Adds Dunbar, “We found that when they are given all that information, project managers take full responsibility for their projects. They have all the tools and don’t want to involve anyone else because that becomes their project, their baby.”
Ladouceur takes the opposite tack: “While the job is in progress, sales is expected to make site visits and communicate with customers.” Shortly before the job wraps up, either the salesman or production manager walks the job with an informal punch list, and after the job, the salesperson sends the customer a handwritten thank-you postcard.
PRE-CONSTRUCTION MEETINGS Some contractors also take the added step of holding a pre-construction meeting with the homeowner for larger or more complicated jobs. Such meetings include the salesperson, the homeowner, and whoever is responsible for production, whether it’s the project manager or crew leader. Such meetings are common among full-service remodelers but are still rare among roofing/siding/window companies. The goal is to make sure everyone understands exactly what will happen.
At Jancewicz & Son, project managers set up pre-construction meetings after the monthly schedule has been created — about two weeks before a job begins. “If you get too close, you can’t react to errors and omissions,” Dunbar says. The project manager re-measures and double-checks the job one last time. “He essentially says to the homeowner, ‘This is what I understand the job to be. Is this your understanding, too?’” Dunbar says. “If not, they can go back to the salesperson for clarification.”
Customer communication is key to effectively handing the project from sales to production in a way that earns referrals. Fick Bros. Roofing alerts homeowners by letter when their jobs are scheduled, and informs customers of any schedule changes. On the job, the foreman is encouraged to talk with homeowners and keep them apprised of progress. “Twenty years ago, the people doing the job never had any interaction with the customer. Now they have to talk to the customer the whole time the job is in progress, and they are getting feedback all day long,” explains Fick, who says that this has had a big impact on customer satisfaction.
“If you are going to err, err on the side of too much contact with the customer,” Lemons advises, “because not enough contact sets the stage for all sorts of inefficiencies in the customer’s eye. Then minor problems become major problems.”
If all this sounds like a mountain of paperwork, consider that since you repeatedly use the same forms, speed and proficiency increase with use. And contractors with these systems in place have no doubt that the time spent processing forms repays itself many times over.
In Energy Swing Windows’ customer satisfaction surveys last year, 74% of homeowners said that they received more value than they paid for, 26% said they received equal value. No one thought they received less. “That gets us a 70% referral rate,” Rennekamp says, “and that’s because we spend the time up front to make sure we and the customers are on the same page. —Jay Holtzman is a freelance writer based in Jamestown, R.I.