Do you want your customers to feel good about your brand? Try telling a great story. Research shows that storytelling has immense power to make us feel emotions as if we are a part of the story.
The Nike marketing department sure figured this one out. Get your Kleenex ready.
It gets you right in the feels, doesn’t it? But, why?
Simply put: hormones. Storytelling is one of many triggers that causes the release of hormones like cortisol and dopamine in our bodies that make us feel stressed and make us feel good.
In fact, there are six of these triggers that you can use in your service cycle to avoid stressing your customers out and to make them feel good. Check out my presentation at last year’s Digital Wrap Conference to learn about all six.
P.S. Registration for the 2019 Digital Wrap Conference opened early this year with a great deal that only lasts through March. Check out the details at digitalwrapconference.com.
How much information is too much?
Check out this image from an Amazon notification that I received during the holiday season. It included imagery of the product (some black pajamas), a map of my neighborhood that indicates the location of my house, the current location of the delivery driver (the Santa sleigh), and a caption telling me Santa (aka Amazon) was just seven stops away and would deliver my package before 2:15pm. It is interesting to see how much information Amazon provides as part of their customer experience, especially when compared to the data we observe in ServiceTrade. Amazon knows that it is almost impossible to give the customer too much information, and yet most commercial service contractors completely ignore this lesson.
Currently, fewer than 2% of ServiceTrade work orders include a notification to the customer that the technician is en route. The feature is an easy one for technicians to access, but they just don’t do it. It’s a shame, because Amazon is not a fool. They know that customer loyalty stems from winning the information arms race. Customers LOVE to know what is happening, especially if it involves zero effort on their part to dig the information out of the supplier. If it is simply offered as part of the service experience, it creates positive feelings about the service brand. The notification creates a dopamine response from the anticipation that something good is about to happen. That little jolt of feel good neurotransmitter goes a long way in justifying higher prices during the next contract negotiation.
How easy is it for you to measure the number of digital records you transmit to your customers as part of your service experience (marketing impressions per service or MIPS)? Do you hold technicians accountable for generating en route notifications, before and after videos and pictures, deficiency records documenting equipment failure risks, review requests to boost search engine optimization? If not, why not? ServiceTrade measures all of these MIPS so that it is easy for you to monitor your success in sharing rich service records that keep the customer engaged and delighted in your work. Amazon knows there is no such thing as too much information. Isn’t it time that your service business took that lesson to heart?
Service Certainty
Who has better pizza, Domino’s or Papa John’s? I do a lot of presentations about these companies and when I pose this questions to audiences, usually they’re split right down the middle. Personally, I’m a Domino’s fan. From a value perspective, however, our opinions about who has better pies don’t really matter. Here’s what really matters:
Domino’s is CRUSHING Papa John’s and they have been since 2009. In fact, Domino’s stock has outperformed Amazon, Apple, and Google in the last 9 years. For every dollar you invested in Domino’s in 2009, you’d have $36 as of the writing of this blog post. Compare that to $10, $5.50, and $2.75 for Amazon, Apple, and Google respectively. Papa John’s, on the other hand, would be worth a respectable $3.75, but it’s been on a steady decline for the past two years.
These numbers are surprising considering how ubiquitous Papa John’s marketing is. It’s practically impossible to watch sports without hearing their slogan, “Better ingredients, better pizza.” They’re everywhere. Domino’s spends plenty of money on advertising too, but their marketing strategy went a very different direction starting in 2009. It’s best summed up by their CEO, Patrick Doyle, who said:
“We are as much a tech company as we are a pizza company”
What technology do you think he’s talking about? Their accounting platform? Their point of sales systems? Their pizza ovens? No. He’s talking about their customer-facing technology like their Pizza Tracker and mobile apps. While Papa John’s has been pouring money into billboards, radio ads, and TV spots, Domino’s hired the best web and mobile developers, built an incredible R&D team, and took a massive risk on the future of smartphones. In fact, an interview in 2015 revealed that around 300 of their 700 employees at their corporate headquarters were focused on technology, not pizza (or accounting). Here’s another one of Doyle’s quotes:
“We believe by transaction counts we’re in the top five of e-commerce companies in the world.”
That’s unbelievable for a pizza company. On the other hand, Papa John’s sales are sinking and their stock price is sliding. They’re trying to blame their poor financial performance on the recent drama and viewership decline in the NFL. The reality is that they got left in the dust. Nine years later, they’re trying to catch up to Domino’s with Papa Track, their answer to the Pizza Tracker, but it’s too little too late. They’re sitting at the starting line coughing up dust while Domino’s is off to the races.
