- When you have the client credit card stored on file, and you can eliminate the financial transaction at the end of a job and kind of leave a job and leave a client on a high note. I think that's a really nice way to end the, you know, the day. That's a nice - Touch. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like fine dining. Welcome to Masters of Home Service, a podcast by Jobber.
Each week we've talked to successful home service entrepreneurs and experts in their field to learn how they built their company so that we can make your business more profitable and more efficient. We are in Las Vegas at Blue Wire Studios, and today we are talking about delivering an Amazon-like experience to your customers. We have Christine Hodge with us today. Christine. Hello, how - Are you? Thanks for having me. Yeah, - Thanks for being here.
So you're the CEO of Clearview washing outta New Jersey, and you guys do high-end pressure washing, shinier, cleaning, a lot of commercial work. Is that right? Correct. Awesome. Well, we're, we're glad you're here. So this is a big topic for you. I know you've talked about this a lot and, and I'm interested to get into it.
So many of our home service listeners, their clients are used to working with Amazon and Shopify and Whole Foods delivery and all these like really fast apps that make their lives a lot quicker. How do you think that's changing our clients' perception of what they expect from a home service provider? - You know, these days you really need to provide an easy experience, right?
You have to be able to provide easy, convenient, quick, efficient, and that's what the standard client base, that's what really everybody is getting out of, you know, even Instacart and there are food deliveries and you really, even DoorDash, Uber, like you don't really have to do much to get what you need to get to the end result.
So in the home service industry, in order to create as Amazon-like experience, and you want things to run smoothly, you have to basically, I always say you wanna touch the client a lot in terms of marketing, but once you have that client, you really don't wanna poke them too often. You really want to say, Hey, you want a window washing, for example? I'm gonna be able to provide that to you.
Tell me what you need. We'll be there, we'll be done, and it'll be fast and efficient in - Terms of communication. Let's talk about that a little bit. So Amazon, as soon as you click the green button or whatever color it is today, you get a confirmation email, right?
You just bought X and then as soon as it ships, you get other emails, it comes to your door, there's a photo of it on your doorstep in the email that they touch you to make sure that you know what's happening at every step of the process. And so I don't think it ha, I don't think there's a direct correlation between home service and that, but I think there are ways that we can keep clients in the know, so they feel the same way. It's, it's delivered differently, but it's, it's the same feeling.
They feel like they're in the know and they know what to expect and then you deliver. And that's really powerful. - If you can communicate with them the way that Amazon would communicate with you with status updates that are not a bother, right? You're not getting a phone call from Amazon, but you're getting an email. You might get a text message with a delivery update. So we call that in our industry a follow-up sequence.
And I do think that it's very important to set a follow-up sequence from beginning to end. You're not bothering the client with a phone call for every step of the way, but you also don't have to remember every step of the way because your technology and your follow-up sequence, your automations are set in place to handle that for you. So once you do your job, you sent an estimate, the estimate is sent, the client approves it, you are pinged to schedule the job, for example, right?
You schedule the job with the customer, they get a confirmation email, they get a two day text message saying, Hey, just a reminder, in two days we'll be at your house. Hey, I hope you're happy with the work that we did. Please leave us a review. So there are different automations that are in place that can give you a similar experience to what you experience in Amazon, but you as a company don't have to remember every step of the way and also you're not bothering the customer.
- Yeah, I think of it from a, a totally different standpoint. I think the, the, the reason that Amazon is so great is because it's easy, it's convenient, it's seamless. You just, you know what to do.
So I think in home service, I think one thing that a lot of listeners and for me for a long time we're missing out on is when clients call the office, they, when they call and they Google your number and they call you, they are just hoping and praying that the first company they call can solve their problem, right? They don't wanna call 10 different companies. They want you to pick up the phone their first ring, and they hope that you're not on your cell phone out in the field.
They want somebody in the office and answer. And if you can book them that first phone call, man, we're gonna, we're all set. We're gonna be out there next Wednesday at eight o'clock. Then we've solved their problem. We haven't even cut their grass yet, but we solved their problem. And that is just as convenient as Amazon. It's different, but it's just as convenient. I think that's really important.
