The Client Perspective

Ian R  
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk everyone. Today we have on with us, Kristine Gerber. How are you, Kristine?

Kristine Gerber  
I'm doing good. Thanks, Ian.

Ian R  
So we have Kristine on today for a very specific reason, is going to give us our customer perspective or client perspective. And the reason we asked Kristine to be on for this podcast, and I'm gonna let you introduce yourself here in a second, Kristine, I just want to set you up for why you're the best person for this particular podcast. Number one, you're not a home inspector, right?

Kristine Gerber  
I am not, never really even knew much about home inspections. 

Ian R  
Yeah exactly. So that makes you perfect for this. Number two, you call and talk to and email, more home inspection businesses and home inspectors than probably anybody else in the universe, even more than me, because you're on our client success team. So when you know, people sign up for our app, after a couple of weeks, you kind of reach out to hey, do you need anything? Can we help you with something, you want some training or, and just make sure that their things are going well for them. So you would be our typical consumer, hypothetically, calling at a hypothetically out of nowhere, so to speak, and saying, hey, my name is Kristine. So you get first impressions of home inspection businesses, which has led to a lot of conversation about that. We've talked about it many times, like, you know, what do I do when there's a garbled message, and I can't hear them or, Ian, I got this weird, like, bounce back from their email. And it opened up the discussion for, we can listen to all of these podcasts, we can listen to any podcasts and try to institute all this stuff with our business. But if the actual rubber meeting the road, customer calling us, client calling us, what is their impression? And would they hire you? So tell us a little bit, now that I've kind of set you up, just tell us a little bit about what you do here at Inspector Toolbelt.

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, I think you explained it well. So client success, I like to say I give support to our clients that are wanting to be successful with the software. So that includes phone calls, answering emails, doing online chats, and zoom training sessions. Everyone knows about David, and he's a favorite. But I also do zoom training sessions. So sorry, not sorry, if you get me. But yeah, and I do blogs related to the home inspection business. So that's a little sum up. Yeah.

Ian R  
And you do a fantastic job at it. And, you know, I think this would be a great session to bash David..

Kristine Gerber  
That'd be great.

Ian R  
Because he cannot control the narrative here. Yeah. So let's get into it. Because this is something that's close to my heart. I remember many, many times this happens. But I remember one particular inspector, he told me, I'm on the Googles, which automatically when he said it like that, I'm like, okay, you're not on the Googles. And he's like, I have a website, I'm doing everything right, is what he was telling me. But I'm, I'm not getting work. What am I doing wrong? And I think this is the perfect opportunity to talk about what people actually get when they call us. So maybe we could start off, you actually sent me a list of things that you've been keeping track of like, Ian, is this normal in the home inspection industry? Let's start off with maybe voicemails and phone calls. When you're calling a home inspection company. What are some of the things that you find happens?

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, I think the number one, well something that stands out is the voicemail itself. Sometimes the box is full, where you can't leave a message. And so right there, if a new client is calling, they're either going to have to use their time, waste their time calling over and over trying to get someone but more likely scenario is probably they're just not going to call back. If they can't leave a message the first time. Yeah, and then also with the voicemails, I've heard numerous ones where you can tell that the voicemail was made while on the road, like in the car, the car is on, driving, you hear staticky background, so it's not super clear and that just, yeah, it doesn't come across as super professional. 

Ian R  
Yeah, I think it's good to start with the voicemails because that's a, that's a pet peeve of mine too, our voicemails are going to be like, hey, you've reached such and such inspection company. We're happy to help you. We're assisting another client at the moment, please leave a message. First of all, our phone calls shouldn't so consistently go to voicemail. Even if we're new, consider a VA, consider a call service because you lose about 40 some odd percent of calls that go to voicemail, because it's the next inspector they call, answers right away. They've won that client, but the whole voicemail thing. I can't tell you how many times I've had the same experience as you. This voice, this voice mailbox is full. That's gone, like and I've actually told guys, I'm like, hey, I've called you twice and the voicemail is full and they're like, oh, okay, oh, I'll do something. I had to do something about that and doesn't sound like they're going to do anything about it and half the time I know they don't Because I call my back, back again a week later, it's like the voice mailbox is full. What phone service are you using that your voicemail gets full so often? I mean.

Kristine Gerber  
2024.

Ian R  
Yes, I get more phone calls than the average human being and I don't know if I've ever reached the limit of my voicemail box even, even still whatever. Check it daily, clear it daily, what are we saving in there? But I do like your one about the about the unprofessional voicemails. My favorite is, this is Joe, leave a message. At my den..my dentist does that. Like I call, and they're like, hello, this is Karen. Okay, leave a message. I'm like, was that my dentist? Like, who am I calling? 

