SUMMARY
In this episode, Louis Massaro shares how to prevent customer complaints in your moving company.
- “Many of the complaints and problems that happen are because sales is telling the customer one thing and the service is different. What’s said in your marketing, whatever’s on your website, whatever promises you’re making, whatever your salesperson says, whatever happens with the dispatcher and whatever the movers do. If that’s consistent from top to bottom, 95% of your problems will go away.”
- “Maybe you do some incredible stuff on the moves. Maybe you’re laying floor runners down. Maybe you’re putting the door jambs up. Maybe you’re protecting the stairways. Is that in your marketing material? Is that in your sales script? I don’t believe in under-sell and over-deliver, I believe in over-sell and over-deliver.”
- “Walk yourself through your customer’s journey. What happens when they book their move? Are they informed about the next steps? What happens next? Are your movers making a good impression? And then pick some customers to call personally to see how their experience was start to finish. You might be doing surveys, you might have your CRM sending out information. Call some customers once in a while and hear from them. Ask them some more questions. What did you like? What did you not like?”
- “You’ve got to get your employees to buy-in. They should know your number one goal is raving fans. That’s it. You don’t want satisfied customers. You want fans. You want raving fans. They’re quick to go give you the five star review. Maybe even in two places. They hear about anyone that’s moving, they’re like, you’ve got to use my guys. Those are the customers you want to create.”
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TRANSCRIPTION
Louis Massaro: Preventing customer complaints. We want to be proactive with this because there’s a lot of little stuff that happens that doesn’t need to happen. Number one is sales and service consistency. Many of the complaints and problems that happen are because sales is telling the customer one thing and the service is different. 95% of your complaints will go away if what’s said in your marketing, whatever’s on your website, whatever promises you’re making, whatever your salesperson says, whatever happens with the dispatcher and whatever the movers do. If that’s consistent from top to bottom, 95% of your problems will go away.
So review all your marketing. Take a look at everything. What are you saying? What are you promising? What are you telling people that you’re going to offer them? Because if you’re saying it in your marketing, it needs to get delivered. Listen to your sales team quoting customers, whether it’s live or whether it’s recordings. Review your sales scripts. We’ll talk about sales scripts on Sunday, but sales scripts will help keep you out of trouble with complaints. Because if the people that you have on the phones are saying the same thing consistently, over and over and over, you can control what’s being said, and they’re not saying random stuff. They’re not promising random stuff.
Listen to your dispatcher confirm moves. Remember, that’s a great opportunity to take anything that happened in sales and smooth it over. And spot check moves. So basically what you want to do is you want to take a look at your marketing, take a look at what’s being done in sales, take a look at what’s being done in operations. Is it consistent? From sales to dispatch will help with complaints, but if you go from dispatch back up to sales, that’ll help with sales. Let me explain what I mean.
So maybe you do some incredible stuff on the moves. Maybe you’re laying floor runners down. Maybe you’re putting the door jams up. Maybe you’re protecting the stairways. Is that in your marketing material? Is that in your sales script? I don’t believe in undersell and over deliver, I believe in oversell and over deliver. Who was skeptical about coming here? That thought this is probably bullshit, let me go check it out. Be honest. I won’t get offended. I’m selling hard and I’m delivering hard. Period! You guys got to do the same. Don’t downplay the sales piece and then say, we’ll just surprise them on the other end, because that’s less customers.
Customer journey. Walk yourself through their journey. What happens when they book their move? Are they informed about the next steps? What happens next? Are your movers making a good impression? And then pick some customers to call personally to see how their experience was start to finish. You might be doing surveys, you might have your CRM sending out information. Call some customers once in a while and hear from them. Ask them some more questions. What did you like? What did you not like?
When these events are over, I’m always talking to my private clients that are in the room, and I’m like, what was good about it? What was bad about it? I do your whole customer journey. I do that whole walk-through, everything from registration to when you signed up to the emails. And if it’s not perfect, then we’re trying to make it better every time. So you’ve got to walk through the customer’s journey and see what they’re experiencing.
