Our first thought was to call a friend of ours who is a contractor, but he wouldn't be able to get to us because of his busy schedule. That pretty much exhausted what this CPA and his web designer wife knew about the subject. So, I did what any self-respecting computer geek would do... I consulted Facebook with a blind "Does anyone know a good contractor who won't rip us off?" type of question. Who can you trust, if not your 9,000 Facebook friends?
Sure enough, one of my friends sent me an inbox message with the number of a guy that she said was "awesome" and had even given her husband some tips to save money. Out of all the recommendations we received (ok, that was the only one) we decided to give the guy a call.
When this contractor came to give me an estimate, he was really friendly, and he actually came at the time he said he would. Things were looking good so far. We were walking around the house to look at what needed to be done, and the gate to my backyard was sticking. After four years of dealing with it, I showed him that if you leaned here, pulled there, and held your mouth like this you could get it open. His reaction, "I'd hate for you and that little girl to get stuck on one side or the other of this gate. I'll be right back." He went to his truck, got his drill, and had it fixed in about 3 minutes. He also charged me NOTHING to do this. Wait.... isn't he just here for an estimate? At that point, he could have spoken Portuguese and I would have been sold.
He sent us the estimate, we hired him, and he came and did his work. Along the way I kept seeing little extra things he had done, like fixing a deck table where the leg had come off. When some of the white paint on our deck railings came off during power washing, he told me that if I got the paint he would take care of it. I thought he meant that he would touch it up, but he ended up painting the entire deck. When we got the invoice, I was expecting it to be more than his estimate because of all the extra things he had done. Instead it was exactly what he had quoted us, no more.
I thought customer service like that was a thing of the past, but this man gave me a renewed hope for humankind and showed me that you don't always have to get "McService" everywhere you go. And why should we settle for that? If people want a certain kind of service, they should give it themselves.
There are countless stories of web designers keeping their clients waiting ridiculous amounts of time for work to be done and charging an arm and a leg to do it. Well, I have a message for you: STOP IT! You're making the rest of us look bad. Then again, maybe you should keep it up so that you can drive business to designers who will do better by their customers.
Each client should feel special, as if he or she is the only client that the designer has. Additionally, web professionals should listen more than they talk, be honest about how long something will take, and do what they say they will do when they say they will do it. Do things sometimes come up? Definitely. Just be honest with the client instead of putting him off. What does this do for you? Well, clients are going to be a lot more excited to advertise for you with their colleagues and friends if you treat them right.
We teach children to treat others the way they want to be treated, but too many adults miss the mark in this area. I think it's time for website designers to lead the way in changing customer service for the better. By the way, if you live in the Central Virginia area and need a contractor, I have a great prospect to send your way!
In the meantime, keep swimming along!
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