Wisler Plumbing and Air

Serving Roanoke and surrounding areas.

Menu
Schedule Online
or call (540) 483-9382

What does ‘bone honest’ mean?

customer satisfaction

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

Bone Honest is part of our Big 20, our minimum standards.

The big question is, what is the difference between “honest” and “bone honest” or what is the difference between integrity and “bone honesty”?

Integrity has been defined as what someone does when no one’s watching. Do you do the right thing even if nobody knows?

I use this example a lot of times with incoming team members: If we’re in a client’s home and we scratch their tile floor, it could be easy to just clean things up and walk out and hope the customer never sees the scratch. But we know good and well, the right thing to do is to go to that client and say, “Look, we, we scratched this floor, we damaged this. We need to take care of that.”

If the customer comes to that person and says, “Hey, did you scratch my floor?” And they say, “yes, I scratched the floor.” That may be an honest answer, but we need to have the level of integrity where we go directly to that client and own that situation so we can do the right thing.

“Bone honest”, speaks to the level of integrity and honesty that we strive for at Wisler.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

When we go fill our vehicle up with gas, it’s expensive. When we go to the doctor, we’re always surprised of how expensive it is. Rising prices are a reality. For plumbing specifically, you don’t hire a plumber very frequently. It might have been five years ago when, when you had the plumber in your home last time. So your perception of what it’s going to cost today might be based on what it cost five years ago or 10 years ago.

There’s a wide range of expertise out there when it comes to plumbing. So, you may not be comparing apples to apples all the time. A plumber that’s in a one truck operation, that’s just working out of his home is probably going to be less expensive, but he may not be insured! He may not be available. He may not have warranties on the project. So, make sure that you’re comparing apples to apples whenever you’re thinking of pricing. Just because a company gives you a quote twice as much, doesn’t mean that they’re ripping you off. The question to ask is what’s included in that cost and making sure that you break that down and understand what the value points are.

And we’re currently in a time where demand is high for plumbers, and there’s just not many skilled people out there to do the work. And so therefore that raises the costs of a company to provide that service because there’s just such a high demand and not much supply of competence. So, they have to train people and all those costs get rolled into the business. So that does increase the cost as well.

A company that wants to keep good, competent plumbers on hand has to pay them enough that they’re happy.

So…is this is a good time to become a plumber?

Absolutely. At Wisler Plumbing and Air we have an apprenticeship program. So you don’t have to have experience to come to work for us. We’re looking for humble, hungry, and smart people to join our team. And we provide training for them and get them in a career that’s going to be very fulfilling for years to come.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

At Wisler Plumbing and Air, we live by the Big 20. You can go back a few posts and read about all 20 standards, but today we want to dive deeper into three of them.

We are caring and courteous.

We wear uniforms.

We clean up after ourselves.

We are caring and courteous.
Being caring and courteous is important to us. In our mission statement, it says that we will serve people, and I think being caring and courteous is a big part of that.

Many times, clients are dealing with an unexpected emergency that’s going to cost them money they were not ready to spend. Sometimes the breakdowns can be emergencies, which can be scary. Those are situations when being caring and courteous goes a long way.

Another way to put it is that we try to be empathetic. It’s not just a transaction to us, it’s a relationship. Our staff is sometimes in unfavorable weather or working where there is sewage present, and handling that in a very caring manner goes a long way.

We wear uniforms.
First impressions matter. If there is family at home, they’re going to be paying attention to what the service personnel looks like. They want to feel safe and secure. So, we are cautious about who we let into that environment. If someone is not dressed professionally, it can cause fear or anxiety.

It’s really just about making sure our first impression is done with care, and that we have consistency throughout our staff.

We clean up after ourselves.
We want to leave an area better than we found it. We use mats and we put on shoe covers. We keep vacuums on the trucks and make sure to clean up before we leave so that the customer isn’t having to come behind us to do it. We even carry all-purpose spray and rags to wipe things down when we are done. The job’s not complete until the cleanup is done.

If you want to work with a team that cares at this level, you can call Wisler Plumbing and Air at 540-483-9382.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

The ‘Big 20’ is the minimum standard we hold ourselves to at Wisler Plumbing and Air. Onboarding for every single member of the team includes signing an agreement to uphold these standards while representing the company. When we make a mistake or come up short, we can always come back to these standards; we can take responsibility and take action to do better moving forward.

Until now, the ‘Big 20’ has been mostly internal at Wisler Plumbing and Air, but today we’re going to share them, and we’ll get into greater detail in future posts.

  1. Show up on time.
  2. Do the job right.
  3. We listen.
  4. Neat appearance.
  5. Caring and courteous people.
  6. Well-stocked trucks.
  7. Drug free.
  8. Wear floor savers and lay down mats.
  9. Wear uniforms.
  10. Well-trained technicians.
  11. Personal phone answering.
  12. Background checks.
  13. Be honest.
  14. Hard workers.
  15. We value feedback.
  16. Clean up after ourselves.
  17. Give price in writing before the work is done.
  18. We stand behind our work.
  19. We smell good.
  20. Recommend options.

The ‘Big 20’ is just a minimum bar, and sometimes it’s hard to live up to. But we onboard with them, train around them, and have the list posted in all our managers’ offices. When we have a client concern, instead of getting defensive, we say: hey – did we live up to our own standards? And if we didn’t, we need to take ownership of it.

Stay tuned for a more in-depth look at the ‘Big 20’ and call us at 540-483-9382 to work with the team at Wisler Plumbing and Air.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

When I think back to earlier in my career, I realize I was a very task-oriented person. Because I just wanted to get things done and move forward quickly, I’d get very frustrated by just ‘sitting around and communicating’. But over the years I’ve come to value communication more and more—being able to slow down and communicate with the team allows for things to get done at a very high level. This is one of the most counterintuitive lessons I’ve learned. It’s been said that you need to slow down to speed up. It’s true—I didn’t know it would work so effectively, but it has really come in handy over the years.

Without good communication, execution just doesn’t happen very well. Over the years we’ve tried to give more attention to making sure that the line of communication with our team members is well-established. Everybody needs to make the conscious choice to set aside time to train and get better. If we’re too busy to train, develop, and grow, then that means we’re definitely way too busy. We can all go a long way by just sharpening the axe and making sure we’re moving forward in the right direction.

Things are getting really busy right now in our industry, and it’s probably going to get even more challenging as the year goes on. That’s why it’s so important to have a culture that recognizes the importance of training. A lot of the people we hire value ongoing learning. In fact, we have two people dedicated to nothing but training within our organization. Training might not always be something that we want to get done, and it’s challenging to actually make time for it. The secret is to put it on the schedule and actually commit to carrying it through.

I also make myself very available to any of the team members. Of course, I can only be face-to-face with so many people, but our employees definitely have managers that they can turn to. They can also go straight to the training coordinator and request training directly from them.

If you have any questions, or if you need our team to address a plumbing or HVAC issue, just reach out to us by calling 540-483-9382 or requesting an appointment online.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

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.

Diamond Club

Our Ads

Jobs

Blog