Your techs represent your company on site, unsupervised, every day.
Do you train them how you expect them to act with your clients, how to communicate the details of the job to your client the way you want? When you train your techs technically do you go over the details and process of handling a challenging client? Do you explain the things that make a good impression and the things that do not, the theater of business? Can we agree that the interacting skills with your clients are important? I had a cleaning and restoration business for 10 years and I know these soft skills are invaluable.
If you teach your techs these skills you are a proactive owner and you are applauded. You see the value of preventing problems from happening. But do you reinforce these skills often? Do you have a system to teach these skills? We developed a system in our business where we presented a lesson for a few minutes a day, technical skills, and soft skills. But usually, the lesson was on soft skills because that was the challenge with the techs at the time. The tech was late, tracked dirt on their floor, and did not explain the bill. We explained to the techs why these problems where not acceptable, what was expected in the future, and how to prevent these problems from happening again.
We had a colleague that had a training class once a year on these skills. The team did great for a while but over time they forgot the reasons for great service. We had another colleague that went over the details of the technician’s performance once a year during the review, but there was a disconnect with the feedback soon enough. The behaviors reviewed generally returned. These systems did not seem to work well.
Technicians work very hard in the field but sometimes have short memories. Consistent reminder lessons to reinforce “why” they need be professional and what is expected. We all need reminders on best practices, sharpening our axe. Why not invest time into the technicians, they only represent your company all day, every day. This li¬ne of thinking is forgotten as we are running our service business. We don’t always have time to train our techs, with patience, consistently. Maybe we should sub out this task of training, like payroll, card processing, or equipment repair because we are not experts in this area.
We can help train your techs to become super techs applying these ideas so you can focus on your business and do what you do best. Your techs need quality, consistent, pertinent training to make your service company be successful.
For example, are you getting a lot of callbacks lately. The problem is usually communicating the expectations properly or the tech not thinking. The soft skill training has a side benefit of getting the tech to care more about their job because the company is investing in them
Do your techs know how to handle questions from your client that are out of their comfort zone?
