If you’re a home improvement pro, you know that “soft skills” and achieving customer satisfaction are nearly just as important to your business as hard skills. The common saying that “customer is king” rings true in every aspect. You are in business to serve the customer. You identified a need or problem that the customer has and built a company to solve it.
Because of that, it makes sense to be strategic about your customer service experience. This is especially true if you run a contract-based business where you get to directly interact with the client. One of the most important skills you’ll need to master is customer satisfaction. In this article, we will go over 5 service tips home improvement pros can use to increase customer satisfaction.
1. Hire the right people
If retention is important to your business (and it probably is), it’s important to hire the right people for customer-facing roles. We believe that it’s always a better idea to hire for attitude and train for skills. After all, empathy, a key ingredient in customer satisfaction, comes from within. At conXpros, this esteemed value is extremely important to our account management approach.
2. Nail your greeting
Customer service starts as soon as your customers meet you. In earlier blogs, we’ve discussed the importance of making a memorable first impression. Your greeting is central to that. Avoid scripted messages like “Can I help you?”. Instead, personalize your greeting and LISTEN to your customer to get to know them better. In fact, there is no harm in standardizing this process. You can even place a time limit for your sales crew to greet clients. Some of the best home improvement companies already do this, with a “service in X minutes or less” guarantee, and they’re excelling at customer satisfaction.
3. Optimize your online experience
There’s no denying that the world lives online these days. Because of that, customer satisfaction depends on your customer service experience being seamless and efficient online. You should always make sure your company’s website is fast loading, easy to navigate, and clearly shares the information your customers usually ask for. It should be easy for your customers to use your website to find your contact information and get in touch with you. You can even add a live chat function for giving an immediate customer response. We do this at conXpros! Check out this blog for more tips on how to improve your website.
4. Know your product
You’ve heard it a million times before. The home improvement industry is competitive. Your customers have several options to choose from when it comes to roofers, painters, handymen, and beyond. That’s why it’s important you and your crew have the expertise to stand out. Ensure that your staff is extremely well-versed in the services your business offers. Customers are perceptive and can always tell if you know your stuff. And ultimately, sales is a game of trust. People buy from people they trust, so if you and your sales team don’t know the service in and out, you won’t achieve customer satisfaction. You might even lose business.
5. Listen to your customers
How do you solve your customer’s problems? With information. To get that information, you’ll need to listen. This applies to virtually every sales and business scenario in the home improvement space. If your customers are unhappy, your staff should have the formal training and customer service skills needed to make unhappy customers feel better. If your customers are having bigger problems around their homes, offer them larger solutions. If your customers need more time or space to make a decision, give them that time and space. Customer satisfaction is simple for home improvement sales pros as long as they’re attuned to their customers’ needs.
People buy from people they trust. So if you make customer satisfaction a priority with a couple of these tips…. You’ll surely be retaining more customers in no time.
conXpros has become a leader in the home improvement lead generation services space largely because we focus so intently on customer satisfaction. Across all of our points of contact with our customers, we keep one thing in mind – how does it feel to be our customer right now? One of the initiatives that we are most proud of is our lead credit policy. Providing our customers with quality, genuine opportunities is the bread and butter of our business. If a customer doesn’t feel that we met that standard – we make it right.
For more home improvement sales tips, check out our Sales Tip Center. And if you’re looking for more leads, check out this page to learn how conXpros can help!