Ep 278 - Seamless Service

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneurs Secrets, the Electricians podcast. I am your host, Clay Neumeier, and with me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani. We are the Electricpreneurs, a couple of master electricians with business addictions, here and ready to serve Seamless service. Today, joe, if I may Welcome to our freemium daily coach call. Admission cost for you Nothing. Sit back in the hot seat, take everything we give and just promise to please, please, please, I beg of you. Take some action. Joseph, my brother, how are you doing today?

I'm doing good. Have you ever felt like you just ran an endurance race and we just crossed the finish line?

Every single day, but I just can't seem to remember where I put the finish line Exactly.

Because literally the way I feel right now is that I just finished a lap, I broke through the velvet rope all in to see that at the end of the line there's another velvet rope I got to run through.

That's an endurance race, though you get used to just keeping on running. We were talking about this analogy yesterday behind the seat. That's a good one, I love it.

And that thing is. I'm feeling actually really good, Like I love what I do and I love what you and I are doing. So therefore, even though it is an endurance race, I'm filled with purpose and joy. So how can I really complain?

Yeah, I don't have any complaints either, other than this one man. I've got one big complaint actually.

All right, lay it on me.

I kind of missed showing up here live five days a week. A little bit.

I kind of I understand where you're coming from and I kind of do too, at the same time, the fact that we're still putting in the hours but we're going into doing the development, and if people could just see what we're building in the background, it'd be worth it. They'd be like, yeah, I get that, it's worth the pause.

You know what? They get an ounce of seeing what we built in the background. Just in the last little bit of time here, You've been working hard on our installer trainings and today is an action item. Our value piece that we released is a good portion of our installer objection guide, which ties perfectly into what we're talking about today with seamless service.

I'm really, really excited about that, and the thing that really stressed me out was I wanted to create an absolute, flawless, seamless, integratable system, from the moment that they answered the phone to all the way to where you're shaking their hand again in the review. But I noticed that there was a gap, and the gap was that, okay, you have a great phone experience for a 10. And then you go and you sell the job and you're a 10. But then there's a gap between what if you're not the one doing the work? What if you have an installer? What if there's an install team that follows behind you? How do we ensure that they have an absolute, perfect experience so it doesn't detract from the relationship?

And for the life of me.

I couldn't find anything Like there. There was no guy and there was nothing out there. So we took it upon ourselves providing that. Yeah, sorry to interrupt.

You go ahead brother.

No, it's okay, you and I said something the exact same time, but the point was is that I noticed that there wasn't anything existing. It seemed like anytime an objection came up, it was well, it's either an objection over the phone or it's an objection getting this sale or is injection keeping this sale. But it had nothing with objections that are faced when it comes to delivering on. You've already sold.

Yeah, I think this is. This is really huge, and here's my reasoning why. Mm-hmm, are you being let down by customer service and almost every industry currently too, like it's every freaking day right, and the best I can figure is that customer service really tanks when there's no plan, no trained intent Behind the person that you're dealing with. It's not even that they're a bad person. Yeah, I mean. Living a life where we just assume people are shitty all the time is a really shallow life that I don't want to live, but I can't help but be frustrated when there's no training around some of this stuff.

Yeah, like you want to have that mindset of like, oh, I want to assume that everyone's gonna give a great experience, but you also have to accept the reality that people only perform as well as they've been trained to perform, and and that occasionally you're gonna have certain all-stars that just naturally, at the gate, just seem to get it. But we need to make it so it's once again, a seamless experience, which means that any person that puts on our uniform, that wants to carry tools and physically do a job for our customers, need to perform at a certain level, and how can we possibly say that we're keeping them that level if we're not doing things to inspect that? Yeah, and that's why this process is gonna be so helpful.

For sure, for sure. In this guide specifically, I love how it's starting out with the self objection and the pricing and how big of a deal that is, because I've seen this too right equipping people who don't believe in your price to go out and install at your price Could be a really, really bad idea. Do you mind going into a bit of that?