- Now to take it to like another level, when you go onto Amazon, you're looking for something new and good and you saw it on TV and you get 50 options, what are you looking at to narrow down your search? The reviews. The reviews. So another key component to creating an Amazon-like experience is if somebody has a problem and they plug that problem into Google, your company has to be the one to show them, well, I have 500 or five star reviews and I'm the reputable company in the area,
so call me. Yeah. - I mean, I don't, I don't know about you, but I don't really buy anything that has like less than four and a half stars on Amazon at this point. I know. And why would, if, if you had a 4.9 option for home service, a plumber, for example, or a lawn care company versus like a 3.5, why would, why would you ever call the 3.5 - That? And also I'm weary of companies that only have a handful of reviews.
Hmm. So if I see a company with eight reviews and a company with 200 reviews, I'm going with the company with 200 reviews, even at a 4.8. Yeah. Because you know that those are, that's like a real reaction of the audience. - So reviews are critical. We both know that you and I are both in high volume service and so we have an opportunity to get a lot of reviews, which I like, you know, so how do you build it into your sales process?
Are your salespeople setting up your technician, like you're setting 'em up for like, Hey, if you, if you like us next week, you gotta leave this review. Are you, are they, what are they saying? That kind of stuff. - We do have a process for that. We always have our technicians create a very nice, personable relationship with the residential customers. We have them ask for reviews.
We also ask that they state the, the field technician's names and the reviews reviews because it creates like a nice personal, like anyone reading the review feels like they know who's working on the job. And we also use nice job and nice job. I is some of the best money we've ever spent. We've gone from 300 reviews to almost 700 reviews. Wow, that's awesome. In just about three years. The purpose of nice job and what we were similarly talking about is the follow-up sequence.
So it is not at the top of a client's to-do list to leave Clearview washing a five star review. However, with a follow-up and a touch and a touch and a touch, and then maybe a text message. Hey, just a reminder, if you loved us, leave us a review. That kind of prompts the customer into carving out the time to create the five star review - With nice job.
What we used to rely heavily on the integration with jobber and like, so the trigger would be if the job is closed, they get the invite from nice jobber, you invoice them with one of my companies we've actually gotten away with from the trigger, and our technicians send the invite at the time of service with either a client selfie, a client, they a selfie, they got with a client, which, you know, that converts really well.
Or if the client's not home, then we will take a photo of our, our nice service van with a house in the background just so that they feel like it's, it's warmer touch. We used to have like three or four follow-ups and I'm wondering if, what if we just did one follow up and say, this is your last chance, we're not gonna bug you again. I wonder if that would work better. I'm, I'm gonna experiment and let you have - To let me know how that - Goes.
Yeah, yeah. I'm curious. Exactly. So I think that reviews are critical. Amazon really relies on, on reviews. What else can we do if we're trying to be deliver more of an AM Amazon experience, what else can we do to deliver that for our clients? - Well, to deliver something like Amazon, like an Amazon-like experience to a client, you really have to set up your team to be able to be that fast and efficient as well.
So you have to create some sort of flow chart and process to make sure that you're flowing the way an Amazon facility works. I think it's pretty incredible. We heard this stat that if you add something to your shopping cart and you generally buy what's in your shopping cart on Amazon, that the Amazon facility that has that item will ship it to your area, to your distribution site. Wow. Anyway, wow. Because your algorithm shows that you are likely going to purchase that product.
Wow. So that's thinking ahead, right? That's taking that little date that says, we'll arrive in four days and making it we'll arrive tomorrow if you click, you know, purchase now. So there are things like that that you really want to structure your company from the very beginning to flow the way an Amazon, you know, service really flows to get the product out the door for us. It starts with that initial touch. The first touch is usually with our office team.
It flows into our sales department, it flows back to the office for scheduling and then it flows into the field. But we want that flow to be seamless so the customer doesn't feel any hiccup that might incur. Because in any home service industry, there's a hiccup, right? You're not every job is gonna go perfectly, but you never want the customer to know that. - Another thing that Amazon does is when you're checking out, it says this is what other people buy.