Internal communication. Most information is given to the moving consultant, you know that. Customer does not care about your departments. You ever have an issue with a company, and they’re like, oh no, well, that’s operations, you need to talk to them. Or that was sales, you need to talk to them. Don’t let that be your company. When the customer sees your company, all they see is the logo. All they see is the logo. All they see is your company. They’re dealing with one entity. They don’t want to hear that, oh well, I know you told the salesperson but we didn’t know about that on the operations end. They don’t care about your departments. It’s all one.
Make sure you got detailed notes in your software. Of course, I think you guys should definitely check out SmartMoving. But any software you’re using, use it and put the notes in there. I don’t care if it’s the most old school system, there’s a little note field in everything that’s out there. Put the notes in it so that everyone knows what’s going on and what the customer gave to the salesperson.
And then set your dispatcher up for success. Give them the tools they need. We talked about, who walked away with some good stuff for dispatch earlier? Some good ideas? Okay. All right, good. Set them up for success. They’re the quarterback of the day-to-day operation. And send movers out with a move detail sheet. So move detail sheets, basically all the notes, all the specifics on what’s going on with that job. If you don’t have a CRM, if you are operating off of paper, stick a Post-it note on the contract with the unique something. If that’s your move detail sheet, then that’s your move detail sheet. But you’ve got to send them out with information so that they know what is unique about this specific job.
And then you got to get employee buy-in. You’ve got to get your employees to buy in. They should know your number one goal is raving fans. That’s it. You don’t want satisfied customers. You want fans. You want raving fans. They’re quick to go give you the five star review. Maybe even in two places. They hear about anyone that’s moving, they’re like, you’ve got to use my guys. Those are the customers you want to create.
Each department should know what the other departments do and the importance of them. So we talked earlier, keep sales over here and la-la positivity book moves land. And let this batch be over here, dealing with the stuff. But maybe you got to take somebody from there and let them sit in dispatch for the day. Take dispatch, let them sit in sales for the day. Part of the employee buy-in is getting them to understand that every position is crucial to make the business run.
There’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of people that it takes to orchestrate a successful moving business. Make sure that they all respect the other positions, which, if they don’t experience it even for a minute, typically they don’t. Typically, sales thinks dispatch has the easy job. Dispatch thinks sales has the easy job. The movers think everybody else has the easiest job in the world. Teamwork, basic teamwork. And the buy-in starts with you.
If your attitude towards the customers is screw them, that’s how your employees are going to act. But if you’re taking a proactive approach to preventing complaints and letting them know that it’s not acceptable, even if before it was and now you want to make a shift, that buy-in starts with you. They follow you. It took me, I don’t know, seven, eight years of being in business to realize that it wasn’t what I was telling them to do, it was what they were seeing me do, and how they were seeing me act that they followed. So set that example.
Mover support. Train them how to be a mover. Make sure they know what they’re doing. Train them how to interact with your customers. This is part of the perfect move checklist. How to interact with your customers. A lot of people get the first part but they forget about the second part. Make sure they have all the equipment they need, and be available when they need help. They have some issues, be available. If they’re calling in for support to the office during a job and they’re getting brushed off, that’s not good. That’s going to show you don’t care, they’re not going to care.
Accept responsibility. Accept your role as a business owner. There’s a lot you’ve got to put on your shoulders and realize that you are responsible for. You’re responsible for your employees and what they do. You’re responsible for your customers and the service they receive. You’re responsible for your family and taking care of them financially. You’ve got a lot of responsibility. With that comes the rewards, and if you’re not seeing the rewards by the end of the week I’m going to show you how to find the rewards. But you’ve got to just say, you know what, it’s my responsibility to prevent these complaints. I know better than the customer.
We think that the customer knows. They should know that. The customer might move every seven or eight years. You’re moving seven or eight people a day or more. Take on that role and say, you know what? I am the leader here in this situation. Let me guide the customer on the right thing to do. You know better than the customer. I don’t mean that in a condescending way. I mean that like, if the customer is… You say, give me your inventory, and they just rattle off 10 things. You can’t just say, oh, okay. Cool. Thanks. You know there’s more than that. Take the lead, you know better. Let them start digging for more information.
And tell the customer everything they need to know. Again, this goes back to their journey. What do they need to know from the time they booked the move to help make it a successful move for them and for you?
Anticipate all potential problems. Anticipate all potential problems.