Guest Post: Red-Carpet Plumbing Company Makes It Great

The following is a guest post by Donna Cutting, author of The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red-Carpet Customer Service (Wiley, 2008). In celebration of this week's Emmy Awards, Donna and her book are on blog tour. They've stopped here to give us an excerpt from The Celebrity Experience about a plumbing company that knows how to make their service great!

If you live in Boston, Massachusetts, chances are you are aware of Hub Plumbing & Mechanical Company, Inc. Seven days a week, you can spot one or more of its five custom-designed service trucks on the road. You just can't miss them. They are large, and bright red with the company name and logo on the side, in gold. If you've been to the Dorchester Day Parade, or any number of community events, you've probably seen Hub Plumbing trucks and its plumbers proudly wearing their bright red shirts with the Hub Plumbing logo. And if you've ever had a leaky faucet, a clogged drain, or a broken garbage disposal, you might have watched in amazement as the well groomed plumber, wearing an ID badge and shoe covers, literally rolled out a red carpet and carefully placed his tools on them to avoid destroying your floor.

Yes, John Wood wants you to remember Hub Plumbing. Everyone in the company, including apprentices, has a business card. They give out slick folders, fun magnets, and dry erase boards. They've even been known to replace your toilet paper with a new roll bearing the Hub logo!

But John Wood knows something else, too. He knows that branding is not about the trucks, the carpets, or the toilet paper. It's about the service. If John and his team weren't consistent in the service they provide, the red trucks, the red uniforms, and the red carpets would simply be decoration. And if Hub Plumbing & Mechanical just relied on decor and didn't deliver the goods, it would not have grown from a one-man operation to a $1.5 million business with 11 employees in just six short years.

When you call Hub Plumbing, any time of the day or night, a live person answers the phone. (Once you have an appointment) you receive an email from your plumber. He tells you approximately when to expect him, what his specialties are, and all about his family and hobbies. As John says, "When people hire a plumber, their expectations are low. Our guys have personalities!

Did I mention the e-mail is in HTML format and a photo of your plumber is included?

The day of the visit, your plumber calls when he's on his way to the job. If he's running late, he will call in plenty of time to see if you want to wait or if you'd rather reschedule. Assuming the best, you would soon look out your window and see the bright red Hub Plumbing truck roll up to your house.

Once you have invited your plumber in, he puts plastic covers over his shoes to keep from marking up the carpet. And he lays down the red carpet with the Hub logo, and places his tools like surgical instruments on it. It's their Red Carpet Service.

So far, does this sound like any plumber you know?

John Wood tells me, "Plumbers have a certain reputation for not showing up on time, looking unkempt, and overcharging. Most people don't know there is any other way. I knew there was a way to look sharp and pay attention to customer service."

Copyright, 2008 Donna Cutting

This is excerpted, with permission, from The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red-Carpet Customer Service by Donna Cutting (Wiley, 2008)

Yesterday, the blog tour stopped here:

Beverly Mahone/BAM Enterprises

Terry Booth/Nashville Real Estate Blogger

Denise O'Berry/Just for Small Business

Today you can read more about Donna's blog tour

Melody Campbell/The Small Business Guru

Teresa Morrow/Key Business Partners

Tomorrow, the blog tour continues here:

Michelle Waters/ Watersweb Solutions

Pop Art Diva

Dawn Goldberg/ WriteWellMe

Comments

[George Krueger]

Great post! As the former owner of a plumbing business, I still enjoy reading about successful businesses in that field. We nailed many of these, but never quite got the appointment time down (we were working on it). An e-mail from the tech hadn't hit our radar; that's a great idea since people are so concerned about security. We got the others done by mapping out what we thought the ideal customer experience would be (based on feedback from customers and employees). Then we worked back from there to start creating the procedures to deliver the ideal experience. It works!

[Donna Cutting]

George,

Thanks for your wonderful comment! You have hit the nail on the head! It's about taking your customer's experience, step by step, elimating what they don't like and adding what will WOW them! That's what you, Hub Plumbing, and the other people/companies highlighted in The Celebrity Experience got! Bravo!

[Miki]

I love it. It's all about giving people what they want, but don't expect because they've been conditioned to have low expectations.

I'm also willing to bet that Hub's people have higher self esteem and a lower sense of entitlement than many other businesses (not just plumbers) have.

Interesting (sad?) that this approach counts as rocket science in today's world.