Delivering outstanding customer experience continues to be a critical driver of success for commercial service contractors. In fact, the continuing roadblocks facing the commercial contracting industry — including an unpredictable economic climate, supply chain disruption, and labor/material shortages — underscore the critical importance of customer experience as an opportunity for contractors to distinguish themselves from competitors, protect revenue, and grow their business.
Unfortunately, the same circumstances mean that delivering an extraordinary customer experience has never been more challenging than it is now. The shortage of experienced skilled workers, rapidly evolving customer expectations, and rising prices are contributing to too many jobs marked by delays, frustration, and disappointment — a situation that underscores how important communication, streamlined workflows, data, and training are during this pivotal period in the industry.
Customer service vs. experience
Prioritizing the customer experience can have a transformative effect on service businesses, streamlining day-to-day operations, so you can win and complete more jobs in less time. Contractors who can build a culture designed to prioritize the customer experience can reduce the persistent headaches they and their teams encounter. Even more importantly, they can take a strategic view of their business that allows the company to grow and support its long-term goals. Contractors who consistently deliver the right products/services efficiently and offer true measurable value are a step ahead of competitors who cut corners.
Unlike customer service, however, experience isn’t transactional. It’s a holistic journey that starts before customers schedule an appointment and includes the whole package: branding, marketing, advertising, quoting, scheduling, technician performance/appearance, project management, payments and invoicing, warranties, and maintenance agreements.
How to communicate effectively
Customer experience is ultimately a team effort that depends on constant communication. Clear and reliable communication with customers is essential. In addition, contractors must ensure that they’re communicating effectively with team members, team members have open avenues of exchange with management and leadership, and tools and culture are in place for team members to communicate with each other. Without this, work gets delayed or dropped, leading to longer timelines and unhappy customers.
On top of that, the sheer number of stakeholders involved in a commercial project can complicate the flow of information, increasing the risk of errors and cost overruns.
Thankfully, today’s cloud-based technology solutions can help by providing a key tool for communications. Automated office processes, project/customer management software, and payment/accounting solutions not only streamline workflows but also provide transparency and accountability that help keep jobs on track and allow contractors to provide convenient status updates to customers. Integrating an all-in-one system that connects field technicians, back-office staff, account managers, owners, and customers ensures transparency and accountability, encourages faster decision-making, and reduces errors, all of which adds up to completing more jobs and staying under budget.
The value of training
Training is just as important as technology for maintaining consistently excellent customer experience and communication. Implementing regular training sessions helps keep team members engaged and up to date so they’re equipped to deal with the challenges they encounter in the field. It’s also important to provide resources for field service support like easily searchable knowledge libraries, which help technicians respond confidently to any situation and reduce callbacks and customer dissatisfaction.
Offering team members opportunities for ongoing professional development also ultimately helps companies provide a better customer experience. Employees who feel their careers are supported are more inclined to buy into a customer-first culture, and the skills they develop in outside programs will improve their service delivery.
In conclusion
When you have established a company culture where performance, communication, and training are all prioritized to serve as the foundations of excellent customer service, you’ll see tangible results and efficiencies in operation throughout your business. Teams that are trained to deliver results and practice open communication have fewer callbacks, generate leads, and earn customer loyalty. Those, in turn, help you land and complete more jobs, generate more revenue per job, and recruit the best talent – all of which are keys to growth in the current business climate.
Premier customer experience is critical to any contractor’s success, supporting all the elements of stability and growth that help you build a profitable, efficient business that runs like clockwork. Exceptional customer experience can also provide built-in resistance to economic uncertainty. The results of market-leading customer experience – loyalty, leadership, talent, and efficiency – can ensure your services continue to be regarded as essential.
Alok Chanani is the co-founder and CEO of BuildOps, an all-In-one platform for commercial contractors.
