Wisler Plumbing and Air

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What Keeps me Up At Night?

client satisfaction

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Our mission statement here—and my mission statement, really—is to honor God, serve people, be diligent, do quality work, and grow profitably. I want to extrapolate a couple of things from that statement: Serving people well, being diligent, and doing quality work are practices that are very important to me. The quality of the work we perform is just so important that I find myself thinking about it quite a bit. It bothers me greatly if we’ve done anything incorrectly in someone’s home.

Satisfaction hinges around making sure that we’ve put the right person at a customer’s home and trained them correctly. We also have to be certain we’ve done the best job we possibly could. If we’re not efficient, if we don’t get a call made when we should have, or if we don’t update the customer about their situation, we’ve failed. This is so important to me, this organization, and our team. It’s a huge concern whenever we miss the mark. Day-in and day-out, we strive to respond to those issues quickly and try to resolve them the right way, to make sure we regain our customers’ satisfaction moving forward.

The ‘grow profitably’ part of our mission statement means we need to make a profit to stay in business for our employees and our customers. However, there are isolated situations where that’s not possible. We actually think it’s more important to lose money if it means making sure a customer is satisfied. We have to step up to the plate and take ownership of certain mistakes. Even though it’s neither fun nor profitable, it’s the right thing to do. That goes back to the quality of service and work performed—there’s a balance between quality and profitability, and I’m not willing to sacrifice quality in the name of profit.

If you have any questions about your plumbing or HVAC systems and you want to work with a team who cares very much about your satisfaction, reach out to us today. Contact us online or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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Satisfaction guarantee is such a broad term for a company to use, so I want to talk about what it means to me and give some concrete examples. We’re in the customer service business (which is also a very broad term). If one of our clients is dissatisfied because we’ve failed them in some way, or if we set an expectation that we didn’t live up to, it takes a lot of humility to acknowledge it and say, “We failed you and we’re sorry.”

We make mistakes even though we strive so hard for perfection. Our teams overlook things, which can be easy sometimes with everything that’s going on. The mistakes we make—or our inability to deliver an expectation that has been given—is going to cause dissatisfaction. We always welcome a client to let us know if they aren’t satisfied because we really want to step up to the plate and do the right thing. We make it a high priority to try to respond to the customer within a few hours of learning their concern.

Over the last 6 to 12 months there’s been a couple of areas in the teams where we’ve struggled. It’s happened due to many different reasons—we’ve had a really wet, rainy year, and we’ve also had some staffing challenges. That has led to us not meeting expectations, with excavation being one example. When we dig a hole or work in someone’s yard, not getting the compaction done causes the dirt to settle. Around a month after a job, the settled dirt can result in a low spot in someone’s yard. (That’s definitely very frustrating for a client.) The wet year has been challenging for us because it’s very hard to compact mud. We’ve had a couple of clients call in and say they weren’t happy with the end product. We had to go back out and make sure we got the yard up to an acceptable level.

When we do a job, we’re focused on doing it right for our clients (even if that means losing money). Many times, the measuring stick of the client’s satisfaction is the best way to determine whether or not we did do the job right. We started offering HVAC last year and we now have a full year under our belt. There were (and still are) definitely challenges around staffing and growth in that area. As we hire new employees to join the HVAC team, we’ll see mistakes happen simply because a new employee may not have the full experience we anticipated. If a diagnosis was made improperly and the client tells us something isn’t working, we try to get right back out there. If there’s any uncertainty, we’re going to go out and review any work that was done by that technician.

We don’t want to make any assumptions. In a couple of occasions we’ve had to take ownership of a mistake and go back over everything with a fine-toothed comb. We want to make sure we’re proactive because we definitely don’t want to be surprised three months down the road when an issue has been going on unresolved. Those visits to a home cost money and take away from other areas as well, but we do them in the name of customer satisfaction and making sure we’re taking care of our clients.

