Providing great plumbing services is easy. But pleasing your customers can be much more complicated.
Customer experience has become a buzzword for many businesses. But you don’t need to be a huge enterprise to use this business practice. In fact, customer experience can be even more important for the home services industries.
Beyond basic repairs, customers want a streamlined, frictionless experience with the plumbers they choose to work with. Everything — from the first phone call to the post-appointment communication — can factor into their overall customer experience. In short, it isn’t just the services you deliver. It’s the way you deliver those services that can make or break the customer experience.
In this article, we’ll explore everything plumbing professionals should know about improving customer experience.
What Is the Customer Experience?
Think about all the businesses that you love the most. What makes them so appealing? It might be the low prices, fast service, or simple buying process. Or maybe they’re just friendly and easy to work with.
Working with a business isn't just about buying goods or services. The business provided an experience that left you feeling good about working with them. It’s this experience that builds trust between a business and its customers, making them come back for more.
The customer experience is all the interactions customers have with your company, from beginning to end of the customer journey. This can look like:
- Seeing an advertisement for your business
- Spotting your business listing on Google
- Calling your customer service line
- Meeting with your field tech for services
- Paying the bill before or after the appointment
- Engaging with your company through text and email
All these interactions form a collective experience. This impacts how the customer views the reliability and quality of your business, as well as their decision to keep coming back (or not).
In the digital world where goods and services are just a click away, customer experience is more important than ever. Businesses in all industries have to work harder to keep up with customer demands for quick, affordable, and easy service — plumbing is no exception.
Why Is Plumbing Customer Experience So Important?
Sooner or later, nearly every homeowner will need the help of a plumber. But there’s no shortage of competition out there, both locally and nationally. With so many options to choose from, what drives the customer to choose one plumber over another?
That’s where customer experience can play an important role. No matter how skilled your plumbers are, the way you treat your customers will always come first. After all, most plumbing companies can provide an efficient fix. But if their booking process with a particular company is inefficient or the customer support team fails to follow up, this negative customer experience is something they’re not likely to forget.
Customer experience is so critical that 74% of customers say they would switch to a competitor after one poor customer experience. The stakes for customer experience in the plumbing industry have never been higher. From phone calls to appointments, failing to provide a smooth experience can cost your business and limit your growth.
On the other hand, a positive customer experience can help your plumbing business more than you may realize. When a plumbing emergency comes up, frustrated homeowners seek companies they can trust with their home plumbing system.
Great customer experiences are the foundation of trust. According to a study, 83% of customers say they would trust a brand more after an excellent customer experience. Another 80% say they would also recommend a brand to peers, which can also have a powerful impact to your business. And 90% of consumers say they’re more likely to trust brands recommended to them, even by strangers.
In addition to word-of-mouth marketing, improved customer experience for plumbing companies can also lead to:
- An increase in revenue
- More plumbing leads
- Greater brand loyalty
- Increased customer lifetime value
- Lower advertising costs
How to Improve the Customer Experience for Plumbing Professionals
With intense competition in the plumbing industry, “good” customer service isn’t good enough. To stand out, you need to go above and beyond in delivering the best possible services. From personalized marketing efforts to timely and seamless service, there are some steps you can take to step up your customer experience efforts.
Here, you’ll find tips to help you improve your customer experience and win more plumbing clients with the help of Scorpion’s home services software.
Make It Easy to Find Your Plumbing Contact Info
More than half of home services customers will do an online search before they make an appointment. This means it’s more important than ever to make your plumbing business easy to find. Most importantly, you should make your business easy to contact.
If customers have to spend longer than a minute trying to find your contact information, they may turn to one of your competitors. The more accessible you are, the faster a customer can get on the line to book an appointment. This can be the key to a smooth booking process and a great plumbing customer experience.
Plumbing customers should be able to connect with your business directly from the search engine. If you have a Google business listing, make sure your phone number and website are easy to find. Making the phone number textable can also ensure ease of contact since 66% of consumers say they’d prefer to text with a business over other means of communication.
On your website, make sure your contact information is easily accessible. You can make it visible on each page with a clear call to action while also including a contact page with everything they need to know about reaching your plumbing business. Adding a chat function is another way to establish quick and convenient contact with your prospective customers. In fact, 44% of customers say that live chat is one of the most important features a website can offer.
Scorpion’s website management makes contact easier than ever for potential customers. With easy navigation, instant communication through live chat, and mobile optimization, you can ensure customers have a quick, easy, and direct line of contact with your plumbing company when they’re ready to book.
