Predicting the future is tough, but predicting the future of customer service for commercial service contractors? That’s easy. The technology is already here. It’s already permeated the consumer world. It’s just a matter of time before it revolutionizes how you do business. Just like local retail was rocked by e-commerce and video rentals were decimated by online streaming, the way you deliver service and make customers happy is going to be upended in the next 5-10 years. Rest on your laurels and your brand will end up like Blockbuster. Prepare and, on the other side of this revolution, your company will emerge as a dominant brand like Amazon.
Three different technologies are going to drive the service contracting revolution: Smart cars, smart equipment, and smartphones.
Smart Cars
Every major car and truck manufacturer is developing some form of autonomous, self-driving vehicle. Imagine a fleet of driverless work trucks that are involved in a fraction of the traffic incidents and can deliver parts without wasting a tech’s billable time. That’s great! But, what happens to your company when nearly 5% of all workers in the national economy that drive for a living lose their jobs practically overnight?
When semi-trucks, delivery vans, and taxis don’t need drivers and all of those jobs disappear, the unskilled labor pool is going to overflow. With no new demand for unskilled labor and a massive increase in supply, economics tells us that the cost will go down. Hiring low-skilled workers is going to get cheaper and easier. This won’t solve the skilled labor shortage, but you will have a huge selection of candidates to fill entry-level and apprenticeship positions. Prepare for this labor glut by building an efficient job application review process and scalable training program for new employees, but don’t worry about their driving record.
If you’re an early adopter of a smart fleet, you’ll differentiate your brand and show customers how you take advantage of technology to reduce costs and provide better customer service, you’ll stand out from the competition. It’ll be part of selling the program. Driverless cars are a perfect fit for the program. They’ll enable your company to reduce costs for you and the customer while opening up productivity for improved customer service. Besides that, how cool do you think it will be to take your customers for a spin in one of your driverless trucks?
Driverless vehicles will be as transformative as the internet and successful service companies will adapt quickly. Just like the companies today that still use fax and paper to communicate instead of internet-enabled technologies, there will be Luddites and slow adopters of driverless cars. They will get left in the dust. Companies that are prepared will dominate.
Smart Equipment
Imagine building equipment smart enough to alert you when it needs maintenance or repair, all the while customers are paying you a recurring fee for “equipment monitoring.” You’ll be able to deliver exactly what the customer wants, optimal uptime, without the extraneous labor costs. In fact, it’s already on the market. However, manufacturers and building automation companies are fighting to lock everyone else out of the market. Whoever wins this fight will be positioned to own the relationship with the customer and levy a toll on anyone who wants access. What happens to your company if you’re on the wrong side of this toll?
If you don’t own the relationship with the customer, your brand will be devalued and you will become the truck depot beholden to a third party. Don’t get locked out of the revenue stream. Equipment monitoring products that bypass the building automation system are already on the market. From monitoring sprinkler flow for leak detection, to HVAC and chiller performance monitoring, you can track it all. The moment a problem occurs, you’ll be alerted and mobilize to save the customer’s day and prevent future mayhem.
But, there’s a catch. This future only exists if there is demand for standalone equipment monitoring products. Otherwise, the manufacturers and building automation companies, with their deep pockets, will push those companies out of the market or acquire them. The solution? Incorporate equipment monitoring in your premium program today! Go explore the market for the best monitoring solutions for your customers. They should have simple subscription pricing models with a API-enabled, cloud-based applications that feed equipment data directly to you and your customer. Treat it just like any other software purchase and refer to Chapter 9 of The Digital Wrap for buying criteria. Tell all of your colleagues at other service companies about the solutions you’ve found. Collaborate to find the best solutions and build demand in the market to avoid getting locked out.
Smartphones
Widespread smartphones adoption isn’t new, but its impact on your workforce and your relationship with customers is not done evolving. The average smartphone user spends 3-5 hours a day on their device. Those screens enhance almost every aspect of their lives except for how they do business with you. What happens to your company when they expect to engage with you through that screen? Will you be ready?
Trends in B2B tend to lag behind the consumer world by a few years, but they’re coming. Your customers will expect to engage with you entirely through their smartphones. The better their experience, the more valuable you’ll be. Easy said, hard done. Unlike banks and massive consumer brands like Amazon, you can’t afford or get away with a single shiny mobile app to manage all the communication. It’s too expensive and impersonal. You have a close relationship with your customers. You meet them in-person and chat with them on the phone all the time. Your solution to mobile engagement will require a multifaceted and integrated technology approach.
