Make you jobs smoother by involving the lawn care client.
To some lawn care business owners, the client has two jobs. One is to accept the bid and the other is to approve the finished project and make payment. Between those two points they may not want to hear anything from the client at all. But as we have seen on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, the more you involve the client, the smoother you can make the job go. This comes in especially handy when you run into a problem onsite and you need the customer to hold it together and not fly off the handle.
Here is a great example of this, a member wrote “I did a drain job this week by myself as we are short staff, it was one of the worst yet as the clay content was, well like cement.
I had the rock dumped in the clients driveway while I transported it with the tractor, the client didn’t have access to their front stairs for a while but this customer wanted to get some coffee. I offer to give her a ride up to the back of the house on my tractor, as it was raining and the front bank is very steep, she loved it.
This is one of those jobs that could have gone south fast, due to it being so wet and the heavy clay. It made a major mess of their side and back yard, I involved them as much as possible and everything worked out and they understood. The staff finished sodding yesterday and they wrote saying they are very happy, have to drop down today for payment and see the job.”
That was a very creative and fun way to get the customer involved on the job site and to show that you care about your interaction with them. How do you feel this interaction effected their attitude towards you and the job?
“I am including a picture her husband took. He was sitting on the front porch. He is a retired military veteran with really bad knees. I was coming down front and she was trying to climb up the lawn and he was laughing, I yelled grab a camera and I will give her a ride. I told her to get on when I was down on the pavement and she jumped at the chance, which surprised me.
Lawn Tractor Ride
How did this change the client’s attitude? This was morning two. The back yard was a mess and she has quite a temper and use of the English language. It seemed after this she was really cool and even came out to help. I found things that I could get her to do and praised her work, in the end everyone was happy.
I went by today for payment and they offered me to stay for lunch which I did, everyone is pleased with the results.”
