The problems customers have with us Electricians… do you agree…

Transcript

Auto-generated from the audio (2,118 words). Names, numbers and the odd Aussie-ism may be off — check the audio before quoting.

What's going on guys? James Dest here from Marketing Secrets for Electricians and today we're talking about the problems customers have with us, the electricians. What are they complaining about? And yeah, just the top 9, 10 problems that I've researched and had a look at and let me know if you agree. That's the question.

Join me and follow along as we search for the answers. My name is James Rest and welcome to Marketing Secrets for Electricians. Don't show up when they say they would. And this for me, I've won numerous jobs just because I was the electrician that showed up when I would show up. And this is like the first step in the marketing.

It's like doing what you say you would do. If you can't make it, don't make the promises. And this is kind of where we can use that in marketing. So you can go, Hey, if I don't show up, I'm going to give you 50 bucks. Like that might be the solution.

So the customer knows, well, and that this electrician, if they don't show up, they're going to do it. And then you honor that and use that as a testimony to help you with your marketing. So that's number one and see how we're going problem solution. And using that in the marketing, this is kind of the three step process that I want to go through. And number two is bad quality of workmanship.

And I've also had this, I've had contractors or electrician electrical contractors under me who have done chunky jobs. So the foot up the lights and it's just like crooked sideways leaking. Water gets in, you know, all these types of things. And have the customer call me up and go, Hey, what are you doing? Like, like your guys come here and this place is all the lights are crooked, weak and wobbly.

And what do you do? So talking the solution to this is guaranteeing your work. So reassuring the customer, all jobs are held to a high quality of standard. And you're not happy. We'll come back free of charge to do it.

So that's kind of like having a guarantee. Having testimonies, having case studies, having references to back that up. So, and then you can use this as your marketing. So you can go, Hey, have you ever had a shitty job done by electrician? Well, don't worry.

I've got you covered. We've got a, a warranty of XYZ. We're also guaranteed to do this. If you don't, you know, there's other things. Just what can you use in your marketing to help reassure or take that pain point away from the customer?

Next we have not doing what they say they would do. So not doing what, if I said I'm going to install two PowerPoints for 200 bucks and instead I only install one, obviously that's like a problem. So having, having things written down, and this is also a matter of just communicating your expectations and their expectations, having it written down on a piece of paper. So for example, when you're writing a quote, you don't do four PowerPoints. You go one PowerPoint in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in the kitchen, one in one weatherproof PowerPoint outside, and you're setting the expectation from the start.

And so that's the problem solution. And using that in the marketing, this could be a video you can go on and you could show how you write and communicate your work. So it's a matter of gaining trust with the customers or potential customers that see your message and producing content that they can see. So this is before they come, you go to their house and you meet them. We want to build that relationship well and surely before, and I'm going to go through and I'm actually going to do a Facebook live on each one of these points, pointing them out, talking them, getting people to interact and seeing which one they think is the worst.

And maybe there's others that they are getting themselves and they can also add to the top nine I've got at the moment, but that could be more as we go on. So the next one is does not answer the phone. This is a huge problem for solo electricians. So one main band spark is if you're on your own, in the roof, your phone is like in the car and you're working your way in the house, having a voicemail isn't the best answer to that problem. Essentially having your own virtual assistant is I think personally a big benefit for your customers.

And maybe you can't do it at the start, but it's something to aim for because it's not as expensive as hiring someone full time to sit there and do nothing, but having someone who can like a contract who just answers the phone and books the jobs in or just reassures the customer. Yes. We will be there at this time or they know what's going on. So they have someone to connect with and talk with, with your, with your company or your electrical business. This is important to build and gain that trust of reliability.

So I call and just someone answers just so I know that you're there. And you can say that, Hey, we have a full time, like we have the phones covered from this to this time. And you can use that in your marketing message again. So this is the problem, the solution and the marketing message. So the problem solution become your marketing message.

When you write a blog post, when you do a live, when you do an audio, you can actually do Facebook live in just audios now. So this is something I just found out, which is kind of cool. Haven't tried it yet, but we'll do sometimes in the near future. So. another one, my number five, unprofessionalism.

So basically you rock up in not the correct uniform, no uniform, no logo, no badge, no like shorts, t-shirt, like very unprofessional. You have a pumice crack. People and customers hate that. It's very unsexy. So, and you can talk about these as well.