One way or another, you’re going to give your customers a branded mobile app. It will tell them everything they need to know about the work you do for them and give them a way to request and approve new work. While standing in front of a piece of equipment, they’ll have instant access to pictures, videos, and notes from every service you’ve performed on that asset. They’ll see a spend summary on the equipment and have the information they need to make a smart choice: repair, replace, or roll the dice. That information will roll up into an overall summary of their equipment so they can have their finger on the pulse of their facilities. All of these features will integrate seamlessly into their experience when they log in on their computer, just like ordering from Amazon or banking.
These future conveniences for you and your customers are coming. As we like to say, if you ain’t first, yer last. Be the leader in your market for adapting and adopting new ways of operating your service business.
Nope, it’s a Tide ad.
The Eagles didn’t win the Super Bowl. Nope, Tide won it with their amazing ad campaign. Everybody is still talking about the Tide ad campaign. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could generate that kind of buzz with your customers and prospects without spending anywhere near the estimated $15M Tide spent on their ads? It’s possible. Take a page from Tide’s book: impress customers, steal the spotlight, and reinforce your value to make your brand memorable:
Make an Impression
That ad is impressive. Instead of exceeding our expectations, it transforms them. For that, it will leave a lasting impression on us, increase Tide’s sales, and improve their brand loyalty. Not bad for a laundry detergent. How are you going to leave an impression on your customers? With an invoice and a bunch of text describing the services they are paying for? The last time you bought laundry detergent, did the receipt leave an impression on you?
Of course, you’re not going to spend $15M to impress your customers. Fortunately, your customers don’t expect much from service contractors. With the right technology, you can transform your customers’ expectations and leave an impression without spending millions. Building your company’s Digital Wrap will change the way your customers think about working with you. Instead of a relationship built on invoices and emergencies, you can transform the conversation to one about the great work you do and the value you provide.
Steal the Spotlight
After that Tide ad, every other ad became a Tide ad. No matter what the ad was about, viewers were looking at the actors’ clothes and thinking about Tide. They convinced viewers to dissociate the actors and their clothing from brands and logos. What if every time your customers looked at an invoice from another service company and thought about your brand?
Start by challenging them to dissociate the valuable services you provide from the cost of those services. Impress them with online summaries of the work you perform that include pictures, videos, and information that helps them make the best decisions about their equipment. Don’t rely on invoices to convey your value.
Do this, and your customers will think about your company every time they look at an invoice from another service contractor. They’ll wish the other contractors could offer the experience you provide. You can steal the spotlight when you transform their expectations and leave an impression.
Reinforce your Value
Tide didn’t stop with that one ad. No, they played 3 more!
These marketing impressions reinforced Tide’s message in order to keep viewers thinking about their brand and wanting more. We call these MIPS: Marketing Impressions Per Service (or Super Bowl, in Tide’s case). Instead of one impression (a single ad or an invoice), shower your customer with useful MIPS to reinforce your value. A month before they are due for service, send them a reminder. Send them an en route notification that shows them what the tech looks like and when he or she will arrive. Send them an online summary of each appointment with pictures and videos. Your customers will eat up the information and ask for more.
Is Tide better than other laundry detergent brands? Online reviews suggest they are comparable to other detergents. Is Tide cheaper than its competitors? Not by a long shot. They are 3-4 times more expensive than other options on Amazon. Do you think they are selling more product than their low-cost competitors? After their Super Bowl ad campaign, you can bet your ass they will. Tide shows that a premium brand can easily overcome price concerns when it brings something new and unexpected to its customers.
An Easy Differentiator for Service Contractors
Want to charge 146% more than your competition and still have customers beating down the doors? The secret to easy money for service contractors is simple:
Convenience is more valuable than low prices.
Modern buyers are willing to pay a premium for convenience. In a world flooded with One Truck Chucks and low-cost competitors, differentiating your service brand with convenience, instead of price, can give you a serious competitive advantage. Spiffy and FilterEasy are a couple startups that teach us a lesson about how service contractors can make easy money.
Spiffy
Would you pay $49 for a basic car wash with interior vacuuming and $69 for an oil change? For comparison, pricing from traditional national chains is about $19 and $29 for the same services. That’s a 146% price increase. Sounds like a ripoff. What if the service came to your car, wherever it was, and you could easily schedule the appointment with a mobile app? Now we’re talking.
