Yes, you read that right. I’m going to show you a simple and effective action that you can take to increase your hourly rate by $5, $10, or even $20 while actually increasing your customer’s satisfaction. (Hint: It doesn’t cost any money or extra time)
The secret is in managing the expectations of your customers.
Whenever a customer hires a handyman or other service provider, the customer has certain baseline expectations. These expectations are derived from that customer’s previous interactions with other service providers.
Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that your service isn’t exactly like everybody else’s. That means it’s your job to align customer expectations with what you are actually going to deliver.
You may be thinking this is pretty obvious, and it is. Yet, I’ve screwed this up countless times and see it happen everyday with people I hire or products I buy. New handymen are especially prone to making mistakes regarding communication with customers.
Ever had an unhappy customer? Ever received a bad review online? Ever had a customer say “Oh, that’s more than I thought it would be?” That’s because you didn’t communicate well enough. Those customers were expecting A, and you gave them B.
Think back to the last time you were pissed off or even just mildly unhappy from a service or product you bought. Was it because you were expecting something else? Hopefully, otherwise you bought something you knew you wouldn’t be happy with, and that’s flat out dumb.
So, what can you do as a service provider to properly manage expectations, charge more, and get only excellent online reviews? [continue reading…]