With jobber, actually with all the optional line items you can put on a quote, you can, you can turn a $500 request into a $2,000 quote. You're really good at this. I want you to talk about this. But a client says, I want my gutters clean. Well, you know what? Here's what is in your gutters. We're can also wash your whole house, wash all your windows, wash your driveway, it's suddenly $3,000. And they say yes. Talk to us about that. - We are always offering our clients options.
It's actually our part of our sales process is if a client asks for a window washing and a soft washing, we're also pricing them on flat surface cleaning. If the client asks just for a one-time gutter cleaning, we're providing prices for the one-time gutter cleaning, but also a gutter cleaning maintenance plan. Our customers are never just getting one estimate for one service that they requested. We've built packages and we're able to do this through our quoting software.
So if a customer requests two items, we want them to get those two items. So that would be one bundle. We do a 5% discount on that. Whereas if you quoted them separately with no bundle discount, even though they requested both, if one of them is higher than they wanted to spend, they might only choose one. Right? So you technically like lost a portion of the sale. Our second bundle is actually those two items with a minor upsell. So something not too intimidating.
So we'll throw in a front walkway cleaning or something small so that it's a small upsell. We'll clean the trash bins for an extra $50. And then the third is the luxury package. The luxury package and naming it luxury. Luxury, right? Goes a long way because we are trying to cater to the luxury client. And a luxury client, and I've said this before, will never click the budget plan. So we're very strategic with how we name our packages. Yeah.
A luxury client is gonna see budget plan that includes the two services they requested and they're gonna see luxury and they're saying, well, I'm not a budget client. Yeah, I'm a luxury client. Yeah. And they're gonna hit luxury and it's gonna go from an $1,800 sale to a $3,500 sale because that's your luxury client, - Christine. There's people out there who say, oh my gosh, they didn't ask for that. Who cares? We're not out there to give people exactly what they, they don't know what they want.
We're here here to give them options. They can say no, but you will, you'll never get the yes if you don't go for the no. You have to go for the no to get the yes. - Right. And I will say maybe four times this year has a client said, I don't like that you provided me with options that I didn't ask for. That's okay. And our internal response is, you are not the right client for us. Right. But there is somebody down the street who can service you.
- And it's not right to throw out the process for the thousands of people that it, that exactly appreciated it for the four that didn't. So I use online booking through jobber. You've used responsibility for a long time and they can work together. Online booking, in a way is a, a technology version of Amazon because people can literally never talk to a human being on the phone in your, in your office. And they can book at three in the morning if they wanted to.
I'm a big fan of it. How are you using that kind of thing? Like more technology based to create this experience? Because let's be real, eventually it's going to be, you're gonna be sitting in bed and be like, Alexa, I need somebody to cut my grass tomorrow. Oh, they're coming tomorrow at eight o'clock and you wanna be that com, that company, you wanna be that person who gets that job. And so the online booking feature is going to, is going to be the gateway for that. Any thoughts on that?
- I love the online booking feature. It's something that our company doesn't utilize right now. I'll tell you why. Because when we built our customer avatar, we decided when it wasn't like this a few years ago, we want to only capture the residential luxury clients. So we wanna weeded out the customers who want the faster experience for the customers. It's still gonna be seamless, right? For the customer that wants to look at somebody because you are, we wanna be their guy, right?
So they want someone to show up and cater to them. So a sales representative to look them in the eye, shake their hand, educate them on how to maintain their property and say, your house is gonna be in good hands with Clearview Washing. I've been with the company for years and you know, we got your back and then come back. And then they want our admin to be their person. Like they want to know who's servicing their home. You know, we're talking like $5 million homes here.
So, and, and we're working our way up to larger. So the whole point is, I think once you set your customer avatar, it's how you would gear the way that you would handle booking. Another example of this is if a home is under 2,500 square feet, we are going to quote it remotely. Mm. Okay. So it kind of goes with what you're saying. Like those people can technically book online, schedule online. If we wanted to set that up. The client with over 2,500 square foot home is getting somebody in person.
- Okay. So what you're saying basically is the, the higher the, the, the bigger the home. It goes from being a more of a transactional relationship to more of relational situation. Amazon is a transactional company. I mean, I don't have a relationship with anybody on Amazon, thankfully. It's kinda weird. And so it's a transactional thing. But as you get bigger to these bigger homes, higher tickets, you have found that those people, they, they want and they need more personal attention.