Domino’s figured out how to differentiate their offering with something more valuable than close-ups of melty cheese and empty platitudes like “Better ingredients. Better pizza.” Really? Does anyone buy that Papa John’s really has superior ingredients and better pizza? Can they prove it? Sadly, I’ve heard a lot of service contractors use a very similar line. “Better techs. Better service.” Really? Do you think anyone is buying that? Even if they do, it’s impossible to convince the customer that it’s true. So, why bother? Instead, take a page from Domino’s book. Offer customers a better experience with service certainty.
Domino’s thoughtful investments in technology are cutting edge because they focus entirely on the customer as opposed to logistics and accounting. Everything they build is for the customers’ express benefit. In some cases, they even added administrative work for their in-store employees to improve the digital outcome for the customer. Their Pizza Tracker is semi-automated, but Domino’s employees still have to manually update the system a couple of times to alert customers about the progress of their pizza. For example, every time a pizza is ready for the oven or put in the car for delivery, whether or not the customer is actively using the Pizza Tracker, some Domino’s employee has to update the system just in case a customer decides to check in on their order. They sell more than 2 million pizzas a day. If we assume an average of 1.5 pizzas per order, that works out to almost 1 billion manual system updates a year. That’s a lot of Domino’s data entry! And, for what? The customer. It’s that simple.
Obviously, Domino’s has limited the cost of these billion customer updates substantially with a technology-enabled process. They’re not picking up the phone and calling their customers multiple times per order to update them on the progress. That would be ridiculously cost prohibitive and annoying for the customer. Yet, that’s exactly how most service contractors think about solving the same problem! Better call the customer or send them an ad-hoc email to let them know what’s going on with their service. That’s an expensive approach so it’s either reserved for premium clients or doesn’t get done at all. Why not give every customer a great experience and let technology solve that problem by incorporating it into the standard workflow? For example, instead of having techs call, email, or text to alert the office and customer that they are on the way to a service call, incorporate technology (like ServiceTrade) that will, with a few clicks, log the techs drive time, update the office staff, and send an en route notification to the customer with a picture of the tech and estimated time of arrival. Or, instead of signing a paperwork order, waiting for it to get back to the office, scanning it, and emailing it to the customer with an ad-hoc summary and picture attachments, how about incorporating technology (like ServiceTrade) that will automatically send all this information to the customer the moment they sign the digital work order? Even if it adds a few new points of quick data entry, it’ll remove a boatload of calls and emails.
For Domino’s, however, there were no cost savings with their new workflow. They weren’t calling or emailing the customer to update them on their orders in the first place so these billion data entry points were a net new expense. Despite that, they don’t even think twice about the cost because they understand the value of MIPS, or Marketing Impressions Per Service. MIPS is the heart and soul of Domino’s customer experience strategy. For each service (or pizza) delivered, a series of useful notifications are sent to the customer updating them on their purchase. In Domino’s case, customers receive push notifications on their mobile device throughout the process. From prep to bake to delivery, customers are notified about every step and each notification links back to the Pizza Tracker, the visual manifestation of MIPS.
When you order a pizza for an office full of hungry coworkers or a house full of famished kids, you want certainty about your order. Hangry and anxious, they’ll look to you for one answer: When will the pizza arrive? At this point, you can either be a zero or a hero. If you’re in the dark and you leave your compadres in limbo, the anxiety will escalate and you’re going to be a zero. Compare that to the certainty of “it just got boxed up and should be here in 12 minutes.” That’s more like it! You’ll be the hero. Next time you want a pizza, who are you going to call? The company that made you a zero or the one that gave you certainty and made you a hero? When your customers have failing equipment or systems in their building that impact their tenants, customers, or coworkers, do you think they’d rather have the hero or the zero? This doesn’t just apply to emergency service work. For standard maintenance or inspection work, they’d rather be certain about what’s going on so they can keep their colleagues up to date, make arrangements on their end, and have peace of mind about the work being performed.
At the end of the day, all facility owners and managers really want is certainty. Strategically, that means certainty about their facility budget. Tactically, that means certainty about the facility services they receive from day to day. They want certainty about everything from when the tech will arrive to how they should resolve equipment issues. MIPS give your customers tactical certainty by giving them the information they need to make good decisions on a service-by-service basis. Service certainty can distinguish you from the unpredictable, unreliable competition.
