Long-term relationships often begin with the simplest of actions. If you have attended any of my seminar presentations over the years, they all cover the three basics of being overwhelmingly successful at some point during the presentation. The process is simple:
1. Do Quality Work
2. Do What You Said You Were Going to Do
3. Do It When You Said You Would Do It
The above three things, done consistently, will create all the work the company would ever want. That said, there is one foundation stone that supports all of the above. What is it? Answer the phone! That seems obvious but it doesn’t always happen. Everything begins with the customer calling your company.
Back in 1996 my wife and I decided to have our basement (which was completely unfinished) remodeled. We called three contractors. One didn’t answer the phone. The second looked at the basement but never got back to us. The third was MCF Construction. Bingo, they got the job! They had all the trades under one roof, no subcontracting. They did an outstanding job. The “Flood of 1997” arrived a year later, and our newly remodeled basement flooded! Yes, we had the basement waterproofed before the remodeling began but that is a long story all by itself. It was not done properly, and the basement flooded.
MCF was again hired to redo the basement they had done less than a year earlier. Again, excellent work.
In 2001 we had a tornado hit. It took off our upstairs dormer roof which created a waterfall from the roof all the way to the basement. The day after it hit guess what happened? Our phone rang and it was MCF. They were calling to see if we had any damage and if we needed help. The answer was an obvious yes! The result was a new roof, a complete remodel of the second floor, and repairs in other areas.
We get a little bit of hail at times in Owensboro, KY but nothing destructive. However, 2014 was a HUGE exception. That year we got a large damaging hailstorm over a relatively short period of time. Our thirteen-year-old roof was seriously damaged as well as the soffit, window coverings, gutters, and downspouts. We weren’t singled out by the storm, literally every house on the street and a large portion of the structures in our town needed roofs repaired and/or replaced as well. Roofing companies from seemingly all over the world “suddenly” appeared in Owensboro. We called MCF and within a few days, they had met with the insurance people, gotten approval, and begun the process of replacing our root…again.
A couple of weeks ago we employed a company to waterproof the outside of our chimney. While on the roof one of the crew members noticed the lead edge of the rubber roof on the dormer did not have a drip edge into the gutter resulting in the subflooring getting wet causing some deterioration. My wife suggested we call MCF to take a look at it. When Keith arrived, he surveyed the roof and noted that the required drip edge had never been installed. He fully understood his company had been the ones who installed it and was very apologetic and took full responsibility. Without asking, he volunteered to send a crew out the next week to repair the roof deck and install the proper drip edge into the gutter…at no cost to us. I was impressed. Sure enough, the next week the crew arrived and fixed the problem. It was good timing as well since the torrential rains from Hurricane Helene arrived a week later.
So, what’s the point? What began as simply answering the phone followed by doing quality work, doing what they said they would do, and arriving on time has resulted in thousands of dollars of work over 24 years.
Every customer is important and has the potential of becoming a long-term patron generating thousands of dollars of work over a long period of time.
Written By
Tom Grandy
Company Founder
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