Dear Contractors,
Imagine that you yourself have contracted to have something major done to your house. Let's say a kitchen remodel. Something that will mean ordering take-out and/or washing all of your dishes, and cooking pots & pans in your basement washtub, for weeks. And imagine you have two toddlers.
Now imagine that your contractors are doing the work as they always would. Demolishing the kitchen to replace its parts. Getting all of the plumbing and electrical lines into the right positions for the ground-plan, dealing with the floor, appliances, fixtures, cabinetry, countertops -- ordering and installing, piece by piece, on some kind of schedule. Just doing the work. This post is not about the quality of that work. Let's assume it's just fine. Small glitches here & there; but fine. Good, in fact.
Now please hear me. That is not enough, and as the customer you know it.
When did your contractors tell you they would start? When did your manufacturers tell you they would deliver? Did your contractors know this? Bet they did. Did your contractors tell you they would show up at your house at a certain time? Did they show up at that time?
If your contractor has told you things about scheduling that turned out not to be true, your trust in them will begin to falter. If your contractor has pretended to know something they didn't, you will start to doubt the quality of their work. If your contractor has told you some really vague stuff even though they knew for a fact what the specifics were -- for example: [Something major] will be delivered during a certain week, but the contractor knows darn well that the vendor won't even get the truck on the road before Thursday, so: delivery date = Friday if the weather holds -- you will think that your contractors are stupid, or worse, that they have one set of rules for themselves and how they like to live, and a different set of rules for other people. Other people who are keeping them in a paycheck. And did I mention that you are other people who are doing dishes in the basement washtub at 11 p.m. on a worknight because the two toddlers didn't actually even fall asleep until 10:30? This will make you feel bristly toward your contractor.
We all know that good contractors are mainly focused on getting the job done. As a good technician yourself, who happens to be contracting out some work on your own house, you know this, too. A part of the contractor's job really is to help the customer to survive without the thing he or she is fixing for them.
The simplest way for the contractor to accomplish this, is to give some serious attention to giving you, the customer, all information which will help them to survive, in a timely fashion -- and to having as much as possible of what they say be true. Because if you, the customer, know what to expect, you can work around the inconvenience. If your contractor says he or she will do something by a certain date, and then does it by that date, you, the customer, will trust them. I am not saying that contractors should make up some timetable that only Superman would be able to manage, and then strive to achieve it. I'm saying that what they promise should reflect reasonable reality. As an experienced contractor, you know more or less how long various pieces of a job take to complete; and you have for the most part a fair amount of experience with manufacturers and vendors; so while you might not have control over them or their lead-times, you know more or less what to expect. So tell the customer.
Dear Contractor, have you ever had a customer who was a demanding micromanager? Yes, some people are just like that. But most people only become that after a bad experience with a contractor. If you are proactive in letting your customer know what's up, your customer will call you less often. The cure to the phone-call problem really and truly is not to turn off your cell phone. Turning off your cell phone actually results in increased call volume overall. If they stop calling your phone because they've decided you lost it on a fishing trip, they will start calling the main office instead.
If you just make one call to summarize progress, give an update on expected delivery dates, and quickly explain anything unexpected -- wrong door hardware, an appliance that arrived damaged, glue stuck to the new floor -- you will prevent them from discovering each thing on their own, one thing at a time, and calling you separately about each thing. And if you also tell them, truthfully, what time you'll be back in the morning, you've headed off another phone call. One phone call out prevents four incoming. Which gives you more time to actually get stuff done.
One more *very important* note. Sometimes you have good news to convey. Sometimes you have bad news. As the customer, if your contractor has good news (hey! counters showed up two days earlier than expected! could be good.), when do you want to know about it? In general, the answer to this question is "as soon as possible."
But if it's bad news when do you want to know about it?
Answer: IMMEDIATELY. As in: yesterday. Because the sooner you know, the sooner you can make a plan and take control of the situation.
How do you want your contractor to make such a call? You want them to dial the phone and say, "Good morning. This is [your contractor]. I am sorry to bother you, but I've just learned that the manufacturer of your countertops messed up your order and has to completely re-do it. I just got off the phone with them, and I wanted to let you know right away about the delay, so you can plan for the inconvenience. I am sorry; this was completely unforeseen, and makes my job harder, too, but unfortunately we have no control."
Do you know what your reaction will probably be to receiving a phone call like that? If your contractor has been communicative all along, you will sigh with disappointment, and you will say, "Cr@p. Well, thank you for letting me know." And if your contractor has been surly, silent, and frequently absent, you will express anger, because this might be the last straw that will trigger your heart attack or stroke. And then you will say, "thank you for letting me know."
I kid you not. People will thank you for bad news.
As a contractor, try this approach for six months, as an experiment, and see how incoming phone calls about ongoing projects slow down. If you are calling your customers more than they are calling you, you will find that you are dialing your phone a lot less than you do now, because: no more call-backs. This will give you amazingly more control over your own time, in addition to helping your customer enormously. If you do it for a year, or two years, or forever, and are consistent about it, you will likely also see that you might receive more calls for quotes, and more actual work. If I had contractors who always let me know what was up so I could plan my life, I would recommend them to everyone I know.
Now. How about those situations when you have a customer on the line who is clearly desperate, and has a very short time-frame for completion? You quote out the job, but are in fact too busy with other jobs already in progress to get it done on the customer's schedule. If you accept the job, demolish their [kitchen or whatever] to get them on the hook, and then leave them hang, you will piss them off. And they will remain angry with you forever. And because they wouldn't recommend you to a friend on a bet -- and in fact will warn their friends against even getting a quote from you (did I mention forever?), you will get caught in a vicious cycle of having to resort to that kind of nonsense to even get any work at all. I promise you. Your return customers are like gold. They make your entire life so much easier than the one-hit wonders; you want to encourage return calls and word-of-mouth recommendations.
So if you really can't do the work on the customer's schedule, just say, "I'm sorry, we're too busy right now to be able to meet your deadline. But here's my card. I hope you'll consider us in the future; and if your timetable should change, or loosen up a bit, do give us a call and we'll see what we can work out." Believe it or not, you can actually make money in the long run by occasionally turning jobs down in the short-term.
Oh. And one final note. Erase the habit of saying, "to be honest with you..." Because when you say that, you really are informing your customer that ordinarily you lie to people, but you'll make a grudging exception this time.
Think just a little about what I've written here. You can be an absolute genius at what you do, but if your customer feels off-balance; if your customer feels like you don't respect the value of their time, and like they are not in control of their lives; or if they feel like you're trying to pull the wool over their eyes, they will not have a good feeling about your work no matter what its quality, and they will hesitate to recommend you to others. But if you communicate accurately, and are pro-active about communicating -- changes in the plan; changes in when you can be there; as well as good news asap, and bad news immediately, you will seem like a genius at what you do, even if your skill is just average. Respect breeds respect.
Seriously. Everyone wins through this approach to dealing with people. I experienced it firsthand as a customer service professional; and I'm telling you, it is a stress-buster that can change your life.
Sincerely,
acetylene