Kristine Gerber  
Well, at the end, then recently, I remember one of the voicemails, it was somebody, left his message, and then didn't click, click like to finish the voicemail. And then there's this long pause. And you could also tell it was like the car, in the car. So there's background noise for like, 15 seconds after? And then yeah, and then it ended. So that was funny, too.

Ian R  
So think about that. Your automatic response is, okay, well, that's it. I know, I'm not gonna leave a message for that. I'm going to wait until I get a professional person on the other end of the phone to answer. So that's a good example of real talk. It's like, we spend all this time getting people to call us, paying for Google ads. And that's my favorite is, like these guys are paying for Google ads a lot of the times, and they're paying for, you know, anywhere from 10 to $70 for a click. And it's like, that missed phone call and unprofessional message, or full mail, voicemail box, that just cost you actual real dollars. Just having somebody hit a voicemail, or it's almost 50/50 shot, we're going to lose them, let alone an unprofessional voicemail or a full mail, voicemail box. Now that's almost 100% chance that we have lost that lead. So and you how often, what percentage of home inspectors do you call that one of those occurrences will happen? 

Kristine Gerber  
Oh, quite a bit. 

Ian R  
Would you say a third as a guess?

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah. Probably, yeah. 

Ian R  
So, and how many do you actually get a live person or just the voicemail in general?

Kristine Gerber  
Often. 

Ian R  
Just a voicemail often?

Kristine Gerber  
Pretty often. Yeah. Like not an answering. Yeah, I leave a lot of voicemails. So yeah, more often than getting like an answering, like a secondary answering service. Yeah. Yeah. 

Ian R  
And that's kind of sad. Because that's, that's not good business.  And when you call, you know, it's a normal phone number that's just gonna, it's just gonna come up, like you could be a client, I would say, and this is rough numbers, just because I'm a dork. and I try to quantify things. I would say 80% of the time, if not more, when I call the home inspector, I never get a live person. And it will be hours and sometimes days before they call me back. 

Kristine Gerber  
Yup. Dollars down the drain. Yeah. And then another thing on the voicemail, I don't know, or on the..

Ian R  
Phone call? 

Kristine Gerber  
Is it ok if I move on? 

Ian R  
Yeah, please do.

Kristine Gerber  
Just about when answering the phones. It's funny how sometimes, the way that guys answer the phone, they either sometimes they sound really annoyed or really rushed that you called, and they don't even know like who it is that's calling, like the initial because they're in the middle of maybe an inspection. It's not a good time. But you can tell that in the way that the answer. If that's a client calling, it's like you don't want your first impression to sound like, why did you call me, you should just be expecting it. And if you can't answer, it's better, better to let it go to voicemail than not answer if you're so busy. You know..

Ian R  
That's a good point. And we've talked about that on the show about smiling with our voice. People can tell when we're happy that they're called and we want to feel welcomed, we want to have a good experience. I think our podcast a couple of weeks ago was Randy Lima. I love the context of that, you know, in a world of McDonald's, be a Chick-fil-A. So when they finally get to the window to order and we're like, what do you want? You know, I'm gonna go to Chick-fil-A instead of that fast food joint, you know, because I want to feel welcomed, I want to feel happy about you working for me. So the, let's say the 20% of the phone calls that actually get through, a good percentage of those, they're not getting a great customer experience on the other side of the phone, when an actual live person answers, man, this is this is really important stuff. Because it's like having a really great running restaurant and then just nobody can order or get a live person to get them their meal. And then we wonder why we're not selling stuff. It's pretty, it's pretty consistent along the lines of established home inspectors and new ones too, isn't it?

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, yeah. Even ones you find out the guy's been in business, you know, for 20 years almost. And they still just haven't got the grasp on having a good voicemail, or the way the answer so yeah.

Ian R  
It's sad, but that's why we're talking about it. So just to kind of, we have a couple of sections to kind of talk about here, to kind of sum up the voicemail and phone call section though. I personally am a firm believer in getting somebody to answer our phones. If we can't, or we don't, or that's not our thing, we really need to one, check our voicemails every moment possible. Listen to our voicemail right now. And we're like, oh, yeah, they want a home inspection, they'll leave it, like, hey, leave a message, if you want a home inspection. If that's our voicemail, drop it, sit down in a nice quiet room and say, hey, welcome to such and such inspection company. I'm with another client right now. Please leave a message, I'll get back to you as soon as possible. We check our messages regularly. Make them feel welcomed. And then switch our phone services if our voice mailbox is always full, go to somebody with an unlimited voicemail. And if you don't want to do that, don't want to switch, it's the only carrier in your area. That's fine. Check it every day. Delete voicemails, never let our voicemail get full. But I am just like you personally amazed at how many home inspectors I call, and that's the that's, that's my first impression. When I call them, it's pretty uncomfortable, to be honest. 