Put your best face forward
Good design makes a small company look big or a big company look like a leader. Whether that’s on a website, in emails, social media, on proposals, or in customer service, it’s worth a service contractor’s time to create unique, engaging, modern designs.
You do not have to spend a lot to get something good. We think that we put together good-looking designed pieces on our own. And when our needs are beyond our capabilities, we’ve found some affordable outsourcing options.
Here are five tools that service contractors can use to create professional-looking marketing materials.
Canva is an easy-to-use online tool for creating images for websites, emails, advertising, invitations, posters – just about anything. They provide templates that you can use as a starting point or you can start from scratch. It does not give you as many options as the Adobe Creative Suite – nor the hefty price tag. For simple creative projects, Canva is our go-to tool.
Cost: FREE
The paid version is $12.95 per user per month and I like it because it offers a few important features like saving PNGs with a transparent background, establishing brand preferences, and setting up teams of users that can share an account.
Animoto is great for creating short marketing videos that use photos and existing videos. We’ve used it to create a video that loops in our booth at tradeshows, check it out below.
Animoto has a stable of storyboard templates. Once you choose a template, the customizations you can make are pretty limited, so be sure to try out a few template options to find the right one for your project.
I like Animoto because I am overwhelmed by video editing applications. For simple projects and short videos that combine existing elements, Anomito is a very usable tool that’s saved me a lot of time and aggravation.
Cost: They don’t offer a free version. I seem to have everything I need at their Professional level for $264 a year.
When you need a beautiful presentation, Beautiful.ai is a tool for creating stylish slide decks with the option for cool animations. It’s another point-and-click tool that produces professional results. They offer about 50 templates, and like other tools, the templates are only somewhat customizable but are a fast way to put together attractive slides for those of us who are allergic to PowerPoint and want a slick design.
Cost: It’s free for now. They have plans to add a paid pro tier later in 2018.
Sample slide:
Stock Photos
It is hard for any company to have a full supply of their own high-quality photos that they can use on a website or other projects, so that’s when you turn to stock photos. Choosing stock photos is a matter of personal style and brand personality, so I can’t give you much advice there, but I can tell you about some sources for stock photos that we’ve found helpful.
Here are three stock photo websites we use most often: Pexels – there are a ton of sites that offer free stock photos, but I like Pexels for its good search function and large library
New Old Stock – lots of black and whites from days gone by
Shutterstock – where we purchase most licensed stock photos.
As I’m browsing free photos, I save the ones that I hope to find a use for in the future that strike me for being beautiful, funny, or relevant to our messaging — including these gems.
CAUTION: Try not to chose cliche or over-used photos. How many times have you seen (or even used!) a vanilla stock photo of a smiling person wearing a headset? Be unique! Need advice for choosing photos? Start here.
WARNING: Do not use licensed stock photos without buying the license. The owners of the license (companies like Shutterstock, Getty Images, iStockPhotos, to name a few) have highly intelligent systems that find where their images are being used online without proper licensure. I know someone who learned this lesson the hard way by receiving a bill for $900 for using a photo after the license expired. Always buy the license or choose royalty-free stock images instead.
My biggest challenge is recognizing when I need the help of a professional designer before I spend hours working on a project before I realize I’m in over my head. When that happens, I usually turn to 99 Designs.
At 99 Designs, you begin a contest where you describe the project and set your budget ($199, $299, or $399 are common amounts – do you see why they’re called 99 Designs?) and how many days you want to run the contest. Then designers within their network choose to participate and submit an initial design for your consideration. This is where the contest part comes in – after designers have had a certain number of days to submit designs, you go through them and choose the designs that you want to go to next steps with and request revisions. Once you have chosen a final design, you award the project to the winning designer and they hand over your final files. The winner is the only designer who gets paid.
I enjoy the contest element and having a number of options to consider. For the price and the amount of time each designer can invest in the project, I realize that I’m getting a lot of template work that the designer has on file, but that’s usually just fine for us.
A recent 99 Designs project:
What other tools do you use that I should know about? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
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.
Who do you think you are?
What’s your brand promise? A brand promise is a powerful, shorthand way for companies to tell their customers what to expect. They’re what makes a company different and better than their competition, and a good brand promise gives you permission to focus intently on living up to that promise.
Here are a few popular examples:
Geico: 15 minutes will save you 15% or more on auto insurance
BMW: The ultimate driving machine
Jimmy John’s: Freaky fast
So who do you think you are? What does your company promise to your customers that they can’t get from your competition?
