This is a HUGE pain point for me (aka a potential opportunity). Whether it's lawn mowers, maid services, pool companies or landscapers, the level of service and communication is HORRIBLE around here. Some of these idiots will spend money to run an ad, then not return customer calls. Do they even WANT to be in business?!
It doesn't take much to stand out from the masses of jackasses in these categories, and I've thought long and hard about how to capitalize on this. I could build a company that competes directly, but I'm not sure how to make this a fast lane biz (even though it would be hugely gratifying to crush these idiots). I'm in marketing, so I've also thought about creating a lead gen service or a directory for them, but Home Advisor and Angie's list seem to have that buttoned up. Another thing that makes me hesitate is having any of these companies as customers, given the difficulty of working with them as a customer. Plus, many don't have any money to spend. Still, I can't stop thinking about it...
It took me awhile to realize this too but the reason the lawn guy runs the ad is to get more customers. He quickly gets several calls and those calls become more customers and now he has a full schedule. He tries to hire people but here is what happens.... people continue to call and he is so busy he just says FK it. At the same time he is trying to hire someone to help but that person keeps quitting or is slow or just sucks but even if that person is slow or sucks he needs to keep him. About this time he realizes that trying to have workers sucks. So he just keeps enough customers for himself and if he finds a helper down the road fine and if not, fine. On the bright side for him, he now realizes that instead of looking for cheap lawns and charging $30 per lawn he can now charge $60. See, he shows up and does good work AND he only needs a finite number of customers. So 1 by 1 he can replace those $30 lawns with $60 lawns and he just doubled his profit. And of course, that makes him happy for awhile and then he starts trying to hire a helper again or quits all together and goes back to work for $15 an hour and threatens to quit every day and go back to mowing. The moral of the story: If you are one of the first 20 people that call, he might answer the phone. Customers are a dime a dozen when you first start at low prices.
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