A large percentage of businesses either fail or remain stagnant for a very long time. The appliance repair business world is a demanding landscape. Even in a highly patronized field like appliance repair, it takes brains and brawn to do business right, make the most profit, and grow.
Improving your business is very important if you want to make profits. A business that remains stagnant for too long will eventually fail. Being good at repairing appliances does not automatically make you the best businessman. Delivering excellence services is just one of the many things it takes to build a successful business. One has to master both the on-field and off-field aspects of running a successful appliance repair company if you want to improve your business and make more profit.
While there are many strategies and softwares that can be employed to improve your business, the simple principle is to attract customers through effective advertisement, keep them through excellent service delivery and finally keep them coming by always. It’s a continuous cycle that must be maintained if you will ever grow your business. Here are some important tips to follow in order to improve your appliance repair business. They all essentially fall under the general rule of attracting, keep, and keep them coming.
- Advertise
One of the top things all companies old and new must be able to do is attract customers. A company that fails to attract new customers will eventually fail. A continuous flow of clients is required to keep a business floating. Making your business attractive to a prospective client is thus an essential rule of business that must be followed.
The advertisement comes in various forms. it could be the more traditional approach or the new innovative ways of making your company known to the public. Either way one has to make use of the very best and most effective techniques to keep your company well in the public glare.
While it is true that the advertising landscape is changing, you can still grow your business through some traditional means as well. You can advertise your business through traditional media like TV, magazine, and newspapers if you have the means. Some of these methods might be going obsolete, but they will still get the word across to some people.
- Get online:
As an appliance repair business owner in the 21st century, we dare say that you are not advertising until your company is online. Everyone is online now, and you are at a disadvantage if your name does not show up when someone in your area picks up their phone to search for an appliance repair expert.
- Get listed:
Like the good old directory of the past, you need to get your company listed online if you want to improve your business. The first place that people look when they are in need of services these days is online. Get listed by a search engine and other online directories as well. ensure that your company is listed on top review websites like Yelp. There your prospective clients can see what other people have to say about your excellent services and will be encouraged to give you a call.
- Get a conversion ready website:
A website is becoming just as important as a physical office building these days. In Fact, an appliance repair company operating from someone’s garage but has a website is more likely to get more customers than another with a big office complex but isn’t online.
- Leverage social media:
A large percentage of the time people spend online is spent on social media. Take advantage of this and get your business on social media too to start interacting with prospective customers.
It is not enough to have a website or social media account for your business. You need relevant and attractive content to make the most of these tools. Ensure that your website contains relevant and interesting content optimized for visibility by search engines. Also, ensure that your social media accounts are interactive and your content is engaged and connected to you at all times. this will ensure that your company is the first a client thinks of any time they need to repair their damaged appliances.
- Network
Offline and online, you should make sure you are growing your contact list. Talk to more people about your company and ensure that they are talking about you too.
- Track and convert your leads
Brand popularity isn’t enough. You should try to convert a large percentage of people that you have been marketing efforts to attract. Your website, social media pages, and adverts might get clicks and views but you will still end up getting fewer people to patronize you if you do not put some efforts into tracking your leads.
Because you are not the only one in the appliance repair industry, it is possible that you lose a customer to your competitors if you do not put in some efforts to follow up on your leads. Most people call multiple companies to make inquiries when trying to determine who to hire for a job. Thus even after someone calls you to make inquiries about your services, you must endeavor to follow up on them to ensure they hire you.
Here are some helpful tips
- Use a CRM to track your leads
- Always call back or send a follow-up email
- Create a follow-up contact list of all your leads. A CRM software will help you do this effectively
- Improve your service delivery
This point cannot be emphasized enough. A customer’s evaluation of your business begins the moment they put a call through to you. Your ability to impress will determine whether they will:
- hire you
- hire you again when next they need the same service
- tell others about you.
if you fail in any of the steps leading to you getting hired, then you will most likely not get called up for the job. If you fail while delivering the service, you ruin your reputation and the probability of keeping that customer. You also get a bad review from the dissatisfied customer which will prevent them from recommending your services.
Repeatedly failing your customers will have a negative effect on the growth of your business. Hence you must ensure you deliver the best of services to your clients.
