Video Transcript:

So interesting language here in a clip I’m gonna play. One of the contractors I know shared this video clip with me it’s in the snow removal as you can kind of see behind me I’ve got a picture of a backhoe moving snow of snow. No matter the service industry we all deal with outrageous clients and I’m gonna kind of play this clip and tell you how we would handle this in why not handling this and allowing a customer in your ecosystem and in your service basically area and services people is bad for not only your mental psyche but bad for your team and it’s going to derail your success moving forward. So like I said if you’re gonna be offended by some foul language turn the video off I’m gonna play this clip real quick and kind of show you what happened it’s about a ten second clip, the background on the clip is that the gentleman was not plowed out for snow plowing in the morning the contractor half-dried talked and was actually on the street about to plow the guy’s driveway within a few minutes and the guy lost his mind and the contractor that I talked to on this I handled it pretty much the same way I would recommend so let me play the clip and then kind of break it down but this is not uncommon in any service industry especially in snow removal when things get hot so I’ll play this real quick I’m curious your comments if you’re watching this live or recorded as well so here we go… Take a wild guess why I’m calling it’s almost seven o’clock and the driveway hasn’t been plowed this isn’t a major snow event there’s hardly three and a half four inches out there for Christ’s sake what are we paying you for get over here in plow this goddamn driveway. So as you can see here or hear at least this gentleman was heated using foul language we’ve had actually hit physical threats on our staff or myself as the business owner. Three main points here I want to kind of discuss why keeping this client is not a good idea and how I’d recommend handling it are at least two different ways I’d recommend handling it, curious you hear comments and questions watching this live or recorded but A in my office absolutely it is not even acceptable if a client or future client or potential client is going to curse or threaten my office staff or myself as the business owner it’s not a good fit I do not want my team subjected to that nor will it be tolerated but as diving into the top three here it’s not a good thing for culture, if you’re driving a positive culture that’s working as a team trying to give the best possible service it’s gonna devalue and in just a row that positive atmosphere that you’ve been working so hard to build we just can’t have this in our business so A it’s not good for your culture B it’s not good for morale especially in a snow or even lawn care especially when it’s really wet we’re gonna home-cleaning even in the holiday seasons where we’re working extra hours or doing our best to provide the best service a lot of times we’re in unsafe conditions and we’re really just putting it all on the line for the best customer service and then morale is already physically depleted because people are exhausted they haven’t slept in 25 or 30 hours the last thing we need to do is have a negative consumer potential consumer come in and pull that physical exhaustion that morale down so it’s not good for culture B it’s not good for the morale of yourself at the team . Three it’s distracting to your personal goals as a business owner or personal goals of the company so if we’re all driving to that end goal at least in my company and I know many other business owners that I talk to we take this personal because we want to be successful and to be successful we need to be fully focused on a positive goal where we’re at and where we’re going and by allowing people like this in your service arena that you service you are intentionally or maybe unintentionally making a conscious decision to allow other people to disrupt your culture destroy the morale of your team and basically derail your goals. One customer out of several thousand or several hundred or even a couple you know 30 or 40 clients depending the size business that can be devastating from where we’re at to where we’re going and driving in a positive manner. My recommendation the way we’ve handled this in snow removal, we know that even with the most intense screening in a volume gain we’re doing six hundred driveways in about 70 or 80 parking lots there’s gonna be a few of these that sneak in we’d over booked a little bit by five or six people and we would literally have myself or the gentleman running the business at that time have five or six checks in the armrest of the truck and when we received a call like this we were professional we would not get into a pissing match with them if it was for plowing we would service the driveway one last time and when we were done we would hand them a full refund no matter if it was one week in the season or two months in the season it wasn’t worth the amount of money that they had paid to have them disrupt our culture our morale and our positive focus on where we were going as a business and scaling out. So we would offer a no question refund in the contract there was some verbiage that it could be cancelled by any participant of the contract with a full refund so legally we were covered and it was amazing that when one of our team members caught this awful verbal lashing similar to what this gentleman just saw on this voicemail that the office staff was reinvigorated they knew that we had their back and we were not tolerating someone to come in to our service family and be treated that way so highly recommend no questions asked give him a refund. Now obviously if you’re into a installment contract maybe you give them what’s left the installment and a small extra piece for their pain and suffering to kind of hopefully keep them off social review. Next thing is it we go in and offer to pay the competitor of their choice to do the job and transfer the exiting money over to a competitor and let them deal with it or if that all else fails and they won’t take the refund or your competitor and if you’ve got to pay the difference for two extra bucks totally worth it at that point you write a letter that’s certified releaving them of the contract with refund and try to personally make it a good situation. Sometimes with these folks they’re unreasonable I’ve been physically punched in the face with some of these folks when in the early days people are crazy sometimes and you cannot allow those crazy people to affect your culture your morale and especially distracting you from your goals and the positive drive to where your growth business is now into where you want to be you can’t satisfy everybody so if you give them a full refund you give them the opportunity to take the what the refund would be to pay one of your direct competitors and pay the difference or if all else fails you just give a full refund with a certified letter to make sure they’ve received it and try to personally follow up if you can but don’t get engaged in an aggressive conversation so some of these folks no matter what you do you’re not going to win but if you’re not gonna win with them you’re gonna win with your team because you’re defending your culture your morale of your team and you’re highly focused on your goals of where you’re at where you’re going. Comments or questions drop them below I wanted to share that because that’s something that has definitely happened in my business and in just about every other business whether it’s lawn care, snow removal or home cleaning the crazies are out there we need to focus on the positivity or business and be up and above that. By all means when we’re going in if those red flags are flying when you’re qualifying a potential client if it’s not a good fit you’re better off dealing with it then and that having alleviating that problem before it escalates into something like this so calms questions down below and we’ll see on the next video.