Don’t fret if you are scratching your head right now – it’s not uncommon for service companies to lack a clear, concise statement like BMW’s “The ultimate driving machine.”
There are a few things you can do to reveal your brand promise. But we’d like to start with what not to do, and that is to offer empty platitudes. Have you ever uttered any of these phrases? We have better techs. We give better service. We work harder. We care more.
It’s ok if you have because you aren’t the only one — by a long shot. Benign statements like these are hard to prove and are meaningless to the customer. While it’s nice that you work hard and care about doing quality work, it isn’t unique to your business and it isn’t compelling to your customers and prospects.
Gain Perspective
The best way to determine your brand promise is to step into the shoes of your best customers. What do they want? Why do they love working with you?
They want a better program designed to fit their needs
They don’t want any hassle
They want to see the value in your relationship
Be Unique
How are you different and better than everyone else who does what you do? At ServiceTrade, our mission is to make commercial service contractors more important to their customers to grow their business.
At BMW, it’s to create the ultimate driving machine. BMW shoppers know that they’re looking at an automobile that offers a driver’s experience, not granny’s slow, comfortable ride around town. Jimmy Johns does everything it can to be freaky fast. Even to the point of limiting their menu to a single option for mustard or cheese. (Did you know that? Dijon or provolone – that’s it.)
What makes you unique isn’t a question you can find the answer for in Google. It takes introspection. Involve your team in this project of self-discovery.
Get Uncomfortable
And, finally, get ready for some uncomfortable conversations. You’re definitely going make some customers unhappy if your brand promise doesn’t match their values. You may even lose some deals. But it’s worth it to focus your business on delivering the type of profitable work that is in your sweet spot. Uncovering your brand promise will help you win more of the customers you want and help keep them for longer.
Who do you think you are? Spend some time to figure it out.
This blog post is adapted from a 2017 Digital Wrap Conference presentation by ServiceTrade Director of Marketing Shawn Mims.
Build a Services Brand that is Worth Something
ServiceTrade talks a lot about using technology and great customer service to increase the value of a service contractor’s brand. It is worth exploring what we mean when we talk about a brand.
What do we mean when we say brand?
As your personality makes you different from everyone around you, your company’s brand is a collection of characteristics that make it unique. Your brand is the truth about your company and what makes it special.
ServiceTrade’s mission
I used to work at a branding and marketing agency that helped companies define and communicate their brand. Brands are the fabric of the business – what it does, what it values, and how it engages with the world around it. A genuine brand should reflect what’s happening in the business during normal operations — not the aspirations of what anyone thinks should be happening now or in the future.
At the agency, we used an employee survey to help discover the truth of a company’s brand. One of the questions is “If <your company> was a car, what kind of car would it be?” I know it sounds like a silly question but it revealed so much. It wasn’t uncommon for owners and executives to claim high-end, high-cost luxury vehicles while people in the trenches in the lower reaches of the organizational chart identified with affordable, four-door family sedans. It was one of the strongest indicators of consensus or uncertainty across the company about the brand. For a fun exercise, ask this question of your employees and look at the range of responses.
Why is branding important?
A clear, engaging brand is as important as a person’s winning personality. Your brand sets expectations for what it’s like to work with you. Your brand is your reputation. It is what you are known as or known for. Your brand reputation should be protected as a valuable asset.
Besides establishing who you are, your brand defines what makes you different from your competition when someone cares to compare. Your brand helps people feel a connection to your company by understanding what it stands for and how it can help them. Your brand’s mission also directs your company’s initiatives and your employees in their work. The next time you face a tough decision or a rough patch, take a look at your brand promises and see where they direct you.
Elements of your brand.
Hopefully, it’s clear that your brand is more than marketing, it is how you work every day. But there are some tools in your marketing toolbox that help you communicate your brand:
Logo
There are countless logo styles. Putting your brand into words can help a talented designer create a logo that reflects your brand.
Color palette
Choose a suite of colors to use on all of your materials and use them consistently. Creation of a brand color palette is usually part of a logo design project.
Imagery
Here we’re mainly talking about the style of photos, videos, or illustrations that you use on your website and in your sales and marketing. Do you have a cartoon character or set of iconography that you rely on? Do you prefer photos of environments over photos of people? Give this some thought, and use these elements consistently.
Tone of voice
If you were in a law firm instead of a services company your tone would be formal business language. But in services, you can be more casual and talk in direct, simple language to your audience. Be thoughtful about how you write on your website and in your proposals. If you’re easy to talk to (or read), maybe they’ll also think you are easy to work with.
