So I type “home service repair” into Google and find the highest-rated service company. After I call them and leave a message, I get a call back to schedule my appointment. At that moment, I realized that most service providers unknowingly neglect the most important thing about “home service” – the experience.

So, to all service providers, OEMs, or any company that offers in-home service, please listen to this plea…

My blood doesn’t boil because my pipes are leaking, my blood boils because of the moments between where I’m left in the dark with little to no communication from the service companies. These moments are the “experiences” that every home service company neglects – the hopeless minutes homeowners feel when waiting for the technician to arrive.

Modern companies have noticed that we live in a customer-centric world and customers now expect to be kept in the loop about everything! They want to know:

• Who is arriving?
• When will they be arriving?
• What do they look like?
• Can I leave feedback?
• Can I communicate with them ahead of time?
• Can I easily reschedule or cancel the appointment?
• Can I do everything on my phone?

With consumer expectations rising, it’s time to demand more of your brand and deliver a modern customer experience.

In this post, we break down how to turn those hopeless moments into tech-driven memorable experiences.

Step 1: The moment a customer needs help

Ask yourself this, how frustrating is it when companies make it difficult to schedule an appointment? You search for the “book now” button only to realize that they don’t have one. So you dial the dispatcher, wait for someone to call back, and schedule a time that most likely isn’t built around your schedule but theirs. Nothing about this sounds like an optimal customer experience does it?

The importance of customer experience in the age of instant gratification is now higher than ever.

How to fix step 1:

Simple. Build in a process that allows homeowners to schedule appointments with your company at a time and date that works best for them. Here’s what you do – add a “Book Now” button that takes homeowners to a form where they can share details about their need, fill out their contact information, select the best days and times that work well for them, and easily send their service request with a click of a button.

Then, and this is the most important part, the company sends the homeowner a text message confirming that they received the service request. This immediate communication lets the homeowner know that you have their best intentions in mind and you’re on it. It adds a little bode of confidence in their mind that your brand has everything under control.

Step 2: The moment the customer starts to feel left in the dark

How annoying is it when you text someone a question and they don’t get back for a few days? You start thinking – Are they mad at me? Was I too pushy? Why aren’t they responding? The silence messes with your rationality and just like any other human being you craft a narrative that explains/justifies their silence – often based on zero evidence.

The same goes for service companies. When I schedule an appointment and don’t hear anything from the company for a while, I begin thinking:

• “Did they forget about my appointment and do I need to call to confirm?”
• “Did I actually submit my request?”
• “Is this the right company to go with?”

So what do customers typically do? They call to confirm that the company got their request.

This weekend, I witnessed this exact thing. Before a scheduled carpet cleaning, the homeowner called to confirm that the appointment is still on. I thought to myself, why is it that people assume service companies will inevitably forget about them? It’s not the same in other industries. I don’t call my airline to make sure my ticket is still valid before my flight, so why should I call a home service company to confirm my appointment after it’s already been scheduled? It’s because we’re nurtured to expect a late technician or worse, a no-show.

This stems from the infrequent communication service providers have with their customers, causing homeowners’ latitude of patience to become exceptionally thin.

How to fix step 2:

It’s easy. Implement a tool like Dispatch and send automatic status updates to customers through SMS and/or email. Companies can pop off appointment confirmations, status updates, appointment reminders, on-my-way appointment notifications, feedback surveys, and much more. All of this helps your customers feel informed, aware, and most of all valued.

Step 3: The moment a customer can’t leave feedback

Before I purchase anything (product or service), I read online reviews. I do it before I buy online, and I do it while I buy in-store. I want to know what others are saying. I want to know what type of experience they had. I want to know if 3-weeks later the person still found value in it. I’m very willing to go to yelp or Google and leave a positive review if I had a good experience. Here’s a review I left after getting my tires changed.

I also left it on Yelp…

I wanted to blast it everywhere because I had a great experience and I want to push as many businesses as possible to the companies I enjoy. Most modern customers want their opinion voiced when someone does a good or poor job. It’s just the world we live in! The stigma here is that people only use reviews for negative things…this simply isn’t true. Case in point, look at all the reviews Car Zone has.

How to fix step 3:

Most companies don’t like asking for reviews – which is okay. Dispatch removes that awkward moment with a survey link that is authentically sent the moment a job is complete. So now you can collect every possible review and begin to solidify yourself as an excellent company to do business with.

As a customer, if I’m presented with a quick survey on my phone, I’m much more likely to fill it out – versus getting a link and having to type it in online.

Because of Dispatch’s feedback flow, they’ve helped companies increase their survey feedback response rate by 220%.

So if you’re a company and you’re looking to improve your last-mile customer experience then check us out. Everything presented here is why we exist as an organization. We strive to help home service companies deliver memorable customer experiences.

To learn more, request a demo.

The post How to make your customers feel extremely informed and incredibly valued appeared first on Dispatch Technologies.

Our customer experience team made some rather important improvements. Your customers are the bread and butter behind your business. We recognize how important customer satisfaction is but perhaps equally important…their service experience. Let’s run through some of the items!

Customer Portal: Responsive Design

Whether your customers are on a mobile device or laptop web browser, it’s important the branding is consistent. Customers will see Technician locations in flexible views while also being able to leave feedback, regardless of the device they’re using.

Customer Portal: NPS & 5-star Surveys

Companies may choose to request feedback from customers. In the past, we offered a 5-star survey style which has proven to be successful across thousands of companies. Advancing the options, we’re happy to introduce a standard NPS (10-point) survey. Depending on setup rules, either option may be displayed to a customer and result in the preferred experience.

You can read more about the customer portal showcasing views along the customer’s journey. Over time we’ll continue to make incremental updates to enhance the product suite.

