Word of mouth doesn’t mean anything, it’s myth. I can name several companys that were on News investigations with secret cameras, bait and switch, all that crap. They are still super successful. I know another guy, a contractor who was a customer of mine. I started mentioning to my other customers “Hey what’s his name is my customer” etc. And every one that knew him had a bad story to tell. Small window installed way over priced or scrap wood used in stead of new he even tried to hire me to be a painter just because I had ladders on the truck so you can imagine the type of contractors he sends to your place. But he does lots of advertising and is still a rockstar of contractors around here.
I’m not sure but I think she told me it was kind of sticky and I remember a thread about something like that a few days ago. I’m going to do the eaves and try one window in the back. If I don’t like it I’m out. I’m not going to be the author of one of these horror stories. I’m done struggling with windows, too many easy ones out there to clean, I’ll leave the problems for younger guys.
News to me…"Word of mouth doesn’t mean anything"
So you must not get very many referrals then Mike? Word of mouth is everything around here, especially in the service industry.
Besides this whole house threw me a curveball, it was standard casements for all I knew.
Why would you say that? I clean windows better then almost anybody I know. and btw, referrals only works if you have a good base of customers to start out with, I do get lots of them. I don’t actually want too many of them though because I only work in select areas but I do lots of Mothers and daughters, sisters and friends. But it does seem like there are only a few people that give me lots of referrals rather then everyone giving me one or whatever. Not that I care or ask for them, I advertise in neighbourhoods I want to work in. If you deal with enough people you WILL have problem customers and it does not matter what they say if… they had a bad experience.
I forget everything she said but I remember her saying she sprayed them down. I was about to say you shouldn’t spray water on windows and let it evaporate but she went on saying she dried them. I hope she didn’t phone me because she couldn’t properly clean her windows but now that I think about it, that must be it. She tried to clean them herself then she phones me… hmmm I’ll do the eaves at least and test one window. I won’t think twice about walking on that part of the job if there’s a problem.
Don’t it mean more to you that word of mouth, or your reputation if it is bad will mean a less likely chance that you will continue to stay in that same area you wish to service?
Maybe I am just not reading this right, but what Shawn did was turn a bad situation into a GREAT one. 300 bucks is not much to pay for peace of mind for Shawn, knowing his word is BOND and he stands behind his work plus the client can not say ONE bad word about him at all.
Other window cleaners will most likely not be able to solve this particular problem, so I bet she will end up calling him back.
I’m not saying promote people to talk crap about your company but it will happen and it means nothing… ok, almost nothing. Advertising over comes all and doing a great service to boot will make sure you keep the majority of customers that you can keep.
As an example, 2 years ago a heating place that advertises 1 Hour service or your service call is free was spyed on by consumer reporters with a local tv channel. They video taped them telling customers they could have carbonmonoxide and they need a new furnace NOW… it in the middle of winter. Naturally these furnaces were double the price, if the customer said no, the furnace guys left them with no heat. I think they are always supposed to leave them with at least electric heaters but anyway. Big news story on the tv, Headlines on the newspapers, day after day till it slowly disapated.
So last year our furnace goes. We phoned the company that installed it as it might be under warranty. It turned out it was, it was a circut board but I was talking to the guy and mentioned the big story and he said that he used to work there and still knows most of the guys and absolutely nothing happened with all that bad publicity. Nobody got fired, of course it was those guys that were making the boss all the money but it was all business as usually except they changed some of their policies.
Now compare that to 2 or 3 disgruntled idiots I come across every year… it means nothing. So when I hear about these small companys worrying about their reps because some guy wasn’t happy I’m thinking it’s just paranoia.
btw, that consumer reporting spycam thing also happened to my brother in laws carpet cleaning company. They just had their phone room push one of there other companys for a few weeks, then it was all forgot. It was major but they are successful as always. It never hurt their business long term, they just built a new home on a 2 acre lot and bought some duct cleaning companys.
I hear you and what you are saying, but it is still counting on new customers only. My company is primarily a commercial one. Residential only makes up maybe 10% of what we do. I don’t do storefronts really (I only have 3). The property management companies that are my clients- most of them know each other in my area and in L.A. If even ONE of those clients were not happy (I know we are talking about residential- just an example) then I bet when the RFP’s go out again that I would not even be sent one from too many new companies.
In fact, one of my biggest clients I landed because they knew the woman I was working with at another management company, she called her up and chose me even though I was the more expensive choice- by a pretty large margin.
There are specific neighborhoods that I target for residential work as well. The neighbors do talk. If there was a huge negative news story about my company like what you are describing, it is very likely that they would not use me again, and my goal of locking down that whole area would not work.
I find it amazing that those companies you mentioned did not lose any money because of the expose’.
I think its pretty amazing that in our industry, at least the majority of us, remove all risk and care so much about what the client thinks that we are willing to go WAY above and beyond what almost every other industry would do to please their clients.
WOW! I can’t believe what I’m reading here. Word of mouth means nothing? I have never heard anyone in business say that before.
Car manufacturers spend millions on advertising, yet will go to great lengths to make sure their customers are happy even after they bought cars. I wonder why? Apple has a team of people who monitor blogs to hear what people think about their IPhones…why would they do that? They have sold millions of phones, why would they care what people think after they have processed the payment? Direct TV monitors their customer service calls and ask you to answer a one question survey as to how the service was after your call to them is completed. They are the largest satellite provider in the world. Why would they care what you think?
Simply put, word of mouth is the most powerful marketing around. Have you ever eaten at a restaurant that made you sick or had bad service? How many people did you tell not to eat there?