That’s just what Spiffy is doing. What has this convenience-first strategy gotten them? Since they were founded in 2012, they’ve raised $9.1M and expanded to cover 5 major cities. They didn’t do it by having the best price in town. Instead, they focused on customer convenience. Now, customers love them and Spiffy is making piles of easy money.
FilterEasy
Drop by Walmart or Lowe’s and you can find cheap home air filters for under $1. You can even find allergen air filters for less than $5 on Amazon. Why would anyone choose to pay $12 – $20 for a filter? You guessed it: Convenience. FilterEasy is a subscription service that ships home air filters to customers on a frequency that matches their HVAC system’s need. Home with no pets? You get a filter every 3 months. Home with 3 dogs? You get a filter every month.
When I tell people about the FilterEasy business model, it’s not uncommon to hear this: “I’d never spend that much on filters!” That’s fair. I wouldn’t either. That doesn’t change the fact that FilterEasy has raised $11.4M and is growing like crazy.
Their customers love that they don’t have to remember when to change filters. Their customers love that they don’t have to waste their time with a trip to Walmart or Lowes. Their customers don’t really care that they’re paying more. Now that’s FilterEasy money!
Commercial Service Contractors
So, how are commercial service contractors supposed to make easy money? Start by thinking about how you can use technology make your customers’ lives easier. Give them instant, online access to past service history and current service activities so they never have to contact you or wait for information they need. Set up your contracts with subscription payment so your customers never have to worry about month-to-month budgeting. Sell more repairs with online quotes so there are fewer costly and disruptive emergencies.
Your customers will tell you that price is all that matters, right up until you give them a more convenient alternative. That’s how you make easy money.
What skilled labor shortage?
“What skilled labor shortage? We don’t have any trouble hiring service technicians. We’re covered up in job applications.” That’s what a ServiceTrade customer told Billy Marshall, our CEO, on a recent visit. This customer figured that the economy was tanking because there are so many techs applying for work at his company. Billy just shook his head. “Nope. Everyone else is struggling to hire skilled labor. Your Digital Wrap is recruiting new techs for you.”
Your truck wrap has always been a recruiting tool. Just by performing the day-to-day work and driving around town, your technicians and the trucks they drive market your brand to potential customers and employees. A Mercedes Sprinter with a well-designed wrap is going to leave a good impression, right? A beat up, 15-year-old Ford Econoline with a few decals designed in the 90s, not so much. But, you already knew that.
What our customer and most service companies don’t realize is that a Digital Wrap works the same way. Just by performing the day-to-day work and generating online content for your customers, your technicians, equipped with technology, can market your brand to potential customers and employees. A well-designed website that shows up on the top of Google search results thanks to hundreds of great reviews collected by technicians is going to leave a good impression, right? A 15-year-old website that looks like it was designed before the .com bust, not so much. But, you probably already knew that.
Modern buyers and workers find and judge the companies they want to work with online. If you can’t be found on Google, strike. If you don’t have good reviews, strike. If your website looks like hot garbage, strike. You’re out of consideration. But, if you do have a great Digital Wrap, the customers and job applications will come to you. Selling and recruiting will get easier because people want to work with a premium brand they can trust.
Better techs, better service? Try a better experience.
Do you have a “Papa John’s” sales pitch? They claim to have better ingredients, better pizza. Whether it’s true or not, the financial markets have spoken and Papa John’s is getting crushed by its biggest competitor, Domino’s. Here’s the stock growth for Papa John’s and Domino’s since 2009:
Does your sales pitch sound something like this: Better techs, better service? Even if it’s true, why should your customers believe it? Your competition makes the same claims. Who should the customer believe? It’s your word against theirs. The same goes for any other platitude you may use in your pitch. We care more. We work harder. We have more integrity. Prove it!
If it doesn’t work for Papa John’s and their multi-million dollar marketing budget, do you think it will work for you?
On the other hand, we have Domino’s. Obviously, they are doing something very right. In 2009, they moved away from slogans and hollow talking points when they introduced their mobile app and pizza tracker. They did so to harness the power of the Experience Economy, which is summed up nicely by the Harvard Business Review like this:
“An experience occurs when a company intentionally uses services as the stage, and goods as props, to engage individual customers in a way that creates a memorable event. Commodities are fungible, goods tangible, services intangible, and experiences memorable.”
