The Customer Focus Series – Part 2

Say ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ to your customers. (Bonkers, I know!)

“Hello, I’m here!”

When relating to customers, I’ll recommend a few best practices.

Best Practice #1: Let’s begin with saying hello and goodbye. It is really underrated in the contractor world. When you show up in the morning, before you commence work, give the customer a formal “Good Morning.” Remind them of your name. And, when you’re leaving at the end of the day, do not wander off to your car and drive away. Instead, you need to offer a formal “goodbye” and thank them for the job.

“Goodbye. I’m leaving your property. Thank you for having me as a guest today.”

Best Practice #2: I don’t know about you, but at Nolan Painting, we want to hire friendly people. It is one of our core values – friendliness! So, we employ friendly and train painting. We also teach our vision of friendliness; I tell new employees that being friendly is not optional in our first orientation. They need to treat the customer in a friendly way. Friendly is scripted. I teach them how to be friendly. And then, we review our new employees in two weeks to see that they’re following through using behavior profiles. There are a few good behaviors that we’re looking for.

Best Practice #3: There’s no such thing as a perfect paint job, so I am not looking for perfection. But there is a good experience, which also means the job is well done. Craftsmanship aside, we expect neat, clean, straight lines and everything to be smooth. These are givens – that’s really why people hire a painter.

Now, we have this opportunity to create something unique, in addition to good work, by being really, really friendly. Nolan Painting has ‘five steps to friendliness,’ and I always go through them with my team. Next week, I’ll detail these ‘five steps to friendliness.’ You don’t have to adopt them, just find out what really matters to you in your industry and incorporate that into your practice.

See you then. Build muscle.