If you own a plumbing business, you probably started out as a plumber and a good one. That resulted in more and more work coming in. Now you’re a business owner, manager, employer, and administrator, and you may not have the skills or strategies to enhance service efficiency.
Practical strategies to enhance plumbing service efficiency revolve around three areas: the use of technology, the workforce, and the customer base. Each presents potential growth and profitability limitations but exciting opportunities to improve and develop.
It’s a sure bet that every homeowner has had to call a plumber to fix a blocked drain, faulty water heater, or burst pipe. Whether an emergency or a planned upgrade, efficiency is key to your success. Let’s examine strategies you can implement to manage every job efficiently and continue to grow and prosper.
Technology and Human Resources Combine to Enhance Efficiency
As a plumbing service provider, you probably manage everything from minor residential repairs to installing large industrial plumbing systems. Irrespective of scale, the same strategies apply to enhance your service.
Technology-Based Strategies for Enhanced Efficiency
Due to innovative technology, plumbing services have experienced a remarkable transformation. The days of manual labor, hit-and-miss time-wasting, and crisis management are over, leading to huge advances in efficiency.
Job Scheduling Software
There are several software packages specifically designed for plumbing service providers. Most are multi-faceted and offer the following essential features:
- Task scheduling: This involves using a drag-and-drop calendar to track when certain tasks are started and need to be completed. The calendar allows you to allocate resources for each job and manage your team’s overall workflow.
- Route planning: This feature uses GPS coordinates to plan technicians’ driving routes to and between various job sites. It reduces fuel costs, traveling time, and vehicle maintenance costs and increases billable time spent on the jobs.
- Team tracking: You can communicate with each team member, estimate ETAs for each job, and dispatch the best technician or team to each job, including emergencies, during work hours. This ensures the most efficient use of the workforce and maximizes billable hours.
- Mobile communication apps: These apps enhance service efficiency by allowing your plumbers in the field to receive real-time instructions, update management on work progress, and liaise with clients.
- Inventory Management: Inventory control can significantly impact effective plumbing service. Your software should allow you to control supplies and equipment. You may have an inbuilt reordering program that provides timely restocking and reduces inventory costs.
- Streamlined estimates, invoices, and payments: Cash flow is a major problem for plumbing service providers, but you can easily solve it by using online templates. You can complete estimates on-site, and invoice software makes it easy to send invoices immediately to your customers, who can then pay online.
Effective Strategies to Enhance Workforce Efficiency
Your plumbing team is the company’s backbone, and you need their total buy-in to your efforts to enhance service efficiency—technology is only part of the solution. Here’s how you can get your teams on board:
Recruiting Quality
Your teams are often under pressure, and the individual members must work well together and trust each other’s capabilities. In our case, we use specialized training academies to source new recruits who are certified and committed to a career in the industry.
Technical Training
Plumbing technology constantly changes. Your plumbers need to be kept updated with regular in-house or external training sessions so that they can handle products such as smart home plumbing systems and install them confidently and efficiently.
Cross-Training or Specialization
Smaller plumbing service providers may want the ability to dispatch the closest team to a new job, so they need their members to be well-versed in all aspects. As you grow, having specialized teams to deal with specific tasks may become more efficient. Your training programs will have to adapt to the changing scale of operation.
Performance Recognition
The right software provides key performance indicators, including time spent on specific tasks, schedule adherence, revenue generated, and customer satisfaction. You must have regular team meetings to recognize and encourage top-performing teams and individuals. (The other side of this coin is identifying weak performance areas that must be addressed.)
Checklists and Standard Procedures
Before dispatching, provide teams with an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) document for common tasks and a checklist of necessary tools and parts. This will help minimize delays due to shortages and ensure efficiency.
Developing Customer Skills
Being a good plumber is important, but it’s equally vital that your customer is comfortable dealing with the team members and can rely on the information they share. Pay attention to customer relationship training and act on client feedback.
Staff Retention
The stability of your workforce is essential for an effective and efficient operation. To encourage team members to stay with you, you must stay ahead of your competitors regarding working conditions. Provide your teams with the best tools and equipment and a supportive work environment. Promote from within so that leaders are recognized and rewarded.
There’s a growing demand for plumbers in the US, but because it’s not perceived as an attractive option, the number of newly qualified recruits isn’t matching up. That makes it even more important to ensure that your teams are happy to stay with you and are well-rewarded for doing so.
The Customer’s Role in Enhancing Plumber Service
I touched on this earlier, but dealing efficiently with the customer deserves a closer look because it is such an important part of your overall strategy for enhancing plumbing service efficiency. Some vital aspects of dealing with customers include:
Making It Easy to Book an Appointment
First things first—getting the customer. Your business needs a strong, highly interactive website and an online presence on all popular social media platforms. One option you should offer your customers is online booking on any of those.
The advantage of online booking is that it’s available 24/7, not only during office hours, and can be responded to within minutes if you have a 24-hour emergency team.
Maintaining Transparent Communication
Once the appointment is made, keeping in touch with the customer is critical. Arrive on time, diagnose the problem, and provide a transparent estimate of the cost and time necessary for the repair.
Impressed by your polite, professional manner, the customer accepts your online quote and proposed timeline for the job. It’s now up to the team to get the job done, updating the customer via messaging or calls, until completion.
Getting Customer Feedback
Getting the customer to fill in an online satisfaction report will provide valuable feedback and, hopefully, include a referral that you can use to promote your services. You can also invoice the customer and arrange payment via credit card or online transfer.
Retaining and Growing Your Customer Base
The information you have from a satisfied customer can be used in several ways:
- Discussing the possibility of establishing a long-term maintenance contract through a follow-up call.
- Providing the customer with a regular newsletter regarding plumbing matters or community news will keep your company top of mind for future plumbing needs.
- Using their referral or positive feedback (with permission) in marketing material.
- Taking positive and negative feedback to adjust company procedures.
Conclusion
Being a great plumber doesn’t guarantee that your plumbing services will win market share as you grow. Using technology to increase efficiency, treating your team members as a precious resource, and winning customers with excellent communication skills are just some of the strategies that will set you above your competitors and on the road to long-term success.