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah.

Ian R  
But you know, and then there's those guys that they just are on point, answer the phone right away. And even if just answering the phone gives us a better shot at almost anybody else of closing that deal? What were you gonna say?

Kristine Gerber  
No, it's yeah, sometimes the numbers that are listed on the websites I've gotten where it goes to the office, like that's the default, it's not necessarily their cell phone. So there's somebody, you know, somebody in the office many times that will answer. So that's, that's nice, too. And they take a message.

Ian R  
Yeah, no, that's, that is the best way to do it. In my opinion, call center or VA. And I see a lot of guys complain online about those two options, like, oh, they're not answering the calls that the way I want them. I'm like, it's better that they answer the call the way you don't like it than not answer that call at all. Because you still have a better chance. Statistically speaking, we have a better chance. Even a bad answering service is better chance than a no answer. So again, it's just about the numbers. Let's go to let's go to emails. That's a fun one. I always have anecdotes, Kristine. But I remember one guy, I was trying to email back and forth. A home inspector, and I just couldn't understand his emails. And I even sent it to somebody else on the on the team. And I'm like, am I just not? How, how am I not understanding this guy's email? And then eventually, he wrote me back he goes, sorry, I have a hard time putting my thoughts into words. I'm like, isn't that what you do for a living? Like, this is bad. And we have to put our thoughts and thoughts into words.

Kristine Gerber  
I wonder how he writes comments. Like, how the comments come out? 

Ian R  
Yeah. So and he's gotten better over time. I've worked with them a little bit, but our email communications, that's just to illustrate that, our email communications as home inspectors, are a portrayal in the mind of a consumer as to what they're going to get with the actual report. So what are some things you've run into when you're emailing home inspectors?

Kristine Gerber  
Um, I think first, again, is manners, like just the way that email's written, you know, we get a lot of support emails, ones needing help with something. And sometimes the email just starts off, this isn't working, I need it fixed right now, you know, and then says, what did it maybe says in detail or not what the problem is, but it's like, whenever you're making a request for anything, it's just, just a please and thank you in the email, you know, a hello, just to start off super simple, hi, anything. Yeah. Because I think those things will come across to whoever that you're going to end up emailing if you get in the habit of that. 

Ian R  
Yeah. And so I think what how I take it is, proverb of those who are faithful in least, will be faithful in much. In other words, if we're going to be polite in all of our interactions, not like if you're contacting support, okay, we get it your irritated and things like that. But like you were saying, that can rub off on our clients, if that's how we actually are, it's eventually going to come off that way in other emails, and emails are a dangerous situation. We project our own feelings when we're reading something. So if our clients irritated and stressed, and our email comes off even just slightly that way, then that's how the clients going to take it. So we need to be really, really careful with those interactions. And I've had some, I've had some clients of mine, accidentally email me, like, they must have a client named Ian or something. And so they just start typing. And it's like, they don't notice that it's me instead. And it's like, oh, you're saying that to people, dude. And it's guys that I know, and I'll work with them and they're like, yeah, like, sounds like they just wanted to ask a question, but I have to stop myself sometimes to you know, like, I have to stop and say, okay, how is this gonna come off? Am I being overly polite and I love putting little smiley faces in there, lots of pleasantries. You know, it just makes the pill that we're giving them a little bit easier to swallow. But no, you're right, make it a habit to be polite in our emails. What else do you find with home inspection company's emails?

Kristine Gerber  
The lack of detail, sometimes just you know, if somebody does need help with something, not just being very vague about it, because if that happens, there's a lot more back and forth. And it's going to waste not only their, it's on both parties, it's going to waste time not having enough details, and then also the, you email for something or maybe a client emails you and then no response, because sometimes we'll have somebody email, you email them back for more information. And then it's like, nothing. You're like, okay, where'd you go? 

