This is a complicated thing to write about. Oh, there’s the usual stuff that you should expect from all the contractors that perform any type of service for you:

Be on time, or at least communicate if things change. We all know they can.

Be polite, not too loud, respectful of your home.

Clean up and take away any trash.

Do what you said you would, when you said you’d do it.

These are not complicated, and when I first went into business for myself 30 years ago, people asked me how I thought I would do. My reply was always, “Well, I have a broom and I clean up after myself. That puts me miles ahead of any other plumber I’ve ever seen on a job, or electrician or carpenter, so I’ll probably do OK!” And that turned out to be true. Everyone who works for me is taught these things, not just as company policy but as a way of thinking about someone else’s house, so we’ve done OK over the last 30 years. No, we aren’t perfect, but we do try to be.

The complicated part of customer service is being observant. Let me illustrate that with a story. Tom was in a house recently to install a faucet. He was admiring the recently remodeled house, but in talking with the owner discovered that the kitchen and the large family room attached to it was not comfortable in the winter. The owner ended up having us review the heating requirements of that space, and we are going to install a new Runtal radiator to supplement the heat, and we are also probably going to have icynene foam insulation sprayed into the family room floor. Yes, we do get some work out of this, but to me this is customer service. By listening and observing what the customer said, we ended up giving them something they knew they needed, but didn’t know how to address!

Here’s another one. Last winter I got a call to talk about replacing a  steam boiler in a really nice part of a really nice town. The kind of town people move to for the schools.  A nice house with a very nice young, professional family. The boiler had an ancient coal to gas conversion burner on it, the kind that we can’t get parts for anymore, but have to adapt something to it to make it work. I measured the radiators, which is how you size a steam boiler, and in doing so I realised that there were only one or two radiators on the first floor. Then I looked at the family and realised that they all had heavy sweaters on! So I just asked the question “Aren’t you people cold downstairs”? Then I got the stories of water freezing in the cat bowl in the kitchen and of coming home and just going to bed to stay warm. We ended up by installing hot water heat for the first floor, with some Runtal radiators, a 95% efficient Buderus boiler and a lifetime tank Superstore hot water heater. This winter we took out the rest of the radiators and installed 2 more zones of hot water heat. And they are now very comfortable.  They didn’t waste any more  money on that old steam boiler, and they are saving an enormous amount of fuel, while being comfortable at last. Yes, it’s sales, but it’s also customer service!!

And we still clean up after ourselves.