Ask questions of customers. Just straight talk — if you treat people right and talk to them straight, they’ll tell you the truth, they’ll tell you exactly how (they) feel. People are really open to telling you about your customer service — good, bad and indifferent. You say, ‘Hey, how did my people do when they were out; did they do exactly what they said they were going to do?’ If they did, they’ll rave about you, and if they didn’t, they’ll rave about you.
Fix their problems. If it’s a job-related [problem] — something that we did or a work-related product or item — we go out to the job on the spot and fix it. No matter what. If it’s maybe just a misunderstanding about something, I’ll send people to dinner — a husband and wife if we’ve inconvenienced somebody. If we inconvenienced them, you have to take care of them because your reputation is second to nothing. Even with that, you’re not going to please everybody all the time, but we do strive to please everybody all the time.
Give them access. We have a general manager for each location, and their home number and cell number goes on the top of every contract so that they can go straight to the top. They don’t have to talk to the receptionist and they don’t have to talk to anybody else, and if the decision can’t be made on the branch level, then all my general managers have access to me 24-7, and they call me and I make the decision. I probably talk to each of my managers for something like that maybe once a week.
Get employees to buy-in. Stay in touch with them all the time. It doesn’t matter who has what title. The guy at the top has to be talking to everybody all the time. That’s pretty much a full-time job. My full-time job is calling my branches and talking to my production managers, talking to my scheduling managers, talking to my marketing managers. Talk. Communicate. Just because you’re a CEO, don’t make everybody afraid of you just because you have that title. You have to be able to roll your sleeves up and talk to people, and when they do, don’t overreact. Listen to what they have to say, keep your mouth shut and fix whatever problems they have. If you talk to someone at the branch level, sometimes they’re afraid to talk to you because they may have pressure from their boss. You have to make it always an open-door situation where nobody gets in trouble for talking to you about an issue with a customer. You’ve got to be able to talk and openly communicate.