Ian R  
Yeah, so there's a couple things rolled up in there, the email response thing is important. Gone are the days where we check our emails at the end of the day. And if we're like my age and older, we probably remember those times where at the end of the day, you checked your emails and responded, if we're not responding, within a shorter period of time, people are moving on, like if they email an inquiry, email right back respond, very, very quickly. But I have had the same thing, guys not responding for days. And they'll say, oh, I missed your email, I'd need to check it more often. And I'm like, what are you missing, but there's actually a technical side of that, too. So if we use an email service, that is notoriously bad, we're going to miss emails. One of them that, and this is just my personal opinion, like GoDaddy has one of the worst email systems in the world. And I have helped many, many clients. Even if we're using Outlook built on GoDaddy, there's problems with it. And I've had lots of clients that I've helped dig out all these old emails, and one guy was upset because it was 1000s of dollars of work that he missed in just however long of a period of time, because GoDaddy wasn't handling their emails properly. There's one home inspector right now. Same issue, we email him, he goes, why haven't you responded to my email? I'm like I have? And it's just like, oh, okay. There's also some technical issues, just having an email isn't enough, we need to make sure that it works properly. We personally like Google workspace, if we're going to use an email with our domain name in it, like our website, address. Those are really great. Because if Google's email goes down, it's a zombie apocalypse anyways, nobody's hiring us as home inspectors, you know, get out your rifle and start killing zombies. This really took a turn, didn't it?

Kristine Gerber  
I'm like how did zombies come up in this? 

Ian R  
I don't know. 

Kristine Gerber  
I'm not surprised, if anyone's listened to your podcast before. There's no surprises actually.

Ian R  
ADD makes for great conversation. Look, squirrel. So look at the technical side of it. And it's kind of like if we're a Mason, and all of our masonry tools are broken, and we still try to use them. And then we keep telling our customers, oh, yeah, all of our tools are broken. It's the same thing for home inspectors and our email's broken. And we keep saying, oh, I gotta get that fixed, but we don't get it fixed. We'll never know the work that we're missing. Because we're not getting those emails. I have. I have a client right now. It's been weeks, and I get undeliverable mail back. So then I text them. Your email isn't working? Oh, well, it's working for me. I'm like, I've emailed you from four different emails. Here's the screenshot. Is that your email address? Yes, I'll look into it. Weeks go by. I'm like, if people are asking you for home inspections right now, you're just not going to know about it. We need to stop and fix those issues. 

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, and it's not, I mean, maybe it's a good idea to also occasionally look in your spam folder. Because, you know, you never know if some client that emailed, maybe they had a weird email or something, which also on that, I'm jumping to another point, but.. 

Ian R  
Please do.

Kristine Gerber  
Spam folder. Also your email name. So sometimes, I've seen some really strange email names. And some, sometimes they don't. Yeah, just try to keep it professional. It doesn't have to be yeah, it doesn't have to necessarily be a certain, you know, but is it weird? Like, the person's like, why do they have that email?

Ian R  
Yeah, keep our personal email separate. I mean, we can get free emails from Gmail, if you don't want to spend it on a domain name. I know exactly what you're talking about. We built this beautiful website one time, it was one of my favorite websites of all time, and I'm not gonna get the guy's actual email, but then he's like, right up at the top, I want you to put my email, and it was like, [email protected]. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, dude. It was my nickname in high school. I'm like, I don't care what it was. I'm like.

Kristine Gerber  
I know. I don't like the numbers. I saw another one like that, that had like five numbers, like random numbers at the end. It just, it's weird. It's hard to remember. So yeah, just easily mistyped and..

Ian R  
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the numbers, but the numbers don't bother me. But it's like, like all the cutesy nicknames and all that stuff and, or, you know, your name is Bill, but everybody calls you Billy Bob, and it's [email protected]. It's like, that doesn't exactly exude confidence. You know, have it be [email protected] or something, if you, whatever, just something, something better than your nickname or your personal email, and I do have an issue with Yahoo emails, or Hotmail ones. So listen, I'm an old dude. I still have Hotmail emails, because I've been using them for 30 years. And how do you get rid of them after 30 years? But that's not my professional email. You know, well, you can use Hotmail, but like old Yahoo ones.

Kristine Gerber  
I was like, Yahoo, who uses Yahoo? 

Ian R  
I know. I'm like, how do you..

Kristine Gerber  
Sorry for anybody who uses Yahoo, we're not making fun of that..

Ian R  
Yeah, I'm like, how do you still have a Yahoo account, and it's still okay, but is it professional? At the very least get a Gmail account. Hotmail is okay. Yahoo. Not my favorite. That's a side point, and just a personal preference. But sometimes we've been using them so long, one of my professional emails was and still is a Hotmail account. I've been using that for two decades. I'm like, I really can't get rid of it now. But it's also not [email protected]. So but yeah, emails, phone calls, those are going to be our first impressions, typically, of a home inspector on a personal level. Let's talk a little bit about websites, something close to my heart. Websites are very important. So when we start looking up a guy's website, we're like, oh, let me call this guy. Let me check out his company and see what he's about. What are some things that you find that would turn you off as a potential client? 