If you want to work with a team that truly stands behind the satisfaction guarantee, reach out to us today. Contact us online or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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Sometimes companies can be fearful of talking about a topic like satisfaction guarantees for a couple of reasons. One is because if someone is not satisfied, we have to take ownership of our mistake, and that doesn’t always feel very good. Another reason is because we can be fearful of people taking advantage of a company’s guarantee.

Our satisfaction guarantee is there to remove the risk of people doing business with us. If we offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee, there’s zero risk in choosing us. We’re a team of humans, so we’re imperfect and we do mess up sometimes. As we’ve always learned, the main thing isn’t the adversity itself—it’s how you respond to it that really matters. We’ll do what we need to in order to resolve any concerns.

In my experience, I’ve found that people don’t want to take advantage of you. It turns out that clients are truly concerned that we’ve done something wrong and we need to take ownership of it. For example, we deal with excavation and sometimes rainstorms will cause mud to run somewhere it’s not supposed to be. We try to answer those concerns and get them resolved promptly, but it can be very difficult when working with Mother Nature. Because the client’s satisfaction is very important to us, we try do do whatever we can to resolve the situation.

Not too long ago, we had a job where we were busting up the concrete in a home. We have a process to keep the dust level down, but unfortunately, we dropped the ball in that area and there was a dust issue in the home. We fielded the customer’s concern, addressed the issue, and got the area cleaned up. We did what we needed to do in order to leave the customer satisfied.

I’m working on a situation right now because we subcontracted a pipe lining company from eastern Virginia to line a sewer 12 years ago. We applied the appropriate warranty to the lining, which was 50 years. Unfortunately, the subcontractor isn’t standing behind the work they did. So we are standing behind it. The bottom line is, when I look at the quote that was given to the customer, it clearly and simply states the work done and the warranty we provided. It’s costing us a great deal of money now, but I was personally in that client’s home and I said we would do the right thing to resolve her concern.

The customer agreed to work with us because they had confidence that the problem would be resolved and wouldn’t come up again in the future. Even 12 years later we’re still making sure our commitment is being honored. Sometimes an issue isn’t really resolved and we have to do extra work at our own expense. We must make the choice to do the right thing, even though it might not always be very fun.

If you have any questions, contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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One of the most frustrating things for a homeowner is setting up an appointment for a service person to come to their home and they don’t show up, show up late, or don’t follow directions. We focus on being on time, and we give a two hour window in which we will arrive. We also try to notify people when we’re on our way. I really think meeting our client’s needs comes down to dispatching correctly. It’s important that the people fielding the customers’ requests are well-trained in asking the right questions so we best understand the issue you’re dealing with, how serious it is, and exactly what we need to do. Asking the right questions is vital to making sure someone’s needs are properly met.

Next, we need to make sure we send the right person to your home. We’re very much aware of how the technician we send could make or break the customer’s experience. (Nobody likes it when a technician seems incompetent or when it’s the first time they’ve ever seen the issue.) We assess the task that needs to be done and assign it a skill level. We also assign a skill level to every technician (because everyone is slightly different). Then we try to match up the right technician with the right task to make sure we’re sending a competent person to every home.

A lot of times people think that a company will dispatch its technicians to cover a certain radius. A technician in South Roanoke would just run all the calls in that area for the day, right? Well, not exactly. We do not focus primarily on the location of the call as much as we do the skill level necessary to do the job correctly and meet the customer’s needs. So we may have technicians passing each other by on the way to calls. This is all about making sure the customer has a satisfactory experience.

We make these choices when coordinating our technicians because our time is valuable and our homeowner’s time is valuable. We want to make sure that we’re doing our absolute best. Sometimes we do have to make multiple visits, and sometimes we don’t get everything quite right over the phone. But I’d like to think that the vast majority of the time we’re able to do it well and make sure that the customer’s problem is solved.