- They do okay and they wanna be catered to. And you know, at a $4,000 ticket price, we will cater to them. That's okay because they're gonna call and they're gonna say, I need a pest control company. You guys were great. So I really trust your referrals. Do you know someone? And we're gonna refer them to someone in our networking group. So it's, it's definitely relationship building when you get to a certain type of client.
- Let's take a quick minute to talk about jobber and all the reasons we love jobber. Christine, what do you like about Jobber? - I love everything about Jobber. One of my favorite features is storing the credit card on file. It's something that we knew we can do. We discovered that we can do it more frequently and make it required just this year. And we've implemented it and it's really made billing and collecting money so much easier and smoother for us. - Yeah, I agree.
The online payments, the card on file, all of that is the difference between my company today and my company four years ago. And I would never wanna go back to it the way it was four years ago. So you should try jobber today, go to jobber.com/podcast deal, give it a try, get exclusive discount as a new user and start using online payments and start building your business with a card on file.
- So I love that. I love that when I wanna purchase something on Amazon, I do not have to get up and get my credit card. I don't have to talk to anyone, I don't have to send anyone any money. It's just done. That makes it a very fast transaction. So in our industry, actually for our business, we will not put somebody on our calendar unless we have a credit card on file. This is for residential customers.
And the reason is because we do wanna continue to make this a very fast, seamless and convenient option for clients. Another thing is like there's a psychology aspect behind it, right? You get your house soft wash and then everything is great and you're so happy, but then you have to pause 'cause you have to go get your checkbook or you have to go get your cash or however you're paying.
But with jobber, if we have the card on file, we're able to present them with what we did, do a nice walk around of the home and leave it as it was such a pleasure to work with you. You're all set for the day. Have a wonderful afternoon. We don't even have to talk about billing. Love that. Love that. Because that was addressed during the quoting process. - I love that. Especially I think every human being doesn't like that part of it.
Like it's like paying the pizza delivery guys, like how much I owe you kind of thing. I think if you can eliminate that transaction from the conversation, wow, that, that's a huge tip. I love that. I also think that the client hub feature and jobber the, which is like their account, you know, clients can click on the quote, pull it up and it really takes them a client hub and they can look at their wallet, which is where all the card credit cards are stored.
They can look at all their past invoices, they can look at all the quotes they've gotten in the past. They can even look at their upcoming visits. And so from a standpoint of technology, like that's pretty awesome because that might have saved you a phone call that might have saved you an upset client that saved you, well it saved you a lot of phone calls because they don't have to call the office, they change their credit card, - Right?
And it's just like Amazon, you can pull up your previous historical orders and either reorder something or, so the fact that you can do that in jobber using your client hub is huge. It also helps because you'll get the customer that says, you know, I paid $400 for this service last time. And we'll say, no, no, no, you paid $463 last time. We have all of your historical data. Right?
So there's also a level of professionalism that comes with having technology to support historical data and the ease of anyone in your company being able to say, you know, if a sales rep is out in the field, they can see what the client did. Historically, your office staff is in the office and they're looking at the computer, they can see what the client did historically, everyone can. So it really is helpful.
Another feature that we love to utilize from the quoting phase into the, 'cause, you know, Amazon takes pictures of your packages once they're dropped on your We love pictures and videos. Yeah. So for quotes that are $2,000 or more residentially, our sales representative, if they didn't meet with the customer on site because the customer just could not be there, because we require in-person meetings, our sales representative is attaching a video to their quote.
So they'll film a video as they're walking around the home show some areas that need to be focused on, oh, I know that you requested a, a window washing. I'm just, you know, I'm identifying some rust on the front sidewalk. I see that this is probably from your sprinkler, but I'm gonna put it into your estimate anyway because I think it's something we can take care of for you.
It'll look brand new. So videos go a long way because if you can't get in front of the customer, it allows you to still create that personal connection with them. Same with after you do the job a before and after photo, like being sent off with the invoice or a receipt goes a long way. So I love the fact that jobber will allow you to attach a photo of video or video under a job, but it's transferable to other areas of jobber, right? Yeah.