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, some fun ones on this. First off, no name, you can't find the inspector's name anywhere. Maybe some do that on purpose. Like they really don't want to know, but I don't, I don't understand as a consumer why that would be because any type I was thinking, even if I go to like, find new hairstylist, I love when they put the people's names, that's just your hair, that's not your whole home been inspected, this person showing up to your home. I've seen like, you know, a whole page about, oh, there's an About Me page. And it'll go in about their family life and their hobbies and has all their credentials, everything, but no name anywhere on the site. I don't get that. 

Ian R  
Well, and statistically having a picture of yourself on your website alone, even if we're multi inspector firm, having a picture of the owner of the guys, is shown to increase conversions by up to 50%. So the name, I don't know if there's any statistics specifically on the name, but I would imagine would have the same relative effect, because it personalizes and humanizes us. So it's like you go up to somebody and you're like, hey, what's your name? And they go, hi, I'm a home inspector. Okay, but what's your name? Hi, I'm a home inspector. That's that's the impression of the conversation we're getting from the website. It doesn't need to be plastered everywhere.

Kristine Gerber  
Somewhere. 

Ian R  
Yeah. Personalize it. Yeah, we just did a website for, for a company, multi inspector firm. And one of the first things we see on the homepage is a picture of the owner standing in front of an inspection. And even just me for developing websites. As long as I have 1000s and 1000s of web pages. I, I look at him, like I just get a warm fuzzy feeling from that, I'd hire them. I don't care if I get the owner as I go down the page and see pictures of the other inspectors in their bios on the about page. That just, that just endears them to me. I'm more likely to hire them than the guy that just has blank. AI generated content on the front. 

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, for sure. 

Ian R  
Good point. What else do you notice? 

Kristine Gerber  
A really long homepage, where you just can scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll. And sometimes yeah, I think just, I've seen some that are so long that a person and also with a lot, very wordy, very, like lots of paragraphs, all at once about everything that that they do all on the homepage. I think it just gets a little overwhelming. 

Ian R  
Yeah. And then there again to statistics actually work along with what you're saying. Most people will land on a website, and we have three seconds to convert them. And then the average person will spend 30 to 90 seconds on our website as a whole. The homepage is where they typically land the most. The About Us page is the most navigated to page from the link wherever they land. And the home inspection page is the third most, or second most navigated to page after they land. But on the homepage. I see both sides of that, and both sides bother me, you land on the homepage. And it doesn't have, they don't have a logo or anything. It's just Joe's Home Inspections and then just a Quick paragraph, we go out for inspections, you should hire me because I'm awesome and you should know that already. Like, oh, okay. And then other times where I see it, like you said, and it's just paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, people don't read that, we have three seconds. And then on the homepage an average of 30 seconds, give them, give them short blurbs and catchy, I say catchy isn't the right word. Idea filled headers, you know, like, "the best in the business". And then you have logos underneath it, they're only going to get halfway through the first sentence. And the logos are going to speak of your qualifications, then they scroll down in a graphic of the report, modern home inspection reports, the average person isn't going to spend a lot of time reading a paragraph about a home inspector reports. Now some of that is there for Google. But we need to give the people as they're looking at it something to catch their eye, and give them something to read quickly before they move along. So yeah, the whole, I think it's our mentality as home inspectors is we do the same thing with our reports, we think people will be impressed by our really long, wordy sections on every defect that we could possibly ever imagine in our reports, I mean, we treat our websites the same way. And then we do the reverse thing of what we should do, instead of sending our website to somebody like you who isn't a home inspector, you go, I don't know what this means. I don't understand why should I hire you? Where's your phone number? Instead, we send it to other home inspectors and say, hey, guys, can you look on my website? Yeah, of course, other home inspectors are gonna like our website, because they're looking at it as a home inspector, but we don't want other home inspectors.

Kristine Gerber  
They might have the same bad website.

Ian R  
Yeah, exactly. We need to send it to someone like you and say, Yeah, I don't get this. Why? Why do you have that on there? Don't send it to people that want their website to look just like ours. They're just going to tell us, yeah, this is great, because it's wordy. That's what it should be. 

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, I think it comes from being in school. And you had, it's like, you have to write a 500 word essay, you have to write a 1000 word essay. And, you know, not so much anymore these days. 

Ian R  
See I've talked about this before, I didn't really get through high school. And the, that never made sense to me. I'm like, why write more when you can show that you understand more by writing less? 

Kristine Gerber  
So much fluff, so much fluff.

Ian R  
Schools are backwards. Yeah, yeah, Einstein, if you can't explain it simply, you simply don't understand. So again, we're digressing with the ADD over here. Okay. Anyways, so you also brought up logos. Tell me about what you have, what happens when you go to these home inspectors websites with their logo?

