If you can get customer service right you will be head and shoulders above your competitors. There is a reason people make bad jokes and grim faces when they talk about service people and contractors - very few of them are even able to return a phone call. By setting some simple rules for how to handle customers, appointments and phone calls, you can almost assure yourself success even if your technical handyman skills are minimal.
Rule #1: Return phone calls
This alone may make your business, and once you are established it might give you enough leverage to charge 10 to 20% more than your competitors for the same work. Why? Because some of us get irritated by people who do not return phone calls.
Now, I do understand the reason why returning phone calls could get to be a hassle. You need to get some work done, and that means you need some uninterrupted time. You may also be a bit tired of people who call once, twice, or three times in one morning, only for you to call back that afternoon to find they have solved the problem. That's understandable.
One of our local handymen (he specializes in appliance repair) has developed an elegant system. The answering message on his cell phone says "Thank you for calling Handy Jason. I am away from the phone right now, and I am booked through the end of this week, January 25th to 29th. I am setting appointments for the week of February 1st to 5th. If you would like to make an appointment, please leave your name, telephone number, your address and neighborhood, and the nature of the problem. Please tell me if I have been to your house before. I will call you between 10am and noon on Saturday to set appointments for the week of February 1st to 5th. Thank you very much for your business. I realize your have other choices among handymen, and I appreciate your support."
And he actually calls you at that time. And he shows up on time. He walks right into the house and at some time during his visit he slaps his business card/refrigerator magnet on our refrigerator (unless he sees its already there). If it is his first visit, he will also do one or two housekeeping things like check that our refrigerator is set at the appropriate temperature (80% of people's aren't), and might duck his head into the utility closet to say a word or two about how we could probably save about $20 a month in propane if we kept our hot water heater just a few degrees cooler. This is the only service person I enthusiastically recommend to friends. It also helps that he is cheerful and respectful.
Rule #2: Show up when you say you will
Some handymen schedule an extra half an hour between their appointments just to make sure they don't have "appointment creep", which is when your first appointment of the day goes over by a half hour, and then so does your second, and by the time its afternoon you are now 2 hours late to your fourth appointment. If you don't like the downtime between appointments, carry something you can eat for lunch and either take a longer lunch or skip it depending on how your appointments go. Have some errands on hand to do during the down-time, so you can do nothing on Saturday morning.
Rule #3: Don't treat women like idiots
I almost didn't include this, but I think it does need to be said. Industry surveys have shown that women make up the bulk of handyman clients. You will have a strong advantage if you can work well with women.
I decided not to work with a plumber who wanted to replace our boiler (which did need to be replaced) because he only wanted to know what my husband had tried (my "husband" is actually my boyfriend, and it is me, not he who relights the pilot light, because even after three lessons in how to do so, he just can't get it lit). Then he asked me if I knew what soot was. Then, while he was checking to see if the boiler he wanted to put in was in stock, he asked the man on the phone if they still had those nice leather jackets that they gave away as a bonus with new boilers. The kicker was when the plumber said he didn't think our house was that cold. The indoor thermometer read 53 degrees. The boiler replacement job was worth $12,000 to this man's company. They should have sent a different plumber.
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