It does seem our industry is depressingly targeted. Not helped by big company plc offering service contracts and because they are big companies consumers think they must be good. It's all over-promise and under-delivery. Further, lead gathering parasites do not help.
I mainly repair/maintain oil boilers and I find broadly that customers have a different attitude when they are off the grid. By this I mean a better attitude generally than customers in gas world who like to commoditise everything.
If I get a call from a prospective new customer a lot of them fail at the first fence. They have to pass my own screening before I take them on.
Questions I ask (politely) are:
1 How did you get my number?
2 Who is your regular service engineer?
3 What type of boiler do you have?
4 When was it last serviced and did your engineer leave a service history?
Those who are cagey/vague do not get taken on. Those who tell me they are phoning around for a quote for a service similarly get the same treatment. When I give my price (I am not the cheapest) sometimes the response is "You're expensive there's someone else that will do it £10 cheaper can you match that?" My response is "Am I expensive?. Fair enough you better use the other guy".
Cheapskate customers will find the Engineers they deserve.
I have a great set of customers some of whom get freebies/discounts/special rates etc. That's all part of the "relationship" we have. Relationship is something that the Internet is destroying.......
The OP would not be one of my customers in a million years
I mainly repair/maintain oil boilers and I find broadly that customers have a different attitude when they are off the grid. By this I mean a better attitude generally than customers in gas world who like to commoditise everything.
If I get a call from a prospective new customer a lot of them fail at the first fence. They have to pass my own screening before I take them on.
Questions I ask (politely) are:
1 How did you get my number?
2 Who is your regular service engineer?
3 What type of boiler do you have?
4 When was it last serviced and did your engineer leave a service history?
Those who are cagey/vague do not get taken on. Those who tell me they are phoning around for a quote for a service similarly get the same treatment. When I give my price (I am not the cheapest) sometimes the response is "You're expensive there's someone else that will do it £10 cheaper can you match that?" My response is "Am I expensive?. Fair enough you better use the other guy".
Cheapskate customers will find the Engineers they deserve.
I have a great set of customers some of whom get freebies/discounts/special rates etc. That's all part of the "relationship" we have. Relationship is something that the Internet is destroying.......
The OP would not be one of my customers in a million years