Nowadays more than ever, what’s most important is not what we say about our businesses, but what our customers say.

If your home improvement business is already established and respected, you’ve obviously gained a reputation for doing great work. The challenge now is retaining the desire that got you there in the first place and not “resting on your laurels”. Getting complacent will jeopardise all the good work you’ve done, because it only takes a few unhappy customers to leave their trail online and you’ll probably lose potential business.

As your business grows you may start putting your efforts into guarding your reputation, rather than continuing to further enhance your customers experience of your business. You got your reputation by producing great results, by giving your customers more than they expected and that’s how you carry on building.

So instead of looking to protect your reputation, a better strategy is to continue to think about where you can continue to improve your service. There’s always areas where your customers’ experience can be improved. There are non negotiables in your area of business that need to be provided irrespective of cost. For example there’s an expectation you’re good for the job, you’ll turn up when you say, ensure the safety of anyone in the property, you won’t
cause any damage etc.

To explain what I mean, consider flying with Emirates or Ryanair. Their planes MUST both meet world aviation safety regulations to be in business. That said they provide very different travelling experiences at every interaction with their
businesses – sales, in flight service, seating, decor etc.

So whilst the suggestion isn’t necessarily to charge more for going the extra mile, what you do that goes beyond the minimum expected, will make your business stand out. Whether relatively new or an established home improvement business, sometimes the smallest actions can make the biggest impact. Those little touches beyond your customers expectations can have customers raving about you.

So how can you do this?

There’s a hundred ways you can improve the level of service you provide your customers at every stage of what in marketing is called the customer journey. From their very first interaction with your business to completing the job.
For example you could call, message, email a couple of weeks before you’re due to visit to confirm everything is still in order and send them all the details they need. You could arrive on site with some kind of thank you gift for their customer or call after you’ve completed the job to see how things are.

It’s the little things beyond the norm that will have you stand out and have people feeling positively inclined to rave about you on and offline. So you could start by brainstorming (with your team if you have one) a list of 10 ways you can go beyond your customers expectations/the trade norms. Then test them and see how your
customers react.