Learn great client
experience from a few
good plumbers
How to build relationships and win business with simple, honest interactions
Not unlike hiring a web designer, hiring people to work on a house can be a complicated, messy and confusing affair. It’s hard to know who you’re going to get, and there are a lot of people out there willing to take your money.
My wife Elyse and I bought a house a few years ago, and it’s been a learning experience as we navigate the complex and idiosyncratic world of specialized contractors. We’re not even talking complex stuff here, just things like “The heat’s not working … why!?” and “I wish the sink would drain faster…”
One morning last winter it seemed awfully cold in the house. It was January in Boston, we just had a huge snow storm, and it was like 5 degrees outside. Our heater wasn’t working for some reason, and the temp inside the house was plummeting. So we called Prospect Hill Plumbing & Heating, a place I ride my bike past every day on the way to work. The guy who answered the phone told me there was a huge wait to get someone out to help us and lots of people were without heat that day. But he stayed on the line and asked me a few questions.
“Have you tried resetting the breaker?” Yep, no dice.
“Do you know how to power cycle the thermostat?” No, but he stayed on the line to help me try that out.
This guy helped me try to troubleshoot my issue for like 15 minutes on a super busy day. He could have just told me he was too busy and to call someone else. But he genuinely wanted to help. He actually ended up calling a friend who owns an HVAC service in Woburn who was in the area. That guy drove to my house, found the problem (clogged condensation drain pipe) and didn’t charge me a dime.
We actually ended up calling Prospect Hill back a couple times, and each time they couldn’t actually help us with our problem, but referred us to some great people and helped us get familiar with the industry and what we were looking for. I’ve had an incredibly positive experience with them, and we’ve never even actually hired them yet.
This is something I think about a lot at Upstatement: I try to make sure that we try to help everyone who gets in touch with us, at least in some way. That doesn’t mean working with everyone. Often it means not working with them, maybe telling them they’re not ready to build something yet or that they might want to consider hiring an in-house designer or developer rather than a contractor. A lot of people have never hired a design agency before, and are just looking for help and feedback on their project or process.
A shady business person identifies someone without experience and tries to deliberately confuse them, wrapping them up in buzzwords and spraying jargon in an attempt to seem like an expert. But real experts teach people. Real experts try to make the complexities more understandable.
By giving my honest opinion, being clear and direct and trying to help people solve their problems without making our service the only solution, it makes it that much more powerful when we actually do work with someone. This is how we build relationships rather than just win business.
And it all starts with the first call. Are you helpful? Or are you too busy to help someone out? You never know who’s on the other end, and who they’re going to refer you to or when they’re going to need you.
Even though I don’t want anything to happen to my precious indoor plumbing, I can’t wait to hire Prospect Hill when the time comes. They’ve more than earned it.
