According to the Consumer Federation of America, the agency’s top 3 winners for most complaints are: 1. Auto sales and repair. 2. Landlord tenant disputes. and 3. Home improvement repairs and contractors.
This is not good news for our industry. It represents an overall mistrust of the process.
Customers mistrust contractors because they don’t stick to timelines and are slow to respond to disputes.
We all know that when a customer isn’t happy, payments are hard to collect and positive reviews are hard to get. It affects the profitability of the current project, and may slow down overall growth of your company. A social science experiment on consumer behavior found that customers are more likely to spread bad news than good. That means we have to work harder to make sure our customers are satisfied.
Turn a clumsy, mistrusted process into a growth asset for your company.
We get it. Jobs get backed up, supplies are delayed, cash flow can be a big logjam. All this causes the customer to lose confidence in the contractor. And when a customer is paying cash they need a lot of reassurance about deadlines being met and getting the level of quality they expect. But at the top of their list is “not losing their money.”
The best strategy is to be proactive. Put their money in a safe, insured place so there is no risk of them losing it. A federally insured escrow is perfect. Second, set clear milestones where you don’t get paid until the milestones are met. And lastly, make disputes easy to resolve. The customer knows that a small percentage of the funds he set aside in the escrow will not be released until he signs off on the dispute. The process is simple: customer takes a photo, submits it, and contractor schedules the fix. No haggling. Just a happy customer.
PayKeeper elevates customer trust in the whole construction process. And when you establish that trust early on, deals close sooner, money is collected in one lump sum, your people stay on schedule, suppliers work faster for you because you pay on time, and your business grows.
Find out how PayKeeper is dramatically improving the way contractors work.
Schedule a 15 minute demo today.
