How to Decrease Customer Attrition
Customers may only leave a Google review, refer a neighbor or friend, or call you back for more work if you meet all the criteria for home improvement excellence.
Improve Your Initial Assessments
Never upsell to make an extra $100 or even $1,000 on a client. Just give them what they need. A referral and online review can make you $15,000 to $100,000 in the long run. Only some jobs are going to be $10k to $50k. You need to make money but do it so well that your entire process is such a fantastic experience that it turns into years of additional work.
Improve Your Branding
Do you want to be known as the Amazon of your industry or just the guys you won the bid? Step up your branding and professionalism with uniforms, wrapped vehicles, and yard signs.
Uniforms Lead to Lower Customer Attrition
Many contractors wear different clothing styles—that’s an epic fail! With
61% of customers stating that uniforms make your company's appeal more credible, don’t think about uniforms; use them.
Vehicle Wrapping Leads to Lower Customer Attrition
Vehicle wrapping, known as “mobile billboards,” can cost you
$2,000 to $5,000 per vehicle, but it’s worth every penny. It tells the customer you are “all in” on this business. Who would you instead do your roof, gutters, HVAC, or plumbing… the wrapped vehicle fleet or the guy who shows up in a 1995 Ford Ranger?
Yard Signs Lead to Lower Customer Attrition
When a customer allows you to place a business yard sign while you’re doing work or possibly for the following week for a slight discount, you get free local advertising to their neighbors. This is a sign your initial assessment, pricing, and customer service are on point. Mark down these types of customers with high potential for referrals and online reviews in your Home Services CRM.
Your Pricing
Never be the lowest pricing on the market, but never be more than 10% higher than the highest company. Ya, it’s 2024-2025, and there’s inflation, and people are counting every penny. Still, in
pricing psychology, higher pricing is always more lucrative and gets the consumer to ask what you must do differently to charge more. Besides, you want bigger payouts and can only get bigger payouts by charging more.
Eco-Friendly Tax Credits and Public Relations
You may not care about recycling or global warming, but some people do. Simply find a way to safely repurpose your customer’s bad wood, gutters, etc Many local artists would love to have access to these materials.
You can also consider melting down or repurposing them with some kind of investment. The IRS may even give you a tax credit. For example, Virginia has a tax credit for repurposing materials within the scope of your business. Ask your CPA or whoever does your taxes and get write-offs and more eco-friendly customers at the same time.
If you do have something like this in place, put it on your website and in your marketing too!
Keep the Language and Music Clean
Many contractors will play music which is fine, but this isn’t a high school rager. Keep the music clean and your language with it. While the homeowner or business may not care, the neighbors may and those complaints to your customer won’t bid well for an online review, referral, or customer retention and reduced customer attrition.
Clean Up as You Go
Home Improvement is dirty, but what if you have to stop work right now? Will the home look like a disaster? What about people stepping on nails? Ensure your customer's happiness throughout the project and avoid liability for on-site injuries simultaneously.
A great home improvement team has demolition and/or removal teams, clean teams, and installation teams. It’s like Henry Ford came to your company and showed you how to run the Assembly line in terms of people and efficiency.
Customers see this level of planning and specialization, and they don’t want their home to look like a warzone ever, so clean up as you go along.
Entire Site Cleaning, then the Walkthrough
Every contractor knows you have to do a final walkthrough, but with a finely detailed cleaning of every nook and cranny, the homeowner realizes you are leaving their home cleaner than when you arrived.
Customer Satisfaction Follow-Ups
Call every customer 3 months after your service, then every 6 months until you or they die, lol. Ask them how their roof, plumbing, HVAC, or gutters are. This consistent follow-up will be the difference no other company does. Never ask for more work as a premise for the call, just see how they are doing and if they are super happy then ask them for a referral or review.
