[Brian]

I'm working on a new intiative for my company. The goal is to have every customer say WOW at the end of the job. This means that every aspect of the service experience, from the very first phone call until the truck pulls away at the end of the job, has to exceed their expectations.

My first step in this is to visualize what the entire experience should look like at every step. I am curious what others think makes a customer say WOW.

I have some initial thoughts:
Quick response to their call
Prompt arrival for appointments
Good quality work
Great communications throughout the process
Clean workmen

The above seems very insufficient. It's what customers expect. What can we do to make them say WOW?

Brian Phillips

 

[GMack]

A couple things work for us, Brian, but they generally revolve around leaving the customer's home CLEANER than it was before you got there.

- We paint onto the glass on window sashes and scrape it. As part of this process we clean every window we paint.

- Admittingly not every time but if we work over wood or tile floors and any dust makes it underneath our dropclothes, we not only vaccum the floor but, on our hands and knees with a 5-gallon bucket of warm water, clean the entire floor with wallpaper sponges.

- General rule: At no time will our shoes or any of our tools touch our customers floors except in the entryway of the home. Shoes off as we walk in on the first day. We then lay drop clothes in a walkway into the work area, drop out the entire work area, finally put our shoes back on.

I've found that cleanliness is what makes people say WOW while you're on the job.

Mack

 

[timhag]

All of the above are great WOW factors. I get WOW's for staying at a job until completion. A lot of painters around here can't seem to do that. I get WOW,s for respecting customers property, laying drops from front door to work area. The top dog WOW goes to that little extra thing they have you do cause they have nobody else to do it for them.

 

[BenPaintinTooLong]

I think that having your painters cover all walkways from vehichle in the driveway to grass shows real pros are at work here.

Maybe straighten the falling over mail box and paint it.
Replace the old rusting home #"s .
Replace a torn screen or two.
Set out a couple of hanging plants on the last day.
Benptl

 

[Tonyg]

I think that having your painters cover all walkways from vehichle in the driveway to grass shows real pros are at work here.

Maybe straighten the falling over mail box and paint it.
Replace the old rusting home #"s .
Replace a torn screen or two.
Set out a couple of hanging plants on the last day.
Benptl

For exterior repaints I have considered adding mulch to beds in front of house to help with that after effect. That’s if I got a good price on the job and the beds are average/moderate size and not already manicured. 4 or 5 bags of mulch for a thin layer to clean it up and 30min labor tops, would be icing on the cake – That’s if there was money on the table.
.

 

[GMack]

Whether inside or outside, at the end of the day stack your ladders in ascending order perfectly straight. Same with any paint and tools, everything in nice little rows. All paint cans facing the same direction, that sort of thing.

When you're gone for the night and they look at your work area you don't want them to say to themselves, "these guys are very neat workers." Rather you want them to say, "I think these guys suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder." :thumbup:

 

[Paint Works]

We Leave these behind, marked with room name, paint color and filled with a little paint, We also put a little sticker with our logo and number on them. They cost about $8.. I know kinda cheasy but I'm telling you people love them. They can put the paint in the basement and put these away in closet in each room.:thumbsup:

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[/ame]

 

[ProWallGuy]

We Leave these behind, marked with room name, paint color and filled with a little paint, We also put a little sticker with our logo and number on them. They cost about $8.. I know kinda cheasy but I'm telling you people love them. They can put the paint in the basement and put these away in closet in each room.:thumbsup:

Now those are cool. I've never seen those before.

 

[Paint Works]

We buy them at Home Depot.

 

[GMack]

I like that Paintworks . . . Does the paint keep well inside?

Mack

 

[Paint Works]

I hope so. We just started giving them last fall. They seal up pretty tight and there is a plastic cover that closes pretty good over the roller.

 

[The paint whisperer]

I'm working on a new intiative for my company. The goal is to have every customer say WOW at the end of the job. This means that every aspect of the service experience, from the very first phone call until the truck pulls away at the end of the job, has to exceed their expectations.

My first step in this is to visualize what the entire experience should look like at every step. I am curious what others think makes a customer say WOW.

I have some initial thoughts:
Quick response to their call
Prompt arrival for appointments
Good quality work
Great communications throughout the process
Clean workmen

The above seems very insufficient. It's what customers expect. What can we do to make them say WOW?

Brian Phillips

Brian , please don't be offended. My question to you is that, these initial thoughts are very basic. As a company, don't you already emphasize that to your employees? Maybe, it is more difficult when you have a lot people working for you.

I am a one man band.

There are part of my job/services.
I don't consider them a wow factor at all. When someone call for service, these are the thing that customer should be expected from a professional like us.

