ideology, opinion and pointed conversation should be off limits. We sometime offend and never know the issue exists until after the customer drops off our radar. Today’s customer will not complain. They will simply never use your company again. By the way, you should track every customer that does drop off. Not

necessarily to pull the customer back but rather to learn what pushed them away as a lesson learned. One final note. There are occasions where the customer is not a match for your company. Ruth King, “The Profitability Master” , reminds us that, on occasion, you “sometimes must fire a customer.” G. Value your staff’s ability to deliver ; All positions in your company are equally important. Without key personnel at every level, your company goes nowhere fast. Great sales staff, technicians and installers may pay their own way. Efficient warehouse managers, dispatchers and office administrators are often overlooked assets. Qualified staff should be recognized often and compensated w ell. Employees that don’t see a future or feel appreciated are the most likely to leave your company. A job is more than just money. What happens when we use quality as a tool profitability? When we employ the right processes to produce a product that delivers value, we can charge more without worry of what the company down the street is selling boxes for. Anyone can sell a box. Only quality yields a sustainable profit that can drive your company to new levels of meeting needs for the community and your staff.

*Research by Blue Corona 2018