Yeah, I'd be happy to, and I love a UNI on the kind of same page. I'm like, oh, tag me in for that, brother, right? So a lot of times the first thing when someone thinks about an objection is usually the price objection. Oh, this was too much. And there is price objection handling across every industry, because it's very common objection that comes up. But the thing that doesn't often get addressed is what if you're not the salesperson and you don't have a commission that's tied to this and you're just the installer, and Someone comes to you and says this is an outrageous amount of money I or? Do you really think like, as you know how much this I paid top dollar for this job? It better be perfect. If the tech doesn't believe in the value or the price that the company is charging, they're always going to be influenced more heavily by that statement and They'll either be caused to want to offer more value to make up that gap or try to defend it, or, in the worst case scenario, they don't say anything and they pretend like the customer didn't say anything, and that's actually even worse than even trying to take a swing at it.

Totally, when we've even seen guys at that point like break out into side work stuff like it gets greasy out there, and at the same time let me defend the tech for a moment. Mm-hmm, it's uncomfortable being in that situation, especially if you're not trained on how to handle it. How do you talk through that? A Do I believe in it? B how do I handle this? And if I'm not equipped with the belief or the handles, then I find myself in an awkward position where I'm compelled to just agree with the person bitching about it in front of me and the same thing actually applies when we're trying to train our teams as well, because I think you actually made a great point where you're like well, eventually just cave and give up on it.

How often are we actually sitting down and going through what we charge and explaining that to the people turning tools? We explain it to our sales team because we're the ones that they need to convince that their price is justified. But it needs to be equally convinced to your installers, because that same customer that gave a price complaint May do it to test the team. The price objection may not be you're charging too much. It could be hey clay, do you really think that we need this part of the installation or why do you think we had this particular thing on it? It doesn't sound like an objection, but when you understand why someone would ask it in the first place, if they're trying to get an unbiased opinion and Based on your response, could be the difference of this customer being completely sold on what you're doing or them opening the door and being genuinely Concerned and now starting to scrutinizing question everything just based on the text and direction.

Little cracks in the wall, man. That's where it all begins. It's the little cracks. I can't disagree with you at all. And, just as a reminder, everything we're trying to do is at the premium service level. Now what does it say about us if that's only at the curb facing? You know, the first impressions are great, but then on the back end things are just kind of cracking and falling apart.

There's an expression called a white wash tomb. Have you ever heard of it before? No, I haven't been. A white wash tomb is Something that like. Imagine a gravestone, right, and it's completely just scrubbed and beautified. Like you know, you're having a memorial and you get that gravestone taken care of, right, you shine that up. It looks beautiful, yeah. Well, what's inside of it? Just a rotting body, nothing special. Skeletons exactly so when you say the white wash tomb, what we're trying to say is that if our goal is to look good but not to deliver a seamless experience, there will always be roadblocks in which the customer will have their experience drop. So by making sure your installers are fully up to date with not only how to escalate situations, but how to de-escalate situations without having to say give me one second, let me call my boss, imagine your team was just able to handle on their own and you didn't even have to receive the phone call. That is the kind of experience we're looking for and that's the experience it's often lacking in the business owner's existence.

You know what I got to add to this? Because when you call attention to the business owner, there is attention to a different view here, a different size of contractor, and it could be that you, the business owner, listening to this right now, are doing the sales and the installs and the office, and so it seems like there would be a seamless service field to this organization, except when we're overwhelmed and we're stressed out and we're trying to serve but we're taking a phone call right In the midst of these things. Have you ever been in a situation where you're having a difficult conversation and then the phone rings for the 10th time that hour and you just kind of have this meltdown moment where everyone can tell there's smoke coming from your ears and the next things out of your mouth are not going to be pleasant?

That's why we insist that you need to hire your office manager first to specifically prevent that situation. But yeah, and additionally, on top of that, when you want to go through and get that experience, that customer gets to see exactly who you are in that moment, because you're only as strong as you are in your weakest state and if you're overwhelmed, and that's the experience your customer gets from you, that's what they remember.

