I received a phone call yesterday afternoon. As Service Experts offers a 24 hour 7 day emergency plumbing service, the phone rings at all times of the day & night.
It was “Nick” (name changed for obvious reasons). He had a toilet that was blocked because excessive toilet paper had been flushed down it (aka he had a big dump).
“Of course we can help you Nick”. “I can dispatch a plumber to be on your doorstep within the next 1 hour to help you out. Just to let you know, we do have an after hours service call.”
I went on to clarify our after hour charges and accepted forms of payment upon completion of the job.
“What?!”, screamed “Nick” down the other end of the phone. “Really?!” – “Yes Nick”, I replied. “It is Sunday but I can get our on-call plumber to attend within 60minutes”.
“I don’t want to pay that much”, said “Nick”. “What else can I do?” I suggested that our service call was pretty fair considering it was Sunday and I could have a plumber attend within 60 minutes. If we weren’t the right fit for “Nick”, I suggested that he kept scrolling down Mr Google to find a plumber who could come out within a 60 minute time frame and help him out.
As the internet becomes more and more competitive in the plumbing industry and service seeking sites become more prevalent, we face this scenario quite a bit.
Customers want quick service. Like yesterday! They want a quality service and they want the cheapest price.
It is well known that out of the three – Service, Quality and Price, you can really only have two. If you don’t care about quality you can have a cheap price, but you can’t expect good service too. If you care about service, not so fussed about quality you will probably still pay a decent price. If you want good service and good quality, then be prepared to pay a fair and reasonable price for that.
In addition to “Nick’s” phone call, our on-call plumber attended to three other plumbing emergencies over the weekend. These lovely customers appreciated the prompt service and the fact that their problem was fixed so they could get on with enjoying the rest of their weekend.
I hope “Nick” got his toilet unblocked….
