Callbacks Are Killer: How to Stop Them in Your Company
What’s the most destructive thing to your business? I know… there could be plenty of things to choose from. Okay, times up. You should have said callbacks.
Callbacks are absolute company killers and for two very important reasons: It takes your technician away from a revenue-generating opportunity, and it angers a customer. Of course, the last reason is the worst. I can tell you it takes a great deal of effort and time to win a customer back who you’ve angered due to a call back that was your tech’s fault.
The best way to eliminate callbacks is through training. You should be training in your company at least weekly. (The best, most successful companies usually train daily.) Your training regimen should include plenty of communication training, and of course, it needs to include technical training.
In the case of callbacks, often the reason is two-fold: Your tech didn’t do the job properly, or your tech forgot to evaluate the entire system and another problem quickly re-surfaced. Both problems are solved by, yes, training.
Why not start a ‘callback cookie jar?’ Every time you get a callback on a job (and hopefully those are very few) put that reason for the callback on a sheet of paper and put it in a cookie jar.
At your next meeting, ask someone to pick one of those slips of paper out of the jar, read it out loud, and ask each employee at the meeting how he or she would resolve the problem. Write the answers down on a dry erase board and then vote on the best answer. Record the callback and top answer in a log and eventually make your own ‘callback resolution guide.’
Important note: Each person should also be asked how to best take care of the angry customer, too! You want your people to start thinking like you. You want them to see how their shortcomings impact homeowners and the business. In doing so, your techs will be more mindful when in the field.
Callbacks are killers. The only way to stop them is training, training, training. I think you’ll find an investment in training will be much LESS expensive than those costly callbacks.
