Modern Tools for Service Contractors, Part 2: Inbound Marketing

When folks ask me about working in a small business, I point to the imaginary hat rack in the corner and say "I get to wear every single hat on that rack depending on the weather."  This analogy is especially true for owners and managers in…
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Modern Tools for Service Contractors, Part 1: Operational Efficiency

Over the last couple years, we’ve compiled a list of free to low cost, easy-to-use applications and products that we often recommend to service contractors. These products range in benefits from operational efficiency to lead generation and…
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Perspective on Software Recruiting from a Recent College Grad

Have you seen "The Hunger Games" movies or read the books? To give you a very watered down version, the premise surrounds a collection of children that are elected as Tributes to have an annual battle amongst each other until there is a single…
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Smartphone Buying Guide for Service Contractors, Part 4: Where to Buy

In the final installment of the Smartphone Buying Guide for Service Contractors we will address the final decisions you’ll make before purchasing. Should you provide devices for your technicians or should you have a bring your own device…
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Don’t Limit your Techs to Just One Tool – or Just One Mobile Application

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while (thank you, by the way), you’ve heard ServiceTrade advocate a connected IT ecosystem of business operations applications for your customer service, accounting, inventory, CRM, payroll, email marketing…

Looking for Great Customer Service? Try the Cable Company?

Everyone either cringes or laughs when they consider the track record of the cable companies in delivering customer service.  Comedians have named their movies or even their whole persona (Larry the Cable Guy) in salute to the ridiculous nature…
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Smartphone Buying Guide for Service Contractors, Part 3: Smartphones, Tablets or Both?

Once a service contracting business makes the decision to adopt ServiceTrade, the conversation almost always shifts to making device decisions. We covered one factor of this decision, Android or iOS in Part 2 of this series. In Part 3, we…
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Online Customer Engagement is Bad Yelp Review Kryptonite

I found this story on “Yelp Terrorism” amusing.  It seems that the owner of a Massachusetts jewelry store, George Pelz, was “terrorized” by an anonymous Yelp reviewer that claimed all manner of poor customer service, fraud, and malfeasance.…
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Is going completely paperless the best customer experience?

Many of our prospective and current customers tell us that they want to go completely paperless.  On this surface this sounds desirable, but does it really make sense, and is going completely paperless the best customer experience? I…