It’s relatively easy to manage a home service business’ workload when you only have one or two jobs in progress. However, when there are several jobs going on at once, it can feel like you are drinking from a fire hose. Each customer, project or job, and your employees need your attention, and it can be hard or impossible to keep track of every detail. When there is a plethora of jobs to do, chaos can ensue. The tips below can help you make sure every job goes smoothly and help you keep things manageable.
1. Create and Document Processes for Your Home Service Business
You may think it’s tedious or obvious as you’re writing it out, but documenting processes can make everything go more smoothly. Write out what the processes are from the time the customer contacts your business, to when the estimate is completed and sent, to when the job is scheduled, and finally to when your business receives payment for the project. Include what the timeline expectations are because the faster your business is to contact and provide an estimate for a job, the more likely the job is rewarded to your home service business. Share the process with your employees to ensure everyone is on the same page and understands how each project should flow.
2. Communicate Every Step with Home Service Customers
Communication is the foundation of any great relationship; every step of the project needs to be communicated. Proper communication keeps your customers up to date with the project status and prevents worry. By incorporating consistent and accurate communication throughout the project, your customers will feel that they can trust you more. Additionally, customers will refer more work your way if they feel that you have dealt honestly with every situation, including the difficult ones.
3. Stay Organized with Home Service Projects
Tracking everything from communication to final payment will help if questions or problems arise. The easiest way to do this is digitally, and preferably online. Paperwork is easy to misplace and can only be accessed when you have a customer’s file physically present. When you track your customer and project data digitally, all you need to do is type in the customer’s name and review the current project. Staying organized and keeping a proper book of business also enables you to reach out to customers later to check in on the completed project, see if this customer has more projects for you, or find out if the customer can refer more business your way.
4. Evaluate Home Service Projects
Once the project is completed, it’s good to sit back and evaluate how the project went. Think about what worked well that you’d like to implement on other projects. But also think about what didn’t work that you can avoid next time. It’s also good to ask your customers how well they feel the project went so you can continue to provide a great customer experience (or make improvements if something went awry). If your customer is very complimentary of the experience, ask if the customer would be a reference for your business, either online or through a written letter.
Projects will go much more smoothly when you apply these four tips. There may be some additional time that you’ll need to spend putting together the process and establishing a tracking system, but the amount of time you will save per project and the increase in overall customer satisfaction will make it well worth it! You may even notice that you can take on more projects than you could in the past, and your business will really start to soar.