- Always treat the customer right from the very minute they call you or walk through the door for a consultation. Be ready with helpful answers for every
question. Listen to your clients, diagnose what is wrong with their appliances accurately and offer viable and affordable solutions
- Deliver excellent services. Repair your client’s appliances just as requested. You can even go the extra mile within the limits of your professional ability to ensure your customer is maximally impressed. Arrive on schedule to pick up appliances or for home repairs. Also, try to complete your task within the shortest time possible.
- Do not overcharge your customers. Neither should you compromise quality in order to appear affordable. Always make use of the best quality of repair parts that your client can afford
- When all else fails, don’t be afraid to admit it. your clients will trust you better when you simply give them your candid opinion to buy a new device rather than repair a broken one.
At the end of the day, the most important tool for improving your business is your reputation. Each of your efforts to market yourself is hinged on your reputation with your clients. Therefore, you must ensure that you deliver the best of services and keep a spotless reputation at all times.
- Reinvest in your business
The quality of your marketing, service delivery and overall growth of your appliance repair business depends on how much you invest and reinvest in your business over time. If your business will grow you need resources. This is of various kinds
- Personnel:
A large number of businesses fail to grow because they hire wrong. It is particularly true for a field service company like yours. Your technicians have to know enough about their trade. Always ensure that you hire qualified and experienced professionals. Since they will be representing your company wherever they go, they must also be able to maintain a standard work ethic that sets them apart on and off the field.
Your business should also get the best of personnel off the field as well. This depends largely on the size of your business. Your customer service officer must be friendly and helpful, your marketing department must be diligent and effective etc.
- State of the art tools and equipment:
To improve the effectiveness of your staff, you must make the best tools and equipment available to them. Your clients will feel more confident to hire your company when they know that you have the latest tools and repair parts available. It also improves the quality of your repairs and saves time that would have otherwise being wasted.
- Automate your business
This final point is related to the last point stated above. One of the best investment you can make for your appliance repair company is to set up an automated software to handle your business. While there are a lot of options available to handle different aspects of your business, your best bet is to get an all-in-one tool like FieldSurf that seamlessly integrates all the basic component of your business and automates it on a simple and intuitive interface.
FieldSurf is the smart way to do business. Automating your appliance repair business takes all the stress of operating a winning business off your hands and drastically improves your business on multiple fronts. This allows you to concentrate on what you know how to do best which fixing broken appliances. By letting FieldSurf handle all the little details of your business, you not only avoid stress and worries but you also get the job done faster and more effectively. Here are some of the unique ways that automating Your business will help to improve your appliance repair company:
Faster dispatch, better schedules: scheduling and dispatch is every business owner in the service industry’s headache. But with FieldSurf you don’t ever have to worry about these again. Your dispatch staff will find it easier to keep an error-free schedule and work others can be managed faster. In the long run, this leads to faster service delivery and increased customer satisfaction
Records management: with FieldSurf tedious aspect of business such as records and accounts is handled more seamlessly. This software is a versatile tool that eliminates tedious and time-wasting paperwork replacing it with faster and simpler business management. Your business financial records are always at your fingertips. Planning for growth is also easier with FieldSurf as you gain access to all the information you need to chart a new course for your business toward sustainable growth.
Personnel management: FieldSurf can also be a tool to better manage your staff. It is an easier and more effective means of communication allowing you to send messages in real time to your staff members. You can also access the location of every one of them and can tell whether they are busy or done with work at any point in Time. this software can also be used as a collaborative tool between your staff members allowing them to share information about the tasks they are working on.
Faster and effective payment: FieldSurf also automates payments by speeding up invoice processing and introducing innovative ways of getting paid such as on-site credit card processing.
It is evident that automating your business is perhaps the best decision you can make in a bid to improve it. There are in fact, software for lead management, social media, and website tracking and other aspects of the business as well. However, FieldSurf is a comprehensive tool that brings together all the simple aspect of the day to day running of an effective business and makes it easy to control it on right from your mobile or computer screen. What better way is there to improve your appliance repair business than taking everything off manual.
It is the perfect business tool every appliance repair business owner aiming to improve business should get in order to stay well ahead of the competition and grow by leaps and bounds.
