Lack of quality for service 2022

[Kevin88660]

Hi Guys,

First time poster, long time lurker. A brief introduction is I'm a business owner in the heavy equipment industry. We do heavy equipment (yellow iron) rentals and used sales, as well as some other odd things like RV storage, property rentals. Family owned and run business our whole existence. We take pride in customer service as well delivering quality to the customer as reputation means a lot and if you treat someone right they will come back to you, growing your pie as well as others. We have been pretty successful for the most part I believe and hopefully will continue to be so.

One thing I have noticed personally though at least in the last few months that has been getting worse and worse is the absolute lack of care for service and business in general in the current environment. A lot of businesses I patronize due to necessity or just choose to seem to have gone off the deep end as far as the quality of product they put out, the quality of training of staff, lack of proper management, wasted time, no attention to detail, the list goes on. I have seen this not only in our own industry, but also in simple service industries like food and beverage, banking, telecoms, etc. Seemingly 90% of the people I encounter while doing business seem to not give a shit about delivering quality or they are so busy otherwise that it doesn't matter, dollars still roll in, life is good for them so why care. Workers carry this mentality also since management hasnt trained quality into them so they dont know any better. Seems more and more the old saying of "If you need something done right, you have to do it yourself" applies.

I don't want to turn into the angry Karen ranting at the local deli about her sandwich not right and posting it on social media but I'm just trying to get a sense of where peoples heads are at in 2022. Am I the only one experiencing this? Is quality and a general pride in work not a thing anymore? I do it regardless but its just so frustrating to deal with when it seems like I have to do someone else's job for them to get them to do seemingly simple tasks that they were hired to do in the first place.

MJ always talks about when you see a problem, think about how you can solve it and that can be a way to make money. I realize this myself and do my best to pass that on to others under my influence but is that message a common one in society these days

Would just like to start a general discussion on it. Hopefully i didnt come off too angry about all this. Would just be cool to hear some other peoples thoughts on the subject.

Justin

Depends on the margins and nature of the business.

The key thing is giving better service without raising cost. It is very hard to do in practice.

Food and beverage, banking, telecoms service staffs the core KPI is always speed and volume. You want to maximize the amount of service request you can answer and resolve by a single staff within a fixed period of time. If someone tried to take their time to give too much time per customer they are on their road to be fired.

You could say let us hire more staff, and pass the cost to the consumers.

As much as customers enjoy better services they hate higher cost more.

At end of the day you get what you pay for.

It is easier and pretty much expected that you do a good service when you are selling lower volume and higher margin higher ticket item. But much harder to do so when you are selling mass number /high volume with lower margin in a price sensitive environment.

Value skew is only possible when there is a sufficient sizeable niche willing to pay more for that skew.

But again hard does not mean impossible. I think Macdonald is the kind of the example that the service quality is always one notch above the competitors while pricing remains competitive too.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[ALC]

I'm an old fashioned kind of person. (Maybe 'cause I'm old), but I used that approach to good effect when I set up my importing and marketing business in 1987.

Way back then, my research before setting up involved interviewing two of my brothers and their wives. They all complained about the appalling lack of service in the field in which they all worked, but which I had tentatively chosen for my new endeavour.

The first major step I took was to set up a website with a folksy style, including a friendly, signed letter occupying a large part of the home page. The letter had a headline telling viewers that we were an old fashioned, family run business.

The letter included an over the top guarantee promise that would have made viewers' eyes pop.

IT WORKED...... to a large extent because all staff were actually family members. I am pleased to say I never had to reprimand any of them for failing to give beyond the call of duty service, and they cheerfully honored the guarantee. (Maybe they didn't want to encounter Dad's wrath.)

RESULT..... Within a few years our #1 competitor, who when we started owned 90% of the industry's market, surrendered the battlefield and a short while later closed down their business.

SEQUEL..... When I began franchising the business to cope with the massive growth, the biggest difficulty I encountered was persuading new franchisees to give service far better than they were used to experiencing every day. They were hesitant, but I persuaded them to not only honor the guarantee, but to willingly exceed what was promised.

FRANCHISEES' RESULT..... They all prospered and their businesses are still thriving.

Walter

Simple yet effective added value definitely goes a long way, thanks for sharing as always !

 

[Johnny boy]

I think about this all the time. Is there a way to solve this problem on a larger scale and provide value? Maybe a customer service training company offering consulting, online classes, training for executives on how give incentives for top service, etc. Would business owners pay for that?

Right now I just use the complete lack of service everywhere as a value skew for my Construction Management business. Basically if I answer the phone, get back to people, be polite, be honest and provide a valuable service then selling becomes very easy. My biggest problem is that in my business I have so many subcontractors and suppliers that I need to deal with on a regular basis and it is awfully painful weeding through all the vendors I need to deal with because a lot of them are the poor service companies we are talking about.