Mission statement
Mission statements are usually for internal use to make sure that everyone agrees with what kind of car the company is (going back to my favorite branding survey question.) Craft a short mission statement. Share it. Repeat it. Let your mission drive everything you do. ServiceTrade’s mission is in the image at the top of this post.
Elevator message and key messages
Your elevator message is used externally when someone asks “What does your company do?” If you ask any employee in the company, you should get a similar response that could be delivered in the short amount of time of an elevator ride.
Who cares about your brand?
Everyone who has a relationship with your company.
Employees – Employees know what is expected of them as they deliver on your brand promises in their work.
Customers – Customers reap the benefits of your brand promise in every interaction with you.
Prospects – Your brand tells prospects if the things that matter to them matter to you.
Community – The communities where you do your work should also see you living your values in visible ways.
Live your brand.
I have four tips for you for living your brand to keep your company focused on the things that matter.
Be genuine about your brand and your mission.
Use your mission as a touchstone for your daily decisions.
Talk with your customers to learn if their perception of your brand matches yours.
Don’t stop building up your brand. It should evolve as your business grows and moves forward.
Increase the value of your brand.
Let’s be clear – adding to the value of your brand means adding to your bottom line. Here are three things you can do to increase the value of your service contracting brand:
Stop competing on price and sell a premium program that provides better outcomes to customers.
Give your customers a modern, online customer service experience that reduces their risk and aggravation and makes them want to work with you forever.
Enable and encourage your employees to make decisions that support the mission and the brand so they can embody it fully.
Here are some resources that can help you increase the value of your service contracting brand.
Fill the Stadium for Your Customer Service Features
So now what?
You’ve completed a big project to add new capabilities or value for your customers – something like implementing ServiceTrade or adding the Service Portal to your website. How do you get the word out so your customers start using and appreciating it?
If you have asked those questions, you aren’t alone. I’ve heard them half a dozen times so far this year. While you’re basking in a successful implementation, it doesn’t take long to realize that implementation was just the beginning. So what’s next? Driving adoption is the next project – and you’ll want to jump on it fast.
Feed Adoption with Customer Marketing
Every time we talk about marketing with service contractors, I feel like the response is something like “I got 99 problems and marketing is #99.” But marketing communications will help your customers understand and use your great customer service features.
Billy said this in chapter 7 of The Digital Wrap: “The strongest benefit of the digital wrap approach to marketing is that your marketing and sales impressions are actually valuable to the customer instead of being an aggravation or interruption.” He was writing about the marketing impressions that should be built into your service cycle, but it’s a pretty good rule for every marketing impression.
Marketing outreach is a good way to educate your customers about what you’re offering and why it’s good for them. You don’t want to send your first Service Link (online after-service report) and get a call from the customer asking, “What is this and why did I get it?” But your marketing must be seen as helpful, not annoying. Here’s how.
Invite Your Customers to Play Ball
Since a few people have asked for our advice for bringing awareness to their new customer service features, we have assembled examples, templates, and first-draft copy that you can use. Some of the materials available in our marketing resource center are:
Example websites from our customers
Bannerstand for trade shows or conferences that you can borrow
Powerpoint slides
Example email, invoice insert letter, and handout or postcard
Screenshots of customer service features, and more.
Take a look at those marketing resources and use them as a starting point for your own programs. You can run a marketing communications program without dedicating a ton of time or financial resources – doing a little is more effective than doing nothing at all.
Bring Them on Home
With a little bit of thoughtful outreach and follow up, you can:
Get your customers to adopt all your customer service features.
Help your customers understand how the program they bought from you continues to be good for them.
Keep the stream of communication open and ongoing.
Your account managers could do this work 1-to-1, but marketing can do the same 1-to-many. Make marketing communications do the heavy lifting, and have account managers follow up with their accounts.
There was a quote in the movie A Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” Why that may be true for lost baseball legends on a farm in Iowa, it is most decidedly not true for service contractors who want customers to take advantage of their new, modern, online customer experience. Like with modern baseball, you’ve got to do some work to get butts in the seats.
Read Chapter 7 of the Digital Wrap for free! You’ll gain an understanding of how many valuable marketing impressions you can earn with your customers (and sometimes with prospects) during your service cycle.
Bust Customer Service Data Out of the Silo
Integration is a popular topic at ServiceTrade. More people are coming up with ways to integrate their customer service data with other operational programs – their website, CRM, accounting, or marketing programs. Once shared across applications, data becomes information that can be used by people throughout the company. Are you thinking about all the ways that your customer service data can be used in different departments?