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, sometimes. I mean, sometimes they're either really, really, really, really small. Or there is no logo, actually. And that doesn't happen often, where there's none. But I actually came across a website where there was no logo, there was just yeah, it was a weird, it was a weird one. Or the colors are really funny. And in one I saw, I don't know if it was a logo, or if it was a phone number, but it was fluorescent coloring against a white background. So you're like, what is that? You know, trying to make out? That's not good. If someone can't easily tell what it is, or just a weird logo that has nothing to do like, you're like, how is that at all related to home inspections? Yeah, just odd, odd ones.

Ian R  
Yeah. The logo thing is a big one. My favorite is make the logo bigger. And if you're listening to this podcast, and we've built a website for you, I've probably told you told you as you're telling me make the logo bigger. How about we make the logo or reasonable size? Like sometimes I land on a website, all I see is big logo that takes up my whole screen. And I'm like, never will you go to a big corporate website, because they have teams of people that they pay millions and millions of dollars to design websites in a way that will convert, never will you see the whole screen being taken up by the logo. Or like you said, sometimes the logos way at the bottom, nowhere to be found up at the top really tiny because we're using some website builder like Weebly or something, and we just shove a logo in there and we're like, oh, man, I guess that's as big as the logo gets. Yeah, yeah, phone numbers, too. That's a big one. I see more websites where either there's no phone number, or I can't find it or have to look that hard. If somebody has to look for the phone number. You've lost that conversion.

Kristine Gerber  
Maybe their voicemail's not good, they don't want you to find it.

Ian R  
They're hiding, they're hiding their phone number because the voicemail isn't good. Exactly. That, within the first three seconds of opening a website, people should see who we are, what we do, why hire us, and how to contact us. Those are the four primary things. And we do that with logo, phone number at the top, some sort of image to capture the idea of a home inspection and, and a short blurb of text. That, that's really what we want within the three first three seconds. Do you find that a lot of phone numbers, well you use Apple devices if I remember,  right. And Apple automatically converts a phone number to a clickable link. So if it if it finds a 10 digit number, it'll make it clickable. A lot of Android devices and older Apple devices won't do that. So and I use desktop caller, so I go on lots of websites where I can't click on their phone number. So all that's happening is for me now as a consumer is having to copy and paste that phone number, where I can actually call them, that in of itself will lose, I couldn't even guess how many conversions we'd lose. Because if it's a guy I have to call even then I'm kind of grumbling, I'm like, copying and pasting on my desktop caller. That's not good business. If we want to make our phone number a clickable link, either we or website developer, highlight it, hyperlink it, and put in tel:1- with no spaces, and then the phone number with hyphens in it. What that does is it tells every device that this is now not just a series of numbers, but a clickable link, people on a desktop on a phone, they can do that. Same thing with an email, I hate it when I have to copy and paste the email that I want to just click on it and go. Again, you can make that a link by highlighting it, hyperlinking it, and do mailto: and then the email with no spaces in it. And that makes it a clickable link. If we're not doing that, that's kind of like bringing somebody a plate of spaghetti and making them put sauce on it at a restaurant. It's like, drizzle on it for them. 

Kristine Gerber  
Talking about food. I mean, you want to order food online, you're like gonna do takeout or something. And if that happened with the phone number, it'd be really annoying, you're hungry, you know, you're on it there. So and you can't click the phone number to call.

Ian R  
Especially the younger generations like I mean, younger generations don't even like to have to do much of anything to contact somebody, they'd like to chat with them on their website, let alone have to copy and paste the phone number into their, into their phone to text message them, we should, we should make it totally available for them to text message us. Not just call us. But we're talking advanced because going back down to it. I would say for me anyways, a good 30, 40% of websites that I visit of home inspectors, I cannot readily find their phone number, or their phone numbers buried somewhere down at the bottom. Would you say that's about right for you?

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, that sounds like a good percentage. I'm not good with percentages. So I'm gonna go with that. Yeah, yeah. 

Ian R  
Okay. But think about that, even on the lower end, that's let's say it's only 25%. Okay, that's one in four of us are making it hard for people to contact us, you don't want that. Contact forms, we don't actually try not to even use contact forms much anymore, unless it's for commercial inspections, because it's still effective there. Because the statistics we show are that contact forms are becoming more and more useless. The average consumer does not like to fill them out. Because and interestingly, because most people don't get a response from contact forms. So have we tested our contact form lately? Does it work? Very likely it doesn't. Because if we're using Gmail or Yahoo, interestingly, they have these new security measures that block most website contact forms. They have their place in Google ad campaigns and things like that. But for the most part, try to avoid contact forms. People don't like them statistically speaking anymore. I'd rather have them call or email you directly on the contact page. But what about some other things that, you'd actually mentioned the location?

