Every customer experience becomes a narrative. That’s important. People remember stories, not work orders. If they can retell a happy story about a service experience, that's the first step toward them becoming repeat customers and you producing recurring revenues, which are the most fundamental measure of success in service and maintenance.

Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. The same goes for every customer experience. Every electrical service contractor, from time to time, should stop to consider where their best-rated customer experiences began.

We propose five possible answers to that question.

1. A customer experience really begins when a service electrician first arrives at the customer’s location.

That’s how most service managers would imagine it. A service electrician shows up as scheduled at the right place and instantly makes a great impression by conveying confidence that they can solve the customer’s problem. 

If this is a first service call, the technician presents a business card to the contact. Here is an opportunity to tell the company’s story, in 30 seconds or less, and help customers confirm they have made the right call in selecting the organization.

The electrician’s favorable first impression will be spread among the customer’s staff. While whoever signs the work orders may be the most important, there’s always a chance that someone else’s opinion about the call will weigh heavily in a discussion for next time.

2. A customer experience really begins when a service electrician has completed the tasks on the work order.

At the outset of every service call, the electrician should arrange to meet with the customer’s designated representative immediately after completing the tasks. If any of the work was not able to be completed for any reason, that meeting is even more crucial.

In this closing discussion, the electrician must always provide an explanation. As Albert Einstein said, “Everything should be as simple as it can be, yet no simpler.” In other words, a service electrician should use plain language to explain what’s been done without leaving out details worth knowing. If you can’t break it down simply, you might not understand it very well yourself (another belief of Einstein’s). 

This stage also presents the opportunity for a service electrician to point out anything they did beyond the scope of the work order but was necessary. (Hint: there is always a chance for the electrician to say that something was included at no charge. Nothing makes a buyer happier than getting something extra for free.) 

Most of life is maintenance. That is a proverb that arches over every category of electrical systems. When the discussion at the end of a service call convinces a customer that they have made the right decision in selecting this contractor, the customer has peace of mind and the contractor receives recurring revenues.

3. The customer‘s experience really begins when they contact an EC to schedule a service call.

Today, many electrical contractors offer customers the option of requesting service by filling out a form on the website. But let’s confine this third answer to the most common way that customers still prefer to do it—by calling the contractor on the phone.

Here’s where too many contractors make the unfortunate mistake of forcing customers to suffer through a list of options on an automated answering system.

Conversely, when a live person answers, many good things can follow. For starters, after an initial greeting, there’s an opportunity to ask, “Who recommended us to you?” (That’s more specific than, “How did you learn about us?” If it turns out the answer is, “I saw one of your trucks,” it will be revealed by either question.)

But success requires more than having a live person answering calls and asking questions. Success requires asking the right questions, the right way, in language that most customers understand—not industry jargon. In that vein, it is important to train everyone and anyone who might pick up the phone to communicate effectively. 

Contractors that calculate savings on overhead expenses by using an automated answering system are overlooking several factors, including the revenue lost when prospective customers are frustrated by the system and hang up, only to go on to find another contractor. That said, when a live person answers and immediately says, “Please hold,” the same thing can happen.

The day is fast approaching when there will be nothing extraordinary about electrical service contractors depending on artificial intelligence to handle incoming service requests. Until then, their best solution will be to provide a live and fast response to each incoming opportunity.

Some sage advice: Periodically, call your own company. See how much a customer has to struggle to do business with you. You don’t need a “Freaky Friday”-esque body switch to understand your customers’ experience. 

4. Often, a customer experience begins before a customer feels the need to contact an electrical service and maintenance contractor.

When customers come to the conclusion they need to hire a service electrician, mental impressions they unconsciously formed long ago may bubble to the surface.

Even if customers are not currently in the market for electrical work, they can gain a lingering impression from professionally designed graphics on a contractor’s service vans.

In the days when the best source of contact information for commercial enterprises was the yellow pages, some companies incorporated with names beginning in “A,” and sometimes two or three “As,” to capture a space in the front of the directory. Today, that is mostly behind us. Customers that catch a glimpse of a service contractor’s van can quickly find contact information even on companies with names starting in “Z.” 

By and large, however, electrical contractors do a poor job with fleet advertising. They seem to mark their vehicles as if to prove who owns the truck, not to promote the range of their offerings.

In the meantime, nothing can create a stronger first impression than offensive driving on the road or personal crudeness. There is always a chance that the storyline of a customer experience can begin accidentally when a prospective customer resolves never to be one.

Of course, the greatest source of negative advertising about a service contractor can simply come from a friend or acquaintance who swears to never, ever call that company again.

5. Sometimes it is impossible to pinpoint where a customer experience really began.

It is impossible to have an experience without a story. Traditionally, the principal means of conveying such a story was word of mouth. Today, there are many channels to convey every kind of story, including those featuring a range of impressions of a business.

In the swampland of social media and other new forms of online communications, an electrical service and maintenance contractor has the best chance of building a strong reputation for customer experience by harking back to the advice of Hal F. Rosenbluth. Two decades ago, he gained fame for revealing the secret to his own success in his best-selling book, “The Customer Comes Second.” As its title suggests, its main theme is to “put your people first.” Treat them well. Leave it to them in turn to treat your customers well. We think that’s the best recipe we’ve seen so far for creating a superior customer experience.

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