If these groups don’t have access to your customer service data, give it to them and see what they can do. These ideas should be just a beginning.
Sales
Create demo accounts to use in sales presentations. You’ll win new customers when you show them a demonstration of your great customer service in action.
Convert deficiencies into jobs and revenue. Make sure that the deficiencies and repairs your techs find on the job are turning into quotes for your customers.
Monitor your quote approval rate and experiment with ways to improve it. Try new patterns and methods of following up on quotes to boost your approval rate. Experiment with the number of photos or try including video. Test a few new methods to build, send, and follow-up on quotes that convert.
Account Management
Ensure contract SLAs are being met. Wouldn’t you rather proactively know the reality of SLA performance than wait for an unhappy call from a customer?
Use service history to inform renewal contracts. Studying the service history for a location can help you build a preventive maintenance contract for the following year that is based on the reality in that facility.
Continually share useful information with customers. Whenever the customer calls with a question on a past job, send them an online report where they can get all the information they need.
Accounting
Get more information about the services that were offered on a job to create complete and accurate invoices.
Make answering questions about invoices a whole lot easier when you simply look up the job’s details in the customer service application.
Speed up the time to bill when information about a completed job syncs into your accounting platform as soon as it’s complete.
Marketing
Email customers based on shared criteria like a particular type of asset or their location. One of our favorite examples is when there are changes in weather in a region and you want to issue some advice for heading off problems from changing conditions.
Email customers based on their service schedule. How about sending an email to your customers who are due for a regular inspection or service call next month and ask them to start making a list of things that they might need you to look at or take care of while you’re there?
Send letters or mailers to customers based on criteria in their service data: Geography, business type, asset types, services you provide, etc.
Publish and promote the review content that comes in from happy customers. Post this prominently on your website to entice prospects and use them as excerpts or quotes in all of your marketing communications.
Service Managers
Tech report cards. There are a few ways that you can measure the performance of technicians across the board – how much billable time they tracked to jobs, how many of their jobs include media (photos, videos, documentation, audio), how many customer reviews they collect. Monitor the metrics that matter most in your company.
Monitor completeness of job records. Techs are on the front line of that great customer experience you want to provide, and that includes building complete job records of what they do on-site.
Create contests or reward programs for techs based on happy customer reviews. Take advantage of their natural competitiveness to drive them to collect more reviews from happy customers.
Advanced scheduling allows you to better plan the use of your fleet and predict its maintenance requirements.
Owners and Senior Leaders
As an owner or leader in the company, the best thing you can do is give people access to data and encourage them to use it. Heck, if you’re a ServiceTrade customer, office users are free, so there’s no reason not to open accounts for these users today. You might be amazed by the ways they can turn data into useful information for your company and its customers.
Sometimes inspiration comes from unexpected places. Like space and a government agency.
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) is shrewdly launching (pun intended) the GOES-16 satellite and sharing their excitement with the public.
Service contractors can learn from two things that NOAA did exceptionally well:
They engaged their audience throughout the process of adding new technology
The way they shared data made it meaningful to their audience
NOAA has been building awareness of GOES-16 for months. The communication picked up when the new weather imaging satellite was nearing launch in Nov 2016. Now that GOES-16 is in orbit, NOAA shared the first images from the new satellite.
Follow the GOES-16 Launch Sequence
You can build a lot of goodwill and interest in new customer service technology you’re putting in place if you include customers early in the process.
Tell customers it’s coming
Give them updates throughout the launch
Once you’re up and running, share information and give it context
Give examples how the new technology will help you do better work for them
Repeat #3 and #4 liberally
Then answer their question: What’s in it for me?
Like NOAA’s shiny new toy, great customer service technology can help your company provide customers with rich information, like photos, to help them make informed decisions. However, like the images collected by the GOES-16, the pictures you can collect in the field require technical expertise to understand. Fortunately, NOAA has provided another great example of customer education to overcome this technical hurdle.
NOAA smartly used photo captions to explain their new technology: How it’s better, what it tells us that it didn’t before, and what they’ll do with this information. They did a great job of this in just a few simple words. Click through to their website for the full article, or here are some examples that you can click to enlarge.
Photos from your service calls are critically important, but a lot of times they aren’t enough to tell your customers exactly what you want them to know.
Don’t just share raw data, tell people what they’re seeing
Don’t let them draw incorrect conclusions, apply your expertise to explain the current situation and how it could impact their future
Tell them why it’s better than what you gave them in the past