In other words, successful companies like Domino’s are winning more customers, making more money from each customer, and keeping them for longer by creating a memorable customer experience. And now more than ever, that experience is increasingly digital with fewer in-person interactions. For another example, consider Amazon’s convenient shopping experience compared to the chaos of a trip to Walmart. That alone explains Amazon’s wild growth compared to Walmart’s lackluster stock performance.
The problem with a great customer experience is that most of it happens after the customer buys something, making it difficult to incorporate into your marketing and sales pitch. It’s difficult to convince someone that’s never used Domino’s or Amazon just how awesome it is until they make the leap and try it out. Here are a few tips to overcome that barrier:
Use language that describes the experience: Convenient, transparent, modern, accountable, and data-driven are all words that mean a lot more when you can back them up with a sleek, digital experience that offers these benefits. They stand out compared to what your customers are hearing from your competitors.
Give prospects a taste of the experience: As quickly as possible, show prospects what your customer experience is like. For example, you can give them access to a demo account in your online service portal or send them a sample online job summary (in ServiceTrade, send them a Service Link) or quote with pictures and videos from a real job. They won’t get the full experience, but they’ll quickly see that you’re a cut above the competition.
Platitudes won’t get you anywhere. Until you align your sales pitch with a valuable customer experience, you’re going to continue losing to the competition. Drop the Papa John’s slogan and try to offer a Domino’s experience.
As a commercial/industrial service contractor, what is your ratio of repair to recurring service revenue? 1 to 1? 2 to 1? 5 to 1? If you don’t know, you could be missing out on a gold mine of high-margin work. If you do, you probably know that there’s room for improvement. And, when skilled labor is so hard to find, you know that you’ve got to drive as much repair revenue as possible to maximize the revenue potential of each tech.
So, what’s holding you back? Funnel friction. In other words, how easy it is to move from the top to the bottom of the repair funnel. Now, before we talk about the friction, let’s define where the funnel begins and ends. Too often, service contractors think that all the magic happens once the deficiency or repair report gets back to the office. As I wrote in another blog post, it actually starts WAY before you ever find a problem to quote. To keep this post simple, we’ll be talking about a funnel that starts with reporting problems in the field and ending with customer approval:
Now, ask yourself: “How much friction is in each task?” Or, simply put: “How easy is each step?” The easier it is, the more money you’ll make.
Report problems from the field
How easy is it for your techs to send the office all of the information necessary to generate a quote? How is that information communicated? Phone calls, paperwork, and email attachments? Does that data have to be manually entered into your database that manages repair sales?
…Do you have a database to manage repair sales? ServiceTrade does this, and if you’re not using ServiceTrade, a good CRM is your next best bet.
It should be as simple as taking a couple quick pictures, videos, and audio notes that automatically get added to a database for your office staff to start working from. The easier it is, the more reports your techs will create.
Create quotes
How easy is it to take a report from the field and create a quote that’s ready for the customer? Do you have to read chicken-scratch handwriting on reports, call the tech for more details, and retype everything into a Word document?
It should be as simple as clicking a couple buttons to turn a digital report from the field into a quote ready for the customer. The easier it is, the more quotes your company will create.
Follow up on quotes
Does your team manage this whole process out of their email inbox/outbox? Is it obvious which quotes need a follow-up? Is that chain of communication effectively managed and easily shared across the team?
It should be as simple as viewing a list of quotes that are due for a follow-up, no matter which of your team members created and sent the quote. The easier it is, the more follow-ups your company will perform.
Approve quotes
Once your customer receives your quote, how easy it for them to say “yes?” Do they have convenient access to the pictures, videos, and audio notes that will help them make the best decision quickly? After they decide, do they have to print, sign, and fax the quote?
It should be as simple as viewing an interactive quote online with rich media collected in the field that can be approved with the click of a button. The easier it is, the more quotes your customers will approve.
The easier all of these steps are, the more repair revenue you will drive and the more you will get out of each of your techs. Spend an hour assessing your processes. You’ll probably be surprised what you find.