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, location. I've seen that a bit. So someone goes to your web site, and can't really tell where you are? What cities you cover. It's just, yeah, your location is not clear. What state are you in? What cities are you in? Yeah, that's also gonna waste time on both the client and because what if somebody contacts you who's outside of you know, your location area, your service area, and you don't want to actually go that far. But now you've had to have this conversation explaining where you are. That could have just been found out from the main page? 

Ian R  
Yeah. And it's a really good point. Because when we're developing websites, one thing people try to do all the time. I say all the time, often enough that it sticks in my head, that I don't want to limit myself. So they're like, don't, don't put, don't put that I service Houston. Just just say I service all of the state of Texas. I'm like, yeah, but now if somebody's calling you for Houston, they land on your website, they don't know where you are. It's like can we radiate out from where you are, at the very least or some people like, I find this with services too? What's that?

Kristine Gerber  
No, counties, you could do by counties if you don't want to list cities. 

Ian R  
Yeah, yeah. For the consumer side of things. Google doesn't like, for Google purposes, search engine purposes. You don't want to go by counties. But for your consumer list, hey, we serve Albany, Schenectady and Rensselaer County, I'm using my own area. As an example, let people know or if there's a colloquial name, like you serve Dallas Fort Worth, we serve in the entire DFW or the entire capital region, whatever our area calls for, make it clear when they first land where you service. And I know, we talk a lot about commercial inspections here. But I'm seeing a trend of guys saying I don't want to limit myself to home inspections. So just call it inspections. But this is why we tell you to, we tell everybody to separate their businesses, because now if you're saying property inspections in the DFW, people don't automatically know they're like my agent told me to get a home inspection. But as a home inspector, we're thinking well, I don't want to limit myself to home inspectors, I want to do home and commercial, make it clear what we do, the best home and commercial inspections in the DFW. Don't hide what we do to broaden our horizons, all that does is water down our message. So not just location, but what we do. Really super important, but yeah, location location, we really need to tell people where we are. The other thing that I hear people say a lot is, well, my phone number is a 716 area code, just pulling one out of the air, they should know where I am. I'm like you're still forcing a user that you only have three seconds, and we're forcing a user to go oh, hey, that's my area code. That's not, that's not going to do the right job for us. This is something that I think on the side, we actually have you edit a lot of our websites for grammar and links and stuff like that. So tell us about the grammar and spelling errors. Because I noticed on your list here you have not one but two exclamation points. 

Kristine Gerber  
I could have done more. That's a big pet peeve of mine. Um, yeah, you have a, you know, most likely professionally done website. And I mean, some inspectors have made their own websites, and that's great. But even if you make your own, don't let it be apparent that there are grammar and spelling errors. And sometimes they're really, really evident. And that just you know, sometimes even driving on the road. There's, I've seen on billboards before spelling errors, and that, I'm like somebody got paid, you know to do that for you. And it's just, it looks so unprofessional. It looks it. Yeah, it's a big one to me. 

Ian R  
Yeah. And Nick Gromicko has brought that up that when people look at our websites, they're getting a first impression, and they actually connect it to what our report's going to look like. If there's grammar errors there, they're going to expect it on a report, they're going to say he's going to have a hard time communicating with me. And that's not what we look for. The most common spelling error that I see is peace of mind. One of most common phrases on a home inspection website get real peace of mind, and we spell it P E I C E. That's, that's not the word. We're talking about peace like world peace, peace of mind, not a piece of mind. That's a different expression. 

Kristine Gerber  
It's pie...you got that one wrong too..

Ian R  
There you go. And this is why we have an editor. I before E except after C. Yeah. So that's ironic, that's awesome. But that's why have somebody else check our website, somebody like Kristine here, who's just gonna go through and say, don't say it this way, or that doesn't, that doesn't sound right, and look it up and good grammar, grammar errors are going to slip in. Nobody's going to ever have 100% grammar error free website, in my opinion, if it's of any length of text. But it shouldn't be apparent, it should only happen once a blue moon, and we should correct it immediately if we find it. When was the last time we checked the links on our website. I go to websites and I click dead links all the time, or click to call and it doesn't call anybody. We're losing conversions at that rate. But yeah, the the spelling and grammar. That's a big one. I've seen home inspectors. The funniest one I find is the M on your keyboard when you write home inspections doesn't work. So you get hoe inspections all the time. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, hysterical.

Kristine Gerber  
Totally wrong, different word. 

