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- By James Wisler
- Customer Service
- [otfliker]
The residential home services industry is a business of solutions. No homeowner or entrepreneur calls you unless they have a problem they think you can fix.
That’s why it’s crucial to stand behind your work.
Standing behind your work is about delivering quality results that solve whatever it is your customer is facing.
A leaky pipe? We got you covered.
A faulty heating unit? We’ll get it fixed.
Unfortunately, not all residential home service providers step their game. Most of them, as evidenced by a revolving joke in the industry, offers a concrete guarantee on their work. This means all they guarantee is leaving the concrete of your driveway.
Customers don’t want that. Customers want results, and that’s why businesses should stand behind their work.
What Does Standing Behind Our Work Mean?
Standing behind your work means producing a fantastic job and making sure you deliver on all your promises. But what HVAC, plumbing, roofing, and other home services don’t know is that it’s also about ownership.
Not every service that a business renders is 100% guaranteed to last as expected or work as desired. Various services and distinct products have their respective expectancies. If the unfortunate does happen, customers shouldn’t carry the burden of the defective product or workmanship issue.
Standing behind our work is a foundational principle that Wisler Plumbing and Air lives by. That means if we did a bad job, we own up to it and take immediate action.
Standing Behind Our Work: Doing More Than What’s Required
There are times when clients hit us up for a service on one aspect, but upon inspection, they’re dealing with a bigger problem entirely. As a professional, I hold it high enough to bring it to my customer’s attention and give them options to deal with it.
Here’s an example:
Our team was working on a copper pipe because our clients had poor water quality. While inspecting their plumbing, we noticed their copper pipe is thin. We did what we had to do, we patched a hole.
But we didn’t stop there and simply left them with a “concrete guarantee.”
As a professional service provider, we had to notify them that issues like thin pipes are time bombs waiting to explode. They’ll open up doors to new and bigger problems. That’s on us if it happens, and it probably will if we don’t do anything about it.
We notify clients and explain the depth of the problem if left unsolved, and then we offer our solutions. While we can’t force people to do things, bringing it to their attention gives some kind of “backbone” to our claim that we stand behind our work.
A Good Time Can’t Hide a Bad Problem
Businesses are all about building relationships. Agreed. However, a good customer relationship will never mask a second-rate, low-grade, and jerry-built service.
Our team can be nicer than they already are. They can go out there, have an awesome time with customers, build a great brand image and act super professional. But once they leave, one thought lingers over a client’s mind:
Is the problem fixed?
If the issue resurfaces, all that good time is thrown out the window.
Businesses must remember that clients didn’t simply call us to build relationships. Relationships are great, but no more than icing on the cake. At the core of the service is to do the job right.
Longevity and quality work — that’s what they want.
Think of it this way. We all have that well-meaning non-expert friend or cousin that’s willing to get down and dirty to help us with plumbing problems. But would you have them do this work? Probably not. So, relationships come second to quality work.
How Do We Stand Behind Our Work when Our Work Fails?
Again, it all boils down to accountability. There’s nothing wrong with eating humble pie if we have to. It’s about stepping up and taking ownership of the mishap.
Being nice is a nice plus, but it’s never quite enough. It’s our duty to deliver great results, meet, if not exceed expectations, and make sure their problems are dealt with.
That’s what we promise.
If you need any work on your plumbing, heating, and air conditioning, call Whistler Plumbing and Air at 540-483-9382.
