Award winning business coach, Andrew Priestley interviewed 317 customers about their 'nightmare' bad service stories. He discovered 39 mistakes that are costing you lost business. Andrew Priestley www.andrewpriestley.com coaches businesses worldwide on Skype.

1. The 39 Dumbest Mistakes That Are Costing
You Lost Income if You Operate a Trades
or Service Business
In this special series by Andrew Priestley, customers retell their
worst ‘service industry’ experiences, and say what they don’t like
about doing business with tradespeople.
How the report came about
It is based on the proven concept:
1) that if you ask your clients to identify the key frustrations they
have with you, your business or your industry… they will usually
tell you;
2) you then have a pretty good to-do list of things to fix in your own
business that your clients will appreciate;
3) that results in more new sales and repeat business, referrals and
therefore profits.
The anecdotal research was completed for a home improvement centre
that supplies the home improvement industry - trades, sub contractors,
service providers, to-site and on-site suppliers.
We trailed the data and guess what? If you take to heart the
recommendations and make the small changes to some of these items,
your profits will improve.

2. The participants
We interviewed 317 customers - new, long standing and lapsed
customers –from a sample of 500 from their larger database. The
participants were asked a couple of open ended questions about their
concerns, frustrations and complaints with:
1) any recent specific experience with a service provider
2) the ‘service industry’ in general – carpet cleaners, tradesmen,
bricklayers, carpenters, fix-it men, plumbers, dog washers, pest
controllers – basically anyone who provides services in the home;
and
3) the home improvement center. (I have not included the feedback
about the home improvement center in this report).
Tip: Your customers are a gold mine of valuable information about you
and your business … but you have to ask them. Any business can survey
their customers but note there is a structure to conducting full blown
market research - if it is to be valid and reliable and statistically
significant. More on that another time. For our purposes just regularly
asking all your customers for feedback will still offer immense benefits.
As a rule of thumb: you can get general information from eight people (a
focus group), better detail from 32, more useful information from 120
and great ‘shades of grey’ from 1200 customers. (This type of research
can cost you about $100+ per person interviewed.) But you can do a lot
yourself inexpensively like counter or post-service delivery
questionnaires or have someone phone or visit a customer for about a

3. ten-minute chat. We recorded the interviews so we could generally
collate the feedback, transcribe the data and use it as a training tool.
The participants
Understand that customers were specifically asked to focus on their
concerns or complaints. And there was no prompting! (i.e. making
suggestions, giving them examples to get them started.)
We determined:
- the service being provided
- the critical incident or incidents
- the gender of the tradesperson (i.e. male or female)
- perceived age group
- perceived level of expertise
- dissatisfaction rating on a scale of 0-5 ; 0 being Very Dissatisfied
through to 5 being Very Satisfied.
The comments were then tabulated on an Excel spreadsheet. Basically
every time a certain complaint was mentioned, it scored a point.
(This is a very general overview of the full procedure we followed.)
While there were many complaints, they clustered down to 39. (A future
study will complete the Factor Analysis of the 39 Complaints). This
report lists, in descending order, the 39 MOST mentioned complaints
e.g., Number 1 in this case is the thing complained about the most; and
so on.

4. Four Phases
This study showed that customers are telling us what upset them and we
noticed four distinct ‘moments of truth’ or phases of the total transaction:
1) the canvassing/lead generation
2) the quoting for business
3) the service fulfillment
4) the post service delivery complaints follow up
Importantly, we tried to elicit the key reasons why the tradesperson
didn’t get the work irrespective of the competitiveness of the quote,
expertise or availability.
Interestingly, our panel agreed that ALL are completely avoidable; and
potentially losing the tradesperson the sale.
Note: The word ‘he’ is used throughout this report and sadly, in most
cases the interviewee is actually referring to a male service provider!
This point was cross-referenced very carefully. There were instances
where the complaint was about a female service provider, but these were
few.
Tip :If you are MALE, read this very carefully because it probably
applies to YOU … exactly.

5. PART TWO: The Complaints
Here are the 39 key complaints plus commentaries, recommendations
and tips.
NOTE: Since we first wrote this report four years ago, the number one
and two spots have changed. The NUMBER ONE COMPLAINT is:
#1. Didn’t turn up on time, as agreed, when he said he would; or at
all!
Basically trades people are notorious for being late or not even showing
up. It appears to be the universal complaint. Everyone values their time –
even if they are not employed. A LOT of customers arrange to take time
off from work to attend meetings with tradespeople … who show up late
or not at all.
Tip: Show up on time as agreed. When we interviewed tradespeople
who were guilty of this problem we found that they literally spread
themselves thin time-wise and geographically. For example, we found an
almost across the board problem with time management (i.e. we were
staggered at how many business owners didn’t run a diary, or didn’t
allow for travel time); and tradespeople who would book their jobs at
very distinct and separate geographic locations – which almost
guaranteed they’d be late for the next job or appointment. For example,
booking a job nearby and the next job across town, and then next job
somewhere else remote. Apart from being a costly in-transit experience,
the customer is the biggest loser.

6. We recommend a hub or nesting or farming concept. How does this
work? Say you are a pest controller. You market and service your
immediate suburbs rather than try and market to all suburbs. One of our
clients found that 80% of their business came from within a 3km radius
of base. This is nesting. In the real estate industry you farm your
territory. In some cases you have a strict territory and you cannot work
outside that area, so you have to farm it.
One service provider we heard about changed their business name to
something like Mow-On Time and they had a policy of arriving as agreed
or the service was free. This meant that they really sorted out the at-
office logistics. They worked out average travel times to various suburbs
within their territory so they could arrive on time even allowing for peak
hour traffic etc. The referral business they have built just by arriving on
time as agreed is proof that their clients value timeliness. If you are
always late and not punctual for meetings or appointments with
customers re-read this point.
Incidentally, this was also the number one reason customer switched
suppliers! So just being late could be costing you a fortune. And not even
showing is definitely bad for your business.
NEXT: Next in the series:
#2. They are so lazy! They don’t want to do anymore than they have
to.
WANT THE FULL REPORT?
Email coachbiz@hotmail.com. It is FREE until December 31, 2013.

7. About the author
Andrew Priestley is a multi-award winning business coach and he
specialises in working established SMEs – usually registered companies
with 2-5 employees, and usually 5-10 sub contractors.
Invariably it is a family-run business, capital intense (buying plant,
vehicles and equipment, plus contractor costs), they usually employ a
book keeper and while they have good lag information they don;’t
usually have good management accounts intel.
Almost always there is panic around sales tax (or VAT/GST/corporation
tax) time; they invariably have payroll tax issues; and there is a reliance
on refinancing; so you can assume cash flow issues.
The key frustration are around cash flow and lifestyle. In most cases, the
business can imporve with imporved marketing and sales and it can be as
simple as rectifying 3-5 of the items mentioned in this report.
Andrew helps companies worldwide to improve revenues through six
growth strategies designed especially for SMEs.
If you’d like a obligation free chat email him at coachbiz@hotmail.com
and he will sort out a phone or Skype chat.