My bad Brian, I misread you post. :icon_redface:

 

[George Z]

All of the above are great but expected,

Brian,
spend some time reading the comments from our completion form:
http://ecopainting.ca/testimonials.2.html

After a while, a clear theme emerges
friendly, professional...

"Your crew is wonderful. Thoughtful, careful, with attention to detail, and sweet too!"

"My daughter really enjoyed chatting with the painters! A captive audience..."

"I'm glad Shamus wasn't any trouble! I'm sure he enjoyed the company all week too!"

"You guys are awesome. Karon rocks!"

"We will see you in the early spring I guess. Say hello to Peter too from the girls."

"Great job and nice people."

"The painters were courteous and pleasant company."

"Not only do the walls look fabulous, but the painters were such a pleasure to have around."

Our employees,
the ones with the company culture we were discussing earlier,
They are the face of the company.
To them, the company is "we"
and they are out there trying to impress with their service.
All the time.
Training your own takes time, but it's worth it.

 

[Paint Works]

Paint Whisperer, I think what Brian is saying is that aside of just those basic things we all do everyday what would be some suggestions to go above and beyond the basics to get a wow out of the customer.

 

[PressurePros]

One area that has not been covered is the follow up. Some ideas:

• Call the customer and ask them about the experience. Give them a little informal survey. It will wow the customer and give them a relief from any buyer's remorse they may be holding onto as well as provide crucial data to improve your operation. It also puts you one step closer to getting a referral. Ask or it !
• On larger jobs I send a thank you packet. The packet includes before and after pictures. I have gotten referrals that start with "Linda so and so was showing me her before and after pictures. Can you make our deck look like that?". The packet also includes a $25 Visa gift card as our thank you. That $25 given off at the time of proposal would have been worthless. When given back after the sale you would not believe the impact. It has the psychological effect of indebtedness. My referral rate has skyrocketed. I also put a magnet in there. I want my marketing expense down to 1% by 2010 so I can back on here and harass you guys. I don't pay for marketing, all of my work is referral
• Get your referal rewards program going. If you don't ask for a referral 99 times out of 100 you won't get one. I am working on a program called "Pressure Points". Its like a frequent flier program. Every time someone makes a referral they accumulate points. Every time they call us back for work, they get points. I am working out the logistics for an e-store where they can come spend their points. For example one referral will buy them a $35 gift certificate for a local restaurant. Ten referrals, three housewashes and three deck maintenance visits gets you a 32" plasma TV.

This is the kind of stuff that makes a customer say wow. I agree that everything else like communication, appearance, and job quality are equally important but its the post sale stuff that turns your customers into walking billboards.

 

[vermontpainter]

Ken

Wow. Seriously.

 

[Brian]

There are some really good ideas here.

When I think of WOW, I think of the unexpected (in a pleasant way). For example, last week I had to call an electrician to my house. Before he came into the house, he put on a pair of those disposable shoe covers. Totally unexpected, and totally WOW.

George-- your points are well taken. As I've thought about this over the past month, I've realized the production end is where the real opportunities for WOW exist. The production people spend the most time with the customer.

Ken-- your points are also well taken. The other focus of my thinking has been after the job. I really like your Pressure Points idea.

Brian Phillips

 

[PressurePros]

Something else to add about post sale follow up is to keep your name in front of past customers. This is the single biggest secret in the marketing/advertising game. I am really focusing on this aspect this year. I have a company newsletter that goes out to my entire customer d-base. If anyone has any idea either that they have utilized or think may work, I am wide open for suggestion.

 

[Brian]

Something else to add about post sale follow up is to keep your name in front of past customers. This is the single biggest secret in the marketing/advertising game. I am really focusing on this aspect this year. I have a company newsletter that goes out to my entire customer d-base. If anyone has any idea either that they have utilized or think may work, I am wide open for suggestion.

We've done a quarterly newsletter for the past 10 years. It is far and away the most effective marketing we do--it costs about $2 per person per year. It also goes to people who didn't hire us. Each year I pick up numerous jobs from those people-- they went with the cheap guy the last time and weren't happy. I stay in front of them for several years, and bingo, I'm their new painting contractor.

Brian Phillips

 

[GMack]

Something else to add about post sale follow up is to keep your name in front of past customers. This is the single biggest secret in the marketing/advertising game. I am really focusing on this aspect this year. I have a company newsletter that goes out to my entire customer d-base. If anyone has any idea either that they have utilized or think may work, I am wide open for suggestion.

Ken,

Thanks for the continuous stream of helpful posts . . . I've heard a lot of general talk about newsletters from a number of different sources. From a marketing standpoint, what are some things that should be included in any newsletter about your company?

Some things that come to my mind would be a "Current Projects" section, any specials you may be running, a "State of the Company" address.

What other types of things are we talking about.

Mack