Ian R  
We're, we're typing so fast that we're not looking or there's some other there's some other common ones and I'm just like, yeah, just have somebody check our website. There's companies that we can pay to go through and grammar check our website. It's just really important to do. One last point, and I thought this was really good, uh, that you put it in here. Be careful about not bashing other inspectors on your site. Why did you put that in there, Kristine?

Kristine Gerber  
Because it's, of course you want to say like, I'm the best inspector, but I have seen where it was highlighted how other inspectors miss things. And they, they're unreliable and doing that really, you think that you're making yourself stand out, but you're actually hurting, I feel, like the industry as a whole, because you want to, obviously, you want people to choose you. But you don't want them to think like, oh, there's just a bunch of bad home inspectors out there. And for two reasons. One, well, yeah, that's it. Like, you don't want to ruin your industry. But also, you may need those guys one day to help cover for you. Or it should be like a supportive network. And you've talked about that before that sometimes you want other inspectors, you may not be able to get to something, you have somebody else to help you. If you have made it known that you're like, bashed other inspectors, especially if you're live in a smaller area that maybe there aren't a ton of home inspectors, they might not be giving you any favors one day when you need it.

Ian R  
Yeah, and that's, and that's definitely the, the higher elevation of why we don't want to do it. But let's say we're just completely selfish as a home inspector, and don't care about the industry as a whole. There's not many guys out there like that. But let's say hypothetically, and we're only worried about converting that user, that also hurts our own conversion. Because they may not be thinking, Oh, I'm gonna hire somebody from an industry that has a bad name. And they're all going to be good. And I just want to hire the best one. So now when they visit our website, we're telling them oh man, our industry is full of a bunch of jokers, and bad stuff. And all we're doing is actually hurting our own conversion rate, because we're creating anxiety in our environment that they're in instead of confidence. So if I'm going to go buy a new refrigerator, and I go on a website and say, as you've probably seen all refrigerators break within six months, and they explode, and they murder your children in the middle of the night. Now I'm like, oh, man, what, maybe I don't need a new refrigerator. You know, our agent, their agent, maybe, maybe trying to tell them don't get a home inspection, skip that. Get your offer in, we don't know what's happening in the background. Or maybe they're already anxious. All we did was one, reaffirm maybe what their agent is telling them to skip the inspection because home inspectors are jokers, but more importantly to we've created a level of anxiety now that they associate with us on our website. Why would they hire us?

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, yeah. And I, I kind of thought about when I do like zoom training sessions for new guys. I try not to, I don't, I hope I've never done this, but I don't bash other home inspection softwares. You know, I don't talk about all the reasons why, oh, you shouldn't go to them. You shouldn't. I just say what makes us good. Of course, I know, Inspector Toolbelt is the best. But I don't, I don't, yeah, you don't have to put down other other people, other, other companies, just to make yourself. Just focus on what you can do for the person. And that's going to be way more attractive to them. Yeah, it's like a when you are friends with somebody. And they talk about, you know, if a person talks bad about other friends that they had, or whatever, is that really attractive, makes them attractive as a friend? Or do they just talk about positive things, you're more drawn to that person? 

Ian R  
As a caveat, I literally pay Kristine to say that we're the best. So I don't..No, but it's true. We have clients all the times they are users come and say, what, what can you compare your two apps together? And our answer is always listen, we're not experts on their app. But like you said, here's what makes, here's what makes us great, and we focus on the positive. And we have better experiences with those potential users than I imagine if we did it the other way. It's the same thing in the home inspection industry if we, if we speak respectfully of our industry, but then tell them why we're awesome. That's going to have a better conversion rate, and also help our own industry. But, Kristine, we are running out of time. But this was a really interesting discussion. Because this is where rubber meets the road. We can talk about how great our car runs and the engine and the fuel injectors and the special tires we have. But really until it gets hits the road, we don't know how it runs. So as we're operating our inspection business, whether we're new or experienced look over some of these very basic things, because this is all of our prep work, all of our branding, all of our education and everything all put together. If at the end of the day, people can't call us, email us, or look at our website and get the experience that they're looking for. It's all for naught, right? 

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. 

Ian R  
And if you want a training session, and you're tired of David, by all means, ask for Kristine. And she'll help you out. And I don't know we'll have to do something about David. I don't know, Kristine.

Kristine Gerber  
Yeah, we've been trying to get rid of him, but he seems to stick around.

Ian R  
I know, he sticks around.

Kristine Gerber  
No, we really love him, talking about good things about other people.

Ian R  
I'm gonna have to have David listen to this whole podcast so we can hear us bash him. No, we love you, David. And thank you everybody for listening to Inspector Toolbelt, and I will see you all next time.

Kristine Gerber  
Thanks, see you.