- Yeah. It's funny with that in terms of before and after. 'cause a client walks home and sees they're a washed house and eh, it's great. They're, they're done, they good. They're a good job. But it's funny how it's reinforced if you send them a before and after and they look at after dinner that night, they're like, oh, it was way worse than I thought.
Oh, and, and they appreciate it more with the photo because it shows the, the difference between before and after, rather than just seeing it like, I forget what it was like before it was clean. Yeah, - You really don't notice. Like you don't know how dirty something is sometimes until you see it clean. Another thing about before and afters is like, we collect a lot of photos during the quoting phase, especially when they're in person.
And if not, we do like a walk around of the house using Google Earth. So like I can physically walk around the house on Google Earth and get some data and stuff. This also supports you during times where a customer might be arguing something or fighting something. So if before a job, you know, you identify that there are two screens missing on the backside of the house and then you do the window washing and then the customer's like, I have two screens missing.
We can pull up their profile and say, I just want to ease your concerns. They weren't there before we started the project. You know, just, you know, so there are lots of benefits to being able to have documents on file. Yeah, - We use company cam for that. We love company cam for that. Tons and tons of photos. We can send the link to the client, they can browse through their gallery of photos and it's, it's a really nice touch.
I wanna talk about one more thing here about is there any way that we could go overboard with this stuff? Is there any way that we could try to automate our business so much that it just becomes a bad version of our company basically where we, where we're either bugging clients or we're just not delivering the right service to them. Have you seen any downfalls? Have you, have you made any mistakes on this, on this regard that our listeners could benefit from?
- It's hard to see the downfall because this is the level of service that I request. It's hard to get me on the phone, but I am gonna read your email and I'm gonna see the text message I have not found, I know that, you know, there are other generations that do prefer handwritten invoices and mail things mailed to them. But if I were to give you the count of them, I would say maybe two to three per year. And I'm willing to work with that.
I'm willing to break our process and have an admin send them the invoice and have them mail a check. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. But for the rest of it, there's no downside because everything is gonna continue to evolve. AI is slowly starting to take over. I don't even know if I could say slowly. I think it's quickly starting to take over. Yeah. And as long as you're not bugging the client and you're very strategic.
So if we send an email on a Wednesday to a client that, you know, here's your new estimate, we'll send them a text message two days later. It's not every day. It's not multiple times a day. I will personally unsubscribe from an email that I get multiple times a day. And there are companies that do that. Yeah. But we will not do that. So I do think that you have to be strategic in mapping out what you're gonna send as a text message.
What's gonna be a follow-up email, really draw out a follow-up sequence. I use chat GPT to help me draft mine actually. And then with your follow-up sequence set dates and times for me, I read some data that on Tuesdays through Thursdays, clients who get email blasts are more actionable and the email has to arrive right before they wake up. 'cause it's the first thing they check when they wake up or while they're on their lunch break, the email has to arrive.
So as soon as they sit at their desk or you know, whatever their work method is, they see the email. So the whole point is you have to be very strategic with how you're communicating with them. You have to write it down, make a plan, share it with your entire team, make sure that your crews are aware that you know, the customer's gonna get a review email about 10 minutes after you close this job. So I think that you have to write it down and document it
and keep working on your process management. Yeah, - And that's a great point, Christine. I'm gonna try to summarize these in three actionable steps here. Number one, communicate with your clients every step of the way. Number two is reviews matter. If you have two options and one company has a lot of reviews and another company doesn't, which one are you gonna go with? And then number three is upselling and packages are really important.
You wanna turn that $500 quote into a $2,000 quote with optional line items, packages, and upsell opportunities. Christine, thanks so much for being here. How do people find out more about you? - You can find me on Instagram at TheProcessCEO, and you can check me out on my website, the processceo.com. - Awesome. Well keep giving your clients an Amazon experience. They're better for it and we are too. So thanks for - Being here. Thanks Adam. - And thank you to our listeners.
I hope that you heard something that will make your business more profitable and more efficient, that will be better for your clients. I'm your host, Adam Sylvester. You can find me at adamsylvester.com. Remember your team and your clients. They deserve the very best. So go give it to 'em. We'll see you next week.