If you asked people in the 1890s about personal transportation, they’d say “Give me a cheaper, faster horse.” Instead, they got cars and they happily spent more. If you asked people of the 1990s about entertainment, they’d say “Give me more selection and cheaper rentals at Blockbuster.” Instead, they got Netflix and they happily spent more. If you asked people about retail in the 2000s, they’d say “Give me more selection and cheaper options at big-box stores.” Instead, they got Amazon Prime and happily spent more. If you asked folks about their pizza in the early part of this decade, they’d say “Give me better, cheaper pizza.” Instead, they got the Domino’s mobile app and they happily spent more. If you’re scratching your head about the last one, check out Domino’s stock growth since the introduction of their mobile app in 2011:
Domino’s stock reached up to 644% growth since they introduced their mobile app
If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you know that Domino’s is using their customer mobile app to dominate the pizza wars. Every time I write about them, I have to pull a new stock graph to show just how much they’ve grown. Their success boils down to one word:
Convenience
That’s all customers really want. They’ll bark about price and quality right up until someone innovates and makes their life easier. At that point, they’ll happily fork over more money. When cars were introduced, they were fragile and cost far more than a horse, but they didn’t have to be maintained on a daily basis. When Netflix hit the scene, it had a small selection, subscription services were unheard of, and it seemed to cost more than the occasional Blockbuster rental. But, Netflix didn’t require multiple trips to Blockbuster to watch a single movie. Amazon has shipping delays and costs more than big-box stores, but customers don’t even have to leave the comfort of their own home.
In this era, you don’t have to be a technology company like Netflix, Amazon, and Uber to be a game changer. Domino’s shows that you just have to think like one. Use scalable technology to give your customer a convenient experience and they’ll happily give you more money. It’s that simple.
What does this mean for B2B service contractors? Make customers’ lives easy with technology. Give them better information so they can make better decisions by providing convenient online:
Visibility throughout the service process
Access to detailed historical records
Quotes for issues that need repair
This may not seem like much, but neither does an app that makes it a little easier to buy pizza and track deliveries.
Your Best Sales Rep: Data
When you’re selling to a new customer, can you predict their future? You probably try and you don’t even realize it. Like a palm reader, you survey their equipment and try to divine what failures are likely to occur, how much ongoing maintenance will cost, and how much money you are going to make. And, like a palm reader, I bet you are doing this with very little useful information beyond your own experience. So, how can you get scientific about this process and make accurate predictions and decisions? Data!
When a customer has a particular model of equipment that you regularly service, you should be able to tell them the average cost and frequency of repair for that make and model across your entire customer base. Imagine walking into a sales meeting armed with that information. If you are up against a low-price competitor (One Truck Chuck), who do you think customers are going to trust? The guy who tells them “Yeah buddy! I work on these all the time. No problemo. It’ll be cheap cheap cheap!” or the professional sales rep who tells them “We manage 4,065 model ANS-3214s across our entire customer base. We find about 43% in need of repair and the average repair quote is $1,136.83.”
Sounds like a lot of work to get at this data, but it’s not! Let’s walk through the steps:
Establish a list of common assets
You don’t want to perform these calculations for every make and model of equipment you service. All you care about are the most common assets under management. This is a great use case for the 80/20 rule. 20% of the make/models that you service probably account for 80% of the volume and revenue. So, let’s start with an export of all equipment data from your system. Don’t have or can’t access that data? You can with ServiceTrade.
Next, in your favorite spreadsheet application, create a pivot table from the data that summarizes the count of each make/model pair in your database. Unfamiliar with pivot tables? Oh boy, you’re missing out. Just Google “how to pivot table” and be prepared to have your mind blown! Here’s a real example, with fake model names, from a ServiceTrade account:
Model
Count in database
ANS-3214
4,065
LEN547
156
HOB2
102
CHILL-625
99
Now that you’ve determined the most common assets under management, let’s step through the quick analysis to be performed on each one.
Deficiency frequency
How often do you find deficiencies for ANS-3214 units? Well, with a quick export of deficiencies reported filtered down to this asset model, we found that 1,748 assets had deficiencies reported against them. That means that there is a 43% chance that you will find a problem with a given ANS-3214 unit.
Average repair price
Easy! Export your repair quote data, remove all quotes that include more than one asset (to avoid skewing data with repairs of different asset models), and filter down to all quotes for ANS-3214 units. In this case, the average repair quote came in at $1,136.83.
Obviously, there are caveats to this data analysis. First, the results are only as good as the data! Garbage in equals garbage out. Also, you are much more likely to find issues with equipment on your first inspection/maintenance visit. Any given asset may deteriorate differently depending on its environment and usage. Variations in a particular model may make a significant difference in the reliability of the equipment. With all that said, this type of data can make a compelling argument that you are a transparent, data-driven vendor that is more valuable than you low-price competition.