Company Settings

While mostly a UX improvement, the navigation went through migration to allow for adding additional (and exciting to come) additions to the available options. You’ll notice a horizontal set of options where each controls a set of functionality.

Working Hours/Notes

Keeping track of individual availability hours and helpful notes can be tricky. But, we’ve made it easier! View any of team users, open their profile and select the ‘Working Hours’ section. Here you can choose their standard time availability and add helpful, brief notes. In the near future you’ll see exactly how this information becomes increasingly helpful – stay tuned.

• Customer portal will now display Markdown formatted content whereas before, it caused errors.
• Adding a Pause Message was not showing for customers but we fixed that bug.
• Trying to view a PDF attachment in the mobile app but couldn’t? We know…and now you can!
• Labels. We all love them. You can finally add/remove labels when using large mobile devices.

The post Starting Off 2019 – A Review of Recent Product Updates appeared first on Dispatch Technologies.

The time has come for us to share some gems of October. While it’s the spookiest month of the year, we also released some great underlying improvements.

Modify Payee Information

Sometimes it’s necessary to specify unique payment information for an individual Invoice. Perhaps you’re using a unique billing address with a specific customer, wouldn’t it be useful to provide that address directly on the Invoice. Well, now you can.

By default, we’ll apply your company details but if you choose to modify the address, email, or phone number on an Invoice/Estimate, be our guest.

QuickBooks Online Re-authentication

Keeping your account in good graces with integrated parties requires occasional refreshing. In this case, we’ve introduced a friendly alert when there is an ‘authentication’ problem between Dispatch and QuickBooks Online. All you need to do is re-authenticate, follow the simple prompts, and you’ll be in good shape.

Country Select Field

Using an address inside our UX can sometimes trip you up. For instance, if you accidentally mistype “United States” (don’t worry, you’re not the only one) it can throw off the entire process of successfully creating the new job you’ve entered. Instead, we’ve taken out all of the typo possibilities by providing you a pick list.

• Creating Invoices where the selected Customer has no “Billing Address” froze the screen; bug squashed.
• Technicians without First or Last Names could not create any Estimates/Invoices; problem resolved.
• Organizations without a recorded Address were locked out of access Billing pages; issue fixed.

The post October ’18 Release Notes appeared first on Dispatch Technologies.

But you’re content. And why shouldn’t you be?

When you reflect on the meal–from the endless assortment of savory tapas, the sugary sangria, the subtle flan, and the plaza in the foreground scattered with families young and old, each happily chatting away without a care in the world–you realize that it’s the experience that matters most to you.

Yes, back in Boston you may get more “attention” from the waitstaff, but they’re working for tips, and you’d be overpaying for food that isn’t half as good.

Restaurants and service industries alike make the same mistake–they think customer service is the same thing as customer experience.

And those two concepts couldn’t be more different.

Customer Service (CS) vs. Customer Experience (CX)

It’s easiest to think of this in two this way:

Customer service is a one-way conversation that typically happens post-purchase. And 99 times out of 100, the customer is unhappy and contacts your customer service team to let them have one final, proverbial clapback before moving onto another company.

Customer experience, on the other hand, is rooted in two-way dialogue. It is the overall perception a customer has after weighing all of their previous interactions with your company.

Or simply put: what your customers say about you when you’re not in the room.

Don’t grow your company only around Customer Service (CS)

On the surface, the concept of customer service makes complete sense: customer A is unhappy with your product, they come to you to complain, so you offer as much support as possible to hopefully prevent them from leaving your business forever.

The problem is that most times you’ve probably already lost this customer regardless of the time you put into reconciling their issue. This happens a lot with field service companies who employ customer service teams to decipher complaints about previous home repair jobs. Often these teams have to piece together information after the fact when the technician has already left the job, and your client is determinedly unhappy with their experience.

However, some customer service tactics help contribute to a positive overall customer experience. These happen when companies stop waiting and start acting–they reach out to their clients mid-purchase, or mid-service, and become part of the customer journey, not just a detour after the fact.

This type of instant customer service is effective because it hedges potential problems that can develop later on in the customer journey. Everybody feels part of the same team, and nothing is left in doubt.

Embracing a Customer Experience (CX) philosophy

Ultimately, all of the little interactions you have with your customers will factor into a final CX “score” that can make or break your company.

However, please know this, a large factor in your company’s rating depends upon your ability to provide two-way communication from the very first interaction with your business until the last.

At Dispatch, we actually take this a step further. With our web-hosted mobile messaging service, we connect homeowner, field technician, and service company into one conversation the minute a request for help is made until after a service job is complete.

By inviting your customers into the service process rather than excluding them, you help eliminate their anxieties and connect with them on a psychological and emotional level that couldn’t be done otherwise.

Leverage the home environment to create powerful customer experiences

The home repair industry is uniquely positioned to deliver powerful customer experiences because they operate exclusively in an environment that is very personal.

Nothing is more intimate than being invited into another person’s private home.

The household is where people let their guard down, where they recoil into their basic human roles. The second you step foot into their living room, your customers stop being the banker, doctor, or teacher, and become a father, mother, and homeowner.

So, as a home service company, you must recognize the sanctity of your workspace, and connect with your customers at a human level too, and not treat them as just one-dimensional consumers.

Every tiny detail that goes into assuring a customer is informed and comfortable before, during, and after their service job can pay big dividends in the long run. First time customers become repeat customers, and repeat customers spread the word about your brand, and get you quality leads to expand your business.

If you are interested in learning more how Dispatch can help you create meaningful customer experiences, then contact us below. Let’s start a conversation.

The post Get it right – Customer Experience over Customer Service appeared first on Dispatch Technologies.