George W. Roth measures customer service by whether a client calls back for repeat service.
“There’s no better recommendation than a happy client who calls you back for more work,” says Roth, founder, president and majority owner of Augere Construction Co.
Roth and his partner, James L. Stewart II, pride themselves on customer satisfaction — a result of building relationships, good communication and quickly taking care of problems.
That process helped the construction company reach revenue between $10 million and $12 million in 2009.
Smart Business spoke to Roth about how to grow a business and keeping customers happy.
Q. What are the keys to growing a company?
The relationships with the owners and clients — it is key. If you don’t do your job every time, you won’t get an opportunity to perform more work for them. We pride ourselves on most of our work is from repeat clients, whether they’re grocery store chains, churches, manufacturers or office warehouse owners.
It’s key because if you lose that relationship with that client, No. 1, you won’t be doing any more work for them, and then word-of-mouth spreads.
They will be one of your references that you can use for picking up other jobs, so it’s very key to have great client relationships.
It’s key to retaining the business level that you have and finding more and helping you expand.
We go above and beyond for all of our clients and leave them happy at the end. If there’s an issue, we make sure it’s corrected and fixed to their satisfaction every time.
Q. How do you handle issues when they occur?
Everybody is going to make mistakes, and the key when you make a mistake is not to make the same mistake twice. What you want to do is learn from your mistakes and watch other contractors, your competitors and other successful contractors that are in the area.
In Canton, a good friend of mine owns Beaver Excavating. They have done work for me in the past and we have done work for them in the past, and you can learn from people like Beaver Excavating. Their client relationships have been great throughout their career and then they take care of their employees. What we try and do is build on those same features. Put your clients first and don’t make mistakes, and if you make a mistake, don’t make it twice.
You have to get to know your clients. You know how they want things done. Everybody has their little quirks so you try and work with them. Really the key is communication with your employees and your clients so everybody knows what’s going on and there are no surprises. If you have a problem, everybody knows about it, so you can get it rectified immediately.