WannaCry? You will after this so-named ransomware takes over your Windows computer, encrypts all your important files, and charges you $300 to decrypt them, if you’re lucky. This virus is sweeping the globe and making headlines because of its widespread impact. Before you read any further, make sure you have run the latest Windows update if you are using a version older than Windows 10.
Losing your family photos and personal files on a PC to ransomware is unfortunate. Losing the critical infrastructure that runs your business because you’re still using local servers is catastrophic. That’s right, these viruses are indiscriminate and business servers are not exempt from these attacks. Local servers are especially risky because they represent a single point of failure if they aren’t backed up. And how confident are you in your backup systems? Do me a quick favor and go unplug your servers. Are you 100% sure they are going to start up where they left off? If you’re at all hesitant, then ransomware is only one of a host of concerns that you should have:
Disgruntled employees – Is there any way for you to prevent an unhappy employee from stealing your data or wreaking havoc on your company’s servers?
Natural disaster – Fire, flood or tornado. Enough said.
Disk failure – Computers degrade over time and will eventually break down.
Failed updates – If you didn’t update your servers with the latest Windows patch, you are susceptible to WannaCry. On the other hand, every update has the potential to introduce compatibility issues.
Other viruses – WannaCry is just the latest example in a growing trend of PC and local server hacks. And, while it’s possible to recover your files from a ransomware attack, other viruses are less forgiving and will destroy files outright or render your machines completely useless.
How do you avoid these risks? Dump the servers and adopt cloud-based applications like ServiceTrade. Why are they less risky? Without going into detail about the advanced technology they use for security and backup, the easiest way to understand how they work is to compare them to banks. Is your money safer under your bed, or in the bank? If your home is robbed or burns down, you lose your money. If the bank is robbed or burns down, your savings are insured (backed up) and your checks and debit cards still work. It’s that simple.
Don’t keep your business data under the bed. Dump the servers and move to the cloud.
In case you’re curious how WannaCry works, here’s a video of it in action:
Say “yes” to the quote
Are you worried that customers are going to “shop” your repair or upgrade quote around to other service contractors? If so, you failed earlier than you may realize. Getting customers to a “yes” on quoted work starts well before you ever find a problem and send a quote. It starts with trust. I’m not talking about the kind of trust built through personal relationships and old-school customer service. That’s not scalable or reliable. I’m talking about trust built on a technology-enabled, convenient customer experience. I’m talking about giving your customers the Amazon experience so they won’t consider buying from anyone else.
Amazon is dominating its competition because it innovated for the customer instead of focusing on backend efficiency. Now, they don’t have to compete on price. Walmart, on the other hand, focused on efficiency and logistics. They are the low-price leader, but the markets have spoken and you can see from the stock chart below that consumers will pay a premium for convenience. I, for one, will happily pay a few extra dollars to avoid:
Fighting for a parking spot
Wandering around looking for products
Waiting in line to check out
It’s not just the brick-and-mortar retailers that Amazon is dominating. Other e-commerce retailers struggle to compete with Amazon’s innovations. Even though other sites have lower prices most of the time (just check Google shopping), Amazon customers are loyal and don’t consider buying from anyone else. Why? Two reasons. Amazon’s order process is more convenient, reliable, and transparent than any other e-commerce site. From beginning to end, Amazon’s customers can trust that they are ordering the right products based on pictures and reviews and that their order will arrive on time based on notifications received throughout the process. Prime is the second reason Amazon customers don’t shop around.
Amazon sold the program when it introduced Prime, a service that gives customers free, 2-day shipping on most orders for an annual fee. It’s not like 2-day shipping is a new concept, and customers are still effectively paying for expedited shipping with the annual fee, but the concept built loyalty. Prime customers are bought into the program so they feel obligated to buy exclusively from Amazon and buy more to get their money’s worth. It’s brilliant.
Service contractors can take a page from Amazon’s playbook. First, sell the program to build customer loyalty from the beginning. Your program won’t look exactly like Prime, but here’s a webinar showing what it means to sell the program as a Service Contractor. Once they are in the program, use technology to give your customers a convenient, transparent, and reliable experience. Then, when you send a quote for an upgrade or repair, customers will trust that you are the only option to consider.
Does your sales pitch sound something like this: 