Streamline Plumbing Payment Options
Due to the nature of their work, plumbers are always on the go. Collecting payments on the job can be time-consuming and hard to track, especially with a busy schedule full of appointments.
This isn’t just a challenge for plumbing companies. Customers can also struggle with complicated or limited payment methods. If they cannot pay quickly and securely by their preferred method (debit card, credit card, mobile app, browser, etc.), they may reconsider using your services.
The payment industry has come a long way, allowing many consumers to pay through their devices. But many plumbing companies are slow to catch up with this trend, which could be hurting the customer experience.
Nearly one-third of consumers now say they prefer mobile payments. The ease of online payments can make that part of the customer journey much smoother. When a plumbing emergency arises, the last thing they want to think about is payment. A seamless online system lets them take care of it with a few clicks.
The best way to provide a top-notch payment experience is by meeting your customer’s needs. Everyone has a different way to pay, whether through apps or credit cards. Scorpion’s payment technology is flexible, accepting payments through your website, tablet, or phone.
Send Follow-Ups After a Plumbing Appointment
The work doesn’t end when a plumber leaves the customer’s home. Every part of the customer’s journey is an important part of the customer experience, including post-appointment communication.
A follow-up text or email is a way to prove that you’re interested in more than just booking more appointments. When you check in to ask about the customer’s experience, you prove that their satisfaction is important to you — more so than any future sales.
These interactions are crucial for building trust. The customer has already paid, so they know you have nothing to gain from this interaction. It’s purely an effort to make the customer happy with your services.
In this follow-up, you can thank them for choosing your services. Ask how their experience went and if there was anything you could do better. Depending on the service provided, it can help to offer some resources for plumbing maintenance to help them keep their plumbing system in top condition.
It can be time-consuming to send emails to each of the customers individually. The right email marketing tool can help you build customer loyalty without the manual labor. Scorpion's email technology lets you automatically send follow-up emails and build email marketing campaigns to nurture a deeper customer-brand relationship.
Focus On Your Plumbing Company’s Online Reputation
There’s no question that online reputation is important. Whether it’s a planned job or an emergency repair, most people will turn to search engines for plumbing help, which means they can see everything anyone has ever said about your company.
But did you know online reputation is also critical to customer experience? Your online reputation strategy should include engaging with customers after the appointment is completed to request customer feedback. There are two benefits to this. First, it reminds the customer that you value their feedback. Second, it gives you access to important customer data that you can use to improve the customer experience further.
Reviews offer a direct look at your customers' experiences. You can gain valuable insight into what they care about most and what they want to see from their plumbing providers. Anything from a Yelp review to a social media comment offers insights that you can use to improve customer satisfaction.
From social media accounts to third-party review platforms, there isn’t a simple answer to reputation management. Scorpion helps you track ratings across the web to evaluate your customer satisfaction levels. When you manage your reviews in real time, you can quickly respond to positive and negative reviews to keep those customer interactions going.
Improve Your Plumbing Service Speed
For customers and plumbers alike, time is money. Almost 80% of consumers say that speed is one of the main factors in a positive customer experience. For plumbing, speed can be even more important. Many homeowners don’t have the time to wait for an emergency plumbing fix. If they can get faster services from a competitor, you could lose their business.
To improve your customer service, you need to improve your speed of service. From beginning to end, customers should find it easy to get their plumbing needs taken care of with a fast turnaround. This means:
- It should be quick to schedule an appointment.
- Plumbers should show up on time and work efficiently.
- Payment should process within a few minutes.
- Post-appointment follow-up emails or text messages should be sent within 24 hours.
With such a busy schedule, it isn’t always easy for plumbing companies to keep up with fast-paced customer demands. Scorpion’s technology solutions can help you streamline the process from beginning to end. When complicated tasks like digital marketing and website management are taken care of, you have more time to focus on delivering the best (and fastest) possible services.
Improving Customer Experience for the Future of Plumbing
In the digital age, customers expect more from their home services companies than ever. From the booking process to your website’s communication features, everything should be as seamless as possible to help your customers get the help they need, when they need it.
Plumbing companies like yours are focused on providing the best possible plumbing services. You’re not a customer service machine. The time, energy, and expenses it takes to hone the company’s customer experience can be overwhelming for many small businesses.
That’s where customer experience technology can be an invaluable resource. Scorpion can help you manage your workload by taking care of important customer service needs, like website chat features, email marketing, mobile payment technology, and more. Learn more about what we can do for your plumbing company, or you can get started with us today.