Totally man Speaking of whitewash tombs, right? That to me, is like catfishing online dating and putting up a profile picture that's not really you On the inside. We're actually stressed the fuck out here, right, like you can't hide this. You know what? Actually, when I was coming up, I got to share this with you guys. I was driving down the road with my journeyman at the time. He was a good leader, he taught me a lot and his dad called and he wasn't afraid to have a personal conversation. You know how you get chumming with these guys and you come pretty close, right. We rode together all the time. So we were talking about his breakup, his recent breakup, lots, and his dad said this son, you can't hide broccoli in a glass of milk. And I went in my head and I'm like what the fuck does that mean? Excuse my bridge, I scratched my head on that for a long time, but I think it all ends itself to what we're talking about today. We have to do something about this, we can take action on this, and if you're listening to this right now, if you're with us here on this live and you're asking yourself well, how do I take action, guys, if you didn't hear in the beginning. This is literally our action post of the day, our value piece. We're giving it away for free, as always, as we're creating and building up our guides and helping you serve at the highest level, we're also giving a component away of that for free so that this entire industry can rise. So do not miss the opportunity to take advantage of that. Absolutely. We've got I can't see who at the moment with our current view, but someone just posted a 141 podcast in a row trying to catch up. Congratulations to you. Thank you for talking with us, joe. This is so huge man Because, like you said, if we can have the phone call answered and set our tech up as a 10, our sales tech, first and foremost, up as a 10, and they can arrive and they can serve and provide options in a way that really helps people and have a customer make a choice to choose us because of that level of service, how much of a sin would it be then to send someone out untrained to do an install and maybe just maybe it's got to be half the time find themselves in an awkward conversation where they themselves don't have that congruent level of training for this seamless, freaking service? You know?

what it feels like. It feels like a bait and switch, and it goes back to your catfish analogy, because the logic would then be I sold you premium service, you purchased the experience of premium service, you purchased the install correct, but what you've really purchased by hiring me is the experience you'd get from it, and if I don't deliver on that experience, I misled you, because you're not paying for a contractor, you're paying for a premium service provider, and if I don't deliver on that, then I've sold you a list of bad goods and I'm not okay with that.

I love that sentiment. I want to take one more spin at this episode, if we can Sure go for it. Yeah, we only get to go live so often now. And, by the way, guys, this has been a heavy investment for us, so we appreciate you hanging out with some of the replays. You know we're totaling enough episodes to play one every day of the week for a whole year and keep you guys growing, so we're pumped about that, and the growth that's happening on the inside during this time of investment is just massive, as we come up with every guide under the sun and training them at a higher level than ever before. I mean it's really, really incredible stuff. You guys are also going to see the fruits of that in our freemium content that will keep growing. We've got a ton of exciting stuff to share. Here's the spin I wanted to put on this. Sure, let's be the installer for a moment.

Okay.

Right, you're in the house Maybe you're just started working for this company or you've been there a while but there's not really a process on the installs, no training on customer service. Sure, we talk about the technical stuff. Right, there's a sales tech that hands over a work order. Not a huge degree of explanation, the why or the who it's for, right? So we find ourselves in this place of kind of get out the door and go do the thing and try to make it go in this amount of time. That's the most important thing here. The price book said six hours. Get it done in six hours or else, or less, or less. Right, that is such a pressure that is overwhelming to your people. So can I just call out the elephant in the room In an industry that we all agree, it's getting harder and harder to find the staff that we need to grow this team. Isn't it important to equip them, to train our people to have an out and what I mean by an out is like a personal out, personal salvage, where they don't need to feel attacked because they're trained in customer service and how to respond in tricky situations. Because in my mind, that helps me stay longer and it helps me progress up this company ladder and become a service tech and maybe one day a sales tech on my own journey with service loop electrical. Do you agree with that, joe?