What solutions you can show photos of videos of your team, your uniform, your vans, you can say, go to your website, go to your website, get a free quote, not so great. You can say, go to this, this domain. So this URL and get a free. Day of energy guide or free, whatever you're kind of focusing, give them not necessarily a free quote, but something free on your van. So that's part of the professional image that you want to create.

The van I had was wrapped and we had like a really cool logo design and everything. And I had customers comment on the van. So this is like huger than taking notice of the thing. It's your best marketing vehicle. You're driving it around all day, every day.

It can generate you free leads. And if you use the lead magnet, which will cover in day at later on, but yeah, so that's kind of important. Looking professional now, number six is DIY unlicensed electricians, this type of stuff. Basically they don't know what they're doing. You want to say your license, you're insured.

You've got all these checkpoints that maybe people aren't aware of. And I'm going to be also covering this. Like before the electrician does the job, what do you really, what do you need to check? Are they licensed? Do they have insurance?

If shit goes bad, like are you covered? Because there's lots of people doing dodgy work and you know, any, anyone can essentially do electrical work, even though it's not recommended. Seven, you pay for an electrician and the apprentice does the job. So I've had this complaint on jobs where I rocked up and they're like, the last guy, like he quoted me like a thousand dollars and then he left the electrician to do the work. I paid for the trades.

I pay for that electrical contract to do. To do this gig. Why is the apprentice who I know is like cheap and probably not as good as the other as actual electrician. So this is something you want to, you know, you want to advertise in a way that they, the electrician is doing the job or break your product so they can see, I wouldn't break it up. That's probably not the best idea, but you want to explain that the electrician does the job or at least they're on site and overseeing the job, not running a way to do another job because they've managed it bad or whatever.

So that's number seven, number eight, extra charges and additional items that the customer didn't know about at the start. So if you say, Hey, I'm going to install a PowerPoint for $200. And then they're like, at the end of the quote, it's a thousand dollars and you haven't informed the customer front. This is a huge mistake. I just, you know, not trustworthy alarm bells.

And you're like, Oh, because I had to do X, Y and Z. Well, did you ask the customer before this? These are the types of things you're like, before we change the price, before we, even if you're doing hourly rate, you can say we, we, we do an hour and we let you know where we're at, what's happening and our expectation of how long it will do to fault find and find the issue from where we are. So you keep the customer informed upon what's going on. I have, I had one mate who was in a house and he, there was fault finding and it took him like eight hours to find the problem.

And you know, he was contacting the customer and they were getting stressed because like, what's going on? What's going on? And they ended up finding a possum down the cavity wall that had bitten onto the lateral cable and basically short circuit, circuit half the house. So he had to, you know, pull off the tin roof and just dig around. I took him basically all day to find this thing.

But he just had to let the know that the customer know what was going on. Then next up, we want to come back and we want to fix any work we've done. So if, if you do something and it breaks within the 12 month warranty period or whatever, go back and if it's not your fault, you can explain that. But if it is, if we just, if you did something wrong, own up for it. So the main thing is go back and look at it and reassure the customer and look after them because in the long run, the lifetime value of your customer is greater than the small fix you may have to do for that.

particular job. So these are my top nine. So I just run through them again. The top nine things electricians do that customers hate. Don't show up when they say they would.

Bad quality of workmanship. Not doing what they said they'll do. Not answering the phone. Unprofessionalism. DIY unlicensed electricians.

Seven pay for an electrician and get an apprentice that does a job. Eight extra charges, additional items that the customers didn't know they know about at the start. Nine won't come back to fix their work. So if you agree or have any other points, come hit me up. Let me know.

This is something I'm going to be testing on find electricians near me.com. And we're going to be seeing what the actual customers do and what they think if they, this is the, you know, this is just a one I came up with myself to do the research. However, the customers hopefully going to engage and let me know what their problems are. And then I'm going to work with you guys to connect solutions to these problems and connect you to the customers and we can go from there. So if that helps have any questions, please let them know.

Thanks for tuning in and listening guys. Now, if you want to join in on this conversation and see what we're doing as we develop sales funnels for electricians, head over to Facebook and go to marketing secrets for electricians. And you should be able to find us there. Thanks.