Remember, if you make a customer happy, they will tell 10 people. If you make a customer upset, they will tell 100 people.
I also want to caution you guys on something…if you Google your company name, these blog posting will show up on your search. I wouldn’t want to put something on a blog that states that you don’t care what your customers think, or if they are unhappy, or that their opinion doesn’t matter.
Is it possible that the windows were gas filled and creating a static charge? I was an art major so I didn’t pay a lot of attention in science class, but especially with the temperature swings this time of year, heating and cooling- expansion and contraction, couldn’t the gas molecules become more active, similar to rubbing a balloon on carpet and sticking it to your hair?
Hey Chris, add a Bill Nye the Science guy section to the new forum sections:D
So what. You act like you have 10 customers and they all get together and talk about you at a townhall meeting.
You mentioned the auto industry and how customer centric they are, talk about cherry picking facts. That industry has deliberatly killed and maimed 10’s of thousands of people because it’s cheaper to hire laywers then fix defects. But they do make nice commercials that will keep you in your happy place:)
No it’s not. Advertising is. Lets say you have no customers… what do you do? sit on your hands waiting for word of mouth? or lets say you have 200 customers what do you do? stop advertising? If you do you’ll go downhill even if you are an amazing window cleaner… like me:)
I can’t say anything about your particular situation, you’re a small commercial company and you say all the building engineers or whoever all talk and know each other. I find that strange, I thought San Diego was a HUGE city compare to my little town and I’ve never worked for a small commercial company. I only worked for the large ones. We basically had 2 large companys in this city and they always competed with each other for the large contracts, manitoba housing, the hospitals, army etc these contracts always seemed to go back and forth every few years because both these companys suck big time. I was always a heights guy, working alone more often then not but every years 50% of their employees were rookies and never get good training and I can think of dozens of nightmares including video taped theft from a hospital cafeteria. But both companies are the same and no other companys can handle these huge contracts in a timely manner and if anyone tried to step up they would have to hire a dozen rookies and then they would also be a crap company.
There’s no competition so they still get the contracts and it doesn’t matter if all the building engineers talk.
I can think of several other situations right in my neighbourhood. There is a chinese restarant that we used to sell crayfish to, they would sell them as shrimp. That was like 30 years ago, that restaraunt is still in business. A macdonalds just a couple blocks from me was caught using dog food about 30 years ago also, there was hundreds of empty tins in they’re garbage cans. I still eat there. I don’t think you could find a company that doesn’t have a horror story or… thousands. Take a huge company like Google… best company in the world? then it turns out they’re spying for the cia and trying to take free enterprise off the internet and create a tiered system.
Window cleaning is pretty in your face if you’ve done a good job or not. I can do a great job by default, I can catch and advoid streaking but not everyone can or even care to. I don’t think our industry is any different Thor. I think it’s you and me that are different because these people are OUR customers. We want to make them happy… for $$$. I think if you literally didn’t care about customers you’d constantly be replacing your entire customer list and it costs money to get new customers so you’d have a tough time and probably get discouraged and go out of business. I’ve never had a problem with customer retention though;)
Money back guaranteees, don’t mean anything (almost nothing) truly, at least in my opinion. You know why I say that? Because 70% of people that are Not satisfied won’t say a thing, I learned that when I bought a franchise. Doing a good job so you can rebook them is 100x more important. Cuts down on how much advertising you have to do if you are a small business.
Mike - word of mouth (WOM) has the highest return on investment (ROI) of any form of advertising you can do. It’s more effective than other forms because of the trust factor.
Here’s why - you put out flyers, website, direct mail pieces, phone book ads, etc all trying to convince people to trust you to do the job correctly, safely, on time, etc.
With WOM your customer will convince their friends of all that easily whereas they might call you but there will be the trust issue until you successfully complete the job.
Word of mouth IS advertising…everytime I do a good job I have a permanent salesmen in place who pays me year after year. It doesn’t get much better than that. I locked down a whole neighborhood just from one single lady, and she doesn;t even know I have a referral program.
I know of a $25 million company who is know suffering due to word of mouth. They have great customer service, prices are a bit on the higher end, but their parking lot is empty. Why??? Because of the way they run business. So to each his own I guess.
Mr Squeegee do you know what % of your current customers came for word of mouth? Compared to how many hired you from ads? What would happen if you stopped advertising? more or less customers 2 years from now? I get referrals to, I don’t ask for them but I get them all the time I can’t always do them if they’re not in my area. Even though I don’t track such stuff, just thinking of my snow customers… I’d say less then 10% came from referrals.
However, this conversation was about complaining customers. Some people think it’s a real bad thing, the thread starter paid $300 to be on the safe side. All I’m saying is it means nothing… almost nothing.
Been there done that. I once had 5 chinese neighbours. 5 lawns, 5 snow clearings, 2-3 window cleanings. One lady would collect the CASH for them all. (Those chinese like cash) She was the go getter. I happened to **** her off by raising prices, and guess what? I lost all 5. That’s the downside of refferals.
Mike - I have a neighborhood that I do the outside windows monthly. Of the 12 houses there all are referrals from the original 1. I’m not saying I don’t do other forms of advertising but WOM is the best hands down.
As for not worrying about a customer complaint, that’s another story. Have you ever heard the expression one bad apple spoils the barrel? If one of my monthly customers in that neighborhood had an issue I would do my best to rectify it because it all started w/ 1 and it could end just as easily w/ 1. How do I know that? I replaced another window cleaner in that neighborhood by way of WOM. One person was dissatisfied and she made it he goal to get them out of her neighborhood. She is my best source of referrals by the way.