I really, really do, and I love that you wanted to take it there, because nowadays, hiring and keeping people is one of the hardest tasks that people are often faced with. Where do I find them? How do I keep them? And, yeah, it's not just throwing money at a tech, it's giving them a better work experience. And if you can say, hey, when you work for us, not only do you have drastically fewer customer complaints than any other company specifically because our entire focus is that customer experience but we've mitigated every possible situation by mapping out what they could say and giving you specific responses that are ethical, professional and to the point. I would personally feel like you know what I mean, especially someone like me who can feel awkward and uncomfortable in certain situations. I would want to know that there's a game plan, because if there's a game plan, then at least I know what's expected of me. I don't ever want to just be thrown out. I want to know that I did the right thing or I did the wrong thing, so I can understand how to do it better or keep doing it the same in the future.

Absolutely, man, absolutely. We're running out of time here, so I want to wrap this up one up with a couple of action items and I want to try something new, if we can Sure go for it. You're going to make your brain work in multiple ways, because we're only live weekly right now and you're getting a good compliment wise words, joe so thank you for that. Because we're only live weekly, I want to share some wins every week when we come here. Is that cool? I'm down. Do you have a win or two in mind? Because I've got one pulled up on the side just from today that I'll at least share. But if you come up with anything else in your head that you're like that deserves honorable mention, let me know. And in the weeks coming forward, we'll always share a couple wins of the week. How does that sound?

Yeah, I wish I knew in advance. I want to pull up a good one, but yeah, I'll scour my brain.

I ambushed you, man, so let's hit the action items first. We'll share a win of the week and we'll close out with our friends here.

Sounds good.

Okay, basic or all-star, what would?

you like I could take either. I would say all-star, but I'm okay with whatever one you want.

Yeah, and the next one is your beast today. Here's the basic Little pause. I'm building up Anticipation. Can you feel it? Guys, we have to take action on this. Customer service is at an all-time low. The entire purpose of creating these action items is so that we just do something right. The cost for admission for this, as we say at the beginning of these episodes, is just for you to sit back, hear these thoughts and take action on them. Maybe you already are, maybe there's some improvements to make, but we've got this action guide that we're literally going to send out this value piece, and all you've got to do is comment below on the podcast if you're watching this live and or jump on serviceloopelectricalcom right, you can contact us there using the contact form and let us know that you want this Installer Objection Guide because it's going to help you. It's going to help you retain staff, it's going to help you retain customers and last time I checked, both of those things are absolutely critical to your seamless service success. Joe, you're teed up brother.

Thank you. So I feel like the All Star action goes a step before that, because in order to know how to handle an objection, you have to be able to solve your own internal objections. And I really believe that's one of the most paramount things, because if you yourself can believe in something, then, even if you were completely blindsided, you'd have a certain level of authenticity to at least come up with a statement. But if you don't believe in something and you're confronted in that same situation, all you have is regurgitated lines. So if you're going to put your hand up for this value piece, I insist that the first area that you go to absorb is self-objection. Learn about the price objection. If you yourself can get okay with what you're charging and you can learn how to position your price to your team so that they can better understand it, you will find that you'll have less objections across the board in every single field that you do. Whether it means that's your office who's getting oh, that's expensive over the phone, whether it means that you're tech that's getting expensive, whether it means you're installer complaining about the price on the work order, it doesn't matter. Do your price first and ensure that everyone is committed to charging it and serving what that price entails.

I love that man. Really good, really good stuff. And before that price objection, of course. We've talked about this in the podcast before and it's something that we teach in our loop method. We literally map out you become the architect of that offer first, so that your whole team understands it. Guys, here's your win of the week that Dustin, one of our clients, hit a huge, huge home run here. Not that he was aiming for it, but, hey, he showed up for what would have been a $500 service call, presented the options, gave the people choices and they chose a 38K project including a service update and a massive redevice. So congratulations, dustin. Thank you, joe. This has been another effort to help you guys master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Guys, let's make it seamless. Let's go out there and make it together. Cheers to your success. Can we see you soon?