In years of seeing a lot of different clients, I prefer to work for people who have jobs and value their time as much as they value their money. Today these ideal clients are typically dual income households. That means they work long hard hours and they tend to be first coming home late in the day.
The only way to win them as clients is to serve them the right way and on their schedule.
Think about it. When these choice customers come home and find issues at their home that require they call a contractor what is it they’re most likely to get starting around 4 PM? an answering machine!
Maybe you have a professional answering company, surely an improvement, but it’s not anywhere as good as answering your own phones. Why? Because you have a vested interest in the outcome and they don’t.
Also, you have more power to convince a Tech to either stay on late or come out and do a call where they are more likely to blow the call off altogether or go and just mail in their effort when they field the call or they get the message from an answering service. When this happens, it’s the customer and the company who are poorly served.
So, what’s the answer?