As your steel building business grows, it’s vital to learn how to provide professional customer service. Not only is it beneficial to your customers, it further benefits your business, allowing you to grow even more. Building a reputable reputation is just as important as building a top-notch pole barn or steel building. Here are a few tips for providing stellar customer service as a steel building contractor.
Have a Pole Barn and Steel Building Portfolio Ready to Show
When customers are looking for a steel building contractor, they want to know the quality of your work. Having a professional portfolio prepared with all of your past projects (or at least your very best projects) is a great way to showcase your work and start a conversation on what you can do for them.
Actively Communicate with Both Leads and Customers
Leads aren’t customers — yet. But they could be soon with amazing customer service! As such, you should provide the same professional customer service and actively communicate with them just as you would with any other customer. The best way to do this is with a regular email newsletter keeping them up to date with your current offerings and whether or not you’re available to book new projects.
Communicating with current customers on the status of their pole barn or steel building’s construction helps them to stay informed and grows trust between you. This trust and reliability may serve you later — in case the customer decides to build another pole barn or steel building with you or add on to their current structure.
Be Ready to Answer Customer Service Questions
Information about the pole barn and steel building industry isn’t exactly common knowledge. So naturally, your customers will come chock full of questions. And as the steel building expert, you should be prepared to answer.
If for whatever reason you don’t know the answer, assure your customer that while you don’t know at that time, you will research and get back to them. And then do so — always following up with unanswered questions.
If there are general questions you get often, an up-to-date FAQ page on your website is another way to provide professional customer service, even if you’re not directly answering the questions yourself.
Respond to Reviews
If you can, always respond to reviews – both positive and negative ones. Even once the pole barn or steel building are complete, customer follow up is vital for many reasons.
For starters, responding to positive reviews shows you are appreciative of kind feedback and also encourages return customers.
It’s almost more important to respond to negative reviews, however, and to respond appropriately. Some customers just need to be heard, and the best way is to offer to remedy the situation as soon as possible. This shows new potential customers that you’re willing to go above and beyond to set a problem right, should one occur.
In other cases, it’s not usual for an unruly customer to write an unjustified bad review, but they can still be detrimental to your business, especially if you don’t respond. A professional response clarifying the situation and how it was attempted to be fixed allows you to share your side of the story and lets other customers see that the bad review may not have any merit behind it.
Offer Steel Building and Pole Barn Financing for Customers
One of the top challenges customers face when building a pole barn or other steel building is finding adequate, fast financing for the project. By partnering with HFS Financial, you can provide great customer service by offering the pole barn loans and steel building financing they need in a much more streamlined process. All it takes is a 60-second application on their part, and customers can get full funding within a few days. No delays for them, no delays for you. Now that’s top-notch customer service! Learn more about contractors partnering with HFS Financial today. “You Dream It, We Finance It.”