The value skew is in doing the hard work and building the great company yourself.

Making a training company is full of “someone else should do it” vibes.

We hear all the time “wow, you guys are the only ones who answered the phone and showed up”.

Everyone says “hmmm, home services…what a shitty industry that needs to be improved….I know….I’ll start a tech company that __________ for home service companies” thinking it will change anything. The problem is low iq retards run these businesses and that is just who they are. They will be a retard with your app, they’ll be a retard with your training, they’ll be a retard with anything.

 

[AppMan]

This is a tough one. With our business we have struggled with this when we put employees in this position and it ends up always that my brother and I that are ownership/managers end up being the client facing people. No matter what training tactics we would use and pound it into employees you have to be courteous, dont bullshit people, give them the info they need and help them, they cant seem to do it. I think the key is the ownership thing. Its not their store, their risk, so they dont care. They get a paycheque so who cares. The problem with that mentality though is I have definitely fired people for this attitude. I would rather not have you around than try to put out fires caused by you not giving a shit. And this is the problem that I'm baffled by, why dont people want to care. Its in their best interest to do well, you move up in the business, get paid more. They just want raises and more perks essentially for showing up, which is the absolute bare minimum for even keeping your job not getting a raise.

The answer is the benefit employee getting is not worth to do the extra mile you are asking, most likely the salary has to be increased. I noticed employee attentiveness and willingness to follow instruction increase with increasing his payment and at some point if they no longer think the payment is enough or they worth more, they back again to act careless or at best not motivated.
Also I noticed no matter the agreements you have all employees expect some gradual increase in salary and if that is no offered no matter if your company as the risk of bankruptcy, your employees will start jumping from your ship or act careless and buy time until you kick them out.
Why people act as working at google or Amazon is like working in heavens ? because they are tech advanced ? nop , because of the benefits and perks and the prestige. If these big giants stop providing these benefits people will leave them with no second thoughts

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[wyattnorton]

Everyone says “hmmm, home services…what a shitty industry that needs to be improved….I know….I’ll start a tech company that __________ for home service companies” thinking it will change anything. The problem is low iq retards run these businesses and that is just who they are. They will be a retard with your app, they’ll be a retard with your training, they’ll be a retard with anything.

A bunch of lazy a$$, entitled people who think they are going to get away with sitting on their computers all day...

Don't get me wrong it is nice to do... too many "entrepreneurs" trying to do it. Go get a remote job for Capgemini

Depends on the margins and nature of the business.

The key thing is giving better service without raising cost. It is very hard to do in practice.

In landscaping it is one of the toughest aspects right now. One of the largest companies in the nation, Brickman Landscaping, (my pops grew up with Scott Brickman), got out of the business because of all the illegals.

I agree and the only thing we can do is provide the highest quality service. One of those is not doing shitty work, like rigging retaining walls so they only stand for a year or 2.

F*ck THAT - A value skew is focusing on long lasting results for clients. You make one awesome deck/wall/patio/fireplace 3-5 people will see it and want it.

And if you do one job of shitty, half-assed work --> 10-15 people will see it and not want YOU as a company.

 

[Walter Hay]

It is easier and pretty much expected that you do a good service when you are selling lower volume and higher margin higher ticket item. But much harder to do so when you are selling mass number /high volume with lower margin in a price sensitive environment.

A simple solution if selling products not services, is to only work on high margins. I never sold at less than 60% net profit.

So, I have never run a service business, although my industrial chemical business was in effect a service business because it was based on troubleshooting manufacturing industries and solving their problems with the formulas I devised specifically for the solution. When a competitor tried to beat me by offering a poor quality product at 50% of the price I was charging, my customers phoned me and asked if I would like a sample to analyse. I didn't need it because I knew what the junk product was. I didn't lose a single customer.

Walter

 

[Niptuck MD]

I didn't need it because I knew what the junk product was

When you know... you know

Also quality pays hence you retained 100%.

It seems to me that nowadays people are paying asinine prices for terrible service! I dont know why covid still remains an excuse anymore? No one wants to work nor provide a good service experience. Its like the euro business model if you want to shop here go ahead if not we dont care.... what's going on these days?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Kevin88660]

When you know... you know

Also quality pays hence you retained 100%.

It seems to me that nowadays people are paying asinine prices for terrible service! I dont know why covid still remains an excuse anymore? No one wants to work nor provide a good service experience. Its like the euro business model if you want to shop here go ahead if not we dont care.... what's going on these days?

Lack of customer differentiation. This is typical issue for big companies.

There are customers who gave a lot of revenue, some a little and many acquired with cost but yet a sale is made.

If they provided the same good service to everyone they would go broke really soon.