If you have any issues with your plumbing or HVAC systems, you can always reach out to the team at Wisler Plumbing. Just contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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You know the old adage, there’s more than one way to skin a cat? Everyone has their own way of doing things. When I talk about the Wisler way, I’m not saying it with arrogance, but as a way to describe our approach to getting things done. There are definitely many different perspectives and other successful ways for a business to function. The Wisler way is how I label what I’m about to share—these are some of the main things we’ve found to be helpful to our success.

First of all, we’re selective, meaning we focus on hiring the right people and making sure they’re a really good fit for our organization. More specifically, our organization is shaped by our customers’ needs. Customer feedback is what guides who we are and how we build our culture. Nobody likes the service personnel visiting their home to be rude, unknowledgeable, unable to get the job done right, disrespectful of their property, unable to be upfront, unfriendly, or unpleasant. We key in on these kinds of attributes because we know our customers need personnel who provide a high level of service. We fulfill those needs by by putting a strong focus on who we hire and how we hire. People’s homes are extremely precious—they hold the things that we find most dear, like our children and our parents. Anybody who steps foot in that environment needs to communicate safety, care, and respect. It takes a special person to be able to do that.

Next, we’ve found that people have to be trained, whether it’s from a technical standpoint or a professional standpoint. As we hire someone, we may find that they need training to improve specific skills (e.g., communication or service). Our organization is very much about growth and development, whether it pertains to the overall business or the individual. Someone may have the basic skills necessary to be a service technician or an administrative person within the business, but they can always develop various skills to become even better. That’s a big part of who we are.

Finally, because we fail a good bit, I think we need to focus on getting our work done right. (Perfectionism probably makes me a much harsher critic than most other people.) I do think there is a right and a wrong, and doing the right thing is important. It takes discipline and organization to get a clear view of the work you’ve done and then do the right thing, even if it’s not the easiest or most fun thing to do.

In summary, we focus on hiring the right people with the correct fit, we believe in personal growth and training people to obtain new skills, and we’re about being disciplined to do the right thing no matter what type of task it may be. If you have any questions, contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

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Homeowners have drastically different needs from a business owner. Commercial businesses really view their problems as just an expense that needs to be taken care of. Homeowners, on the other hand, usually don’t have the resources that a business does from a financial standpoint. So why do we choose to only work with residential customers? We want to be an expert, not a jack-of-all-trades.

It’s important for us to be very good at preventing issues from happening. We choose to build value in our services by making sure that costly damage doesn’t occur to our clients. Commercial business owners would often rather get the least expensive patch. If the item breaks again a few months down the line, they’ll just take care of it then. Homeowners have a different mindset—they want the issue fixed the first time. They don’t have the resources to go through multiple visits, repairs, or replacements throughout the year.

Being a value-based provider means that we recognize the homeowner’s need for safety, peace of mind, and the ability to sit back and relax knowing that everything is taken care of. Business owners are more about whoever is available at that particular time. They aren’t focused as much on quality and safety. Since it’s a public place of business, background checks and drug tests of our employees might not be as much of a priority for them.

They also don’t prioritize property protection the same way. Putting floor savers, mats, and shoe covers is important to residential customers, whereas it might not be as important to a commercial business. If we were to try to serve both commercial and residential customers, we’d find ourselves trying to cater to two drastically different mindsets. Instead, we want to be great at what we do. We do this by maintaining consistency across the service that we offer.

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Imagine what would happen if a homeowner hired a company that does both commercial and residential plumbing. The technician might have just come from a commercial call when they go to visit the homeowner. Damage prevention might not be at the top of their mind. That isn’t necessarily right or wrong—it’s just a consequence of two types of clients with drastically different needs.

Commercial plumbing systems are also very different from residential homes. They have different types of toilets than what you’d find at someone’s home. If we have someone who’s very good at commercial plumbing equipment, they might not be as much of an expert in residential plumbing. That’s why we’ve niched ourselves to become experts in the items we’d find at residential homes. We find that it serves us much better.

When you work with us, you can be sure that we focus on meeting homeowners’ expectations. If you’d like to learn more, contact us online or give us a call at (540) 483-9382.

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