Unreliable tradesmen

phill99

I run a maintenance company and am happy to put my slant on it. There are 2 sides :

I find that there are many tradesmen who excellent at what they do but are who are extremely poor at running their own businesses. They have no concept of customer care, personal interface or simply doing what they say they will do ie turn up for appointments or send a quote. They also have no sense of team work and don't understand that if they don't do a certain thing at a certain time then it impacts other people.

This, I can guarantee will not change.

I used to have a lad working with me who attended college 1 day a week. I discussed with the college on a number of occasions that they needed to teach basic business skills, but it fell on deaf ears. I found this strange as 90% of construction workers are sel employed.

So much of the problem actually lies with the way tradesmen are educated.

However, there are some decent tradesmen out there and you just need to find them. Because I turn up when agreed, send in quotes and wear boot covers in people's houses, 90% of my work is recommendation and repeat work.


I would also add that it isn't one sided. Customers often don't know what they require, have no concept of costs or time involved. I can't visit a customers house today and have a researched written quote to them tomorrow. To do it justice I say to people not to expect anything for a week. Because of all the TV shows where houses are made over in 5 minutes, people think this I the norm so people have a skewed perception of reality.

Rockingit

phill99 wrote: »

I run a maintenance company and am happy to put my slant on it. There are 2 sides :

I find that there are many tradesmen who excellent at what they do but are who are extremely poor at running their own businesses. They have no concept of customer care, personal interface or simply doing what they say they will do ie turn up for appointments or send a quote. They also have no sense of team work and don't understand that if they don't do a certain thing at a certain time then it impacts other people.

This, I can guarantee will not change.

I used to have a lad working with me who attended college 1 day a week. I discussed with the college on a number of occasions that they needed to teach basic business skills, but it fell on deaf ears. I found this strange as 90% of construction workers are sel employed.

So much of the problem actually lies with the way tradesmen are educated.

However, there are some decent tradesmen out there and you just need to find them. Because I turn up when agreed, send in quotes and wear boot covers in people's houses, 90% of my work is recommendation and repeat work.


I would also add that it isn't one sided. Customers often don't know what they require, have no concept of costs or time involved. I can't visit a customers house today and have a researched written quote to them tomorrow. To do it justice I say to people not to expect anything for a week. Because of all the TV shows where houses are made over in 5 minutes, people think this I the norm so people have a skewed perception of reality.

As someone who runs an electrical business, I can agree with most of the above. Many, sorry to say, tradesmen are just quite frankly cr4p at any sort of customer service, even if they might be all right at their trade. How they manage to actually GET any work in the first place still amazes me! My firm operates a customer pledge, it's on our website, and it gets stuck to come hell or high water - even if, like today, I'm personally out still until 10.30pm seeing/doing customers just so that no-one gets let down. Consequently, our work comes from recommendation most of the time - ergo, we don't need to put up with the money grabbing outfits like My Builder et al. But, if you want us to be competitive then it means that we WILL spend time on quotes etc rather than just plucking figures out of the air, we WILL produce options and things for customers to consider and just generally add as much value to the project as we can. Many (sadly!) years ago when I was an apprentice I got taught an important concept - think thrice, measure twice and cut once - in other words quality takes time. BUT, if you invite a trade to quote and they don't turn up without any reasonable prior apology then drop them like a stone, there's simply no excuse for that level of impoliteness.

alanobrien

Sadly i think this is a growing trend. Countless times we have wanted some work or other done on the house have contacted various trades people only to have them not bother to turn up. One time we even used one of those employ a tradesmen type sites with the same result. At the very worst end of the scale i recall some years back trying to get a boiler installed. One individual that came to quote actually turned up drunk, i kid you not !! Its not all bleak though, there are some very good tradesmen out there but you will generally only find them by personal reference.

kkgree1

I think the key is personal recommendation. We've been in our house just over 2 years but have managed to find excellent local tradesmen through talking to the neighbours. Most of them don't need to advertise and some don't have branding on their vehicles as they have enough work not to need to.