What customer expectation caused you the most problems?
One expectation I wish I had defined earlier was arrival times. When I first started, it was easy to tell a customer: “I’ll be there around 10.” Or: “We should be there between 12 and 1.” At the beginning, that felt like good customer service. The schedule was smaller. The routes were lighter. I had more control over the day. As the business grew, specific arrival times became harder to keep. All it took was: one chatty customer talking for 10 minutes a locked gate a dog outside extra waste in a yard traffic road construction an accident a customer note that needed attention Suddenly the whole route was pushed back. And once you miss the arrival time you gave the customer, even if the work itself is done well, you’ve created frustration because the expectation was set wrong from the beginning. That forced us to change how we communicate scheduling. Now we set the expectation that we scoop from sunrise to sunset. Customers know their service will happen on their scheduled day, and they’ll receive an “on the way” message 30–60 minutes before arrival. That one change reduced a lot of unnecessary pressure. It also made the route easier to manage because we weren’t trying to force the day into exact arrival windows that didn’t hold up once real life happened. I think a lot of service businesses run into this. You create an expectation early because it feels manageable, then growth exposes how hard it is to keep that promise consistently. For us, the lesson was pretty simple: If the business cannot deliver it consistently at scale, be careful promising it casually in the beginning. What expectation did you set early on that later became hard to manage as the business grew?
42% of home services companies we scanned have flagged caller ID numbers
We have been checking the phone lines of home services companies across 15 metros — Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Charlotte, Nashville, Denver and others. The result surprised us: 42 percent run their main business line on non-fixed VoIP. That is the same number category robocallers use, and it is the category carrier spam filters downgrade most aggressively on caller ID. What that means in practice: when your CSR calls back a lead you paid $80-300 for, there is a real chance the homeowner's phone shows "Suspected Spam" or just an unknown number. They do not pick up. You assume the lead went cold. Most owners have never checked this because there is no dashboard for it. The carriers do not notify you. If you want to know what your own line is registered as, comment or DM me and I will run the lookup. Takes two minutes, free, no strings. I will just tell you what category your number is in and what that means.Are you using AI in your business yet or still “just curious”?
Where are you at with AI right now? A) Not using it at all B) Using it for basic stuff (e.g., emails, replies) C) Using it for ops (e.g., estimating, training, reporting) D) “We run everything through AI” level—share below how you’re using it! In this episode of Masters of Home Service, PhilRisher and ryaantuttle share real-world ways home service pros are using AI to: Speed up estimating and hiring processes Create ready-to-use marketing content Prep for the shift from traditional SEO to AEO and GEO Want to put these tips into action? Download our free AI starter toolkit (includes scripts and pro tips). Never miss an episode of Masters of Home Service. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When should you stop saying yes to every customer?
In the beginning of my business, I said yes to almost everyone. If someone was 1+ hour away and wanted service, I would try to make it work. At that stage, every customer felt important. I wanted the revenue. I wanted the reviews. I wanted the experience. I wanted proof that people would actually pay for the service. That helped us get started, but it also created problems later. After a while, the drive time started catching up with us. Too much windshield time. Too many miles on the vehicles. Too much energy spent servicing areas where we were not gaining any real density. The crazy part is that some of those customers looked profitable on paper. But once you added the drive time, route disruption, fuel, vehicle wear, and the fact that we couldn’t build enough customers around them, those stops did not make as much sense as I wanted them to. Eventually I noticed most of our best customers were coming from specific cities in our service area. That changed how I looked at growth. Instead of trying to serve everywhere, we started focusing more of our advertising and energy into our top 7 most profitable cities. That helped us build tighter routes, reduce drive time, and make the day more efficient for our technicians. Another thing I had to learn was that not every customer who is willing to pay is a good fit for the way the business needs to operate. For us, a good example was service frequency. We used to allow more flexibility with every other week and monthly service. The issue was usually customers with 3 or 4+ dogs choosing the lowest frequency possible. Even when those jobs were priced correctly, they could still take 30–45+ minutes per visit. That created a capacity problem. Our technicians could spend almost an hour in one yard, or they could service multiple weekly customers in that same amount of time. So we changed the offer. We removed monthly service as an option. We also stopped offering every other week service to customers with 3+ dogs. If someone has 3 or more dogs, they need weekly service. That change made the routes cleaner, reduced heavy yards, and helped technicians get in and out more consistently. It also forced us to stop building the business around customers who only wanted the bare minimum version of the service. That was a hard shift mentally. Because early on, saying yes feels like growth. Later, too many bad-fit yeses create operational drag. When did you realize it was time to stop saying yes to every customer? Was it based on service area, pricing, job type, customer behavior, or something else?What do you do with a customer that wants you to remove protection everyday?
i got an interesting one - going forward I can definitely put this in the contract but wondering how you guys would handle this. So we are doing a remodel and the bathroom is deep in to their house. I had told them that floor protections would be down for the duration of the project but we would clean them every day. After the first day, the customer told us to take them all down and they expected them down every day. Now we already demo-ed their shower so it's not like I'm going to walk off this job. This particular customer was also getting very hung up on language in the quote regarding stuff that usually gets sorted out onsite (like which tile is going in the back of a 12x12 niche) and we also had to get a change order to do some reframing because the wall framing was basically gone. Would you guys make an issue out of this with them or bite the bullet and take the learning lesson? I should have def put it in the contract but every time I tell someone the protections will stay down, they usually don't go back on their "word" or acknowledgment or whatever you want to call it.
What is your favorite time-saving app?
Hands down, my favorite productivity tool for Windows is Beeftext (sorry, Mac users!). As an executive administrative assistant and customer service representative, this app saves me countless hours of typing every week. What is Beeftext? Beeftext is a free, open-source text substitution tool for Windows that transforms short keywords into longer text snippets. Whether you’re tired of retyping email signatures, markdown templates, or your favorite kaomojis, Beeftext lets you create “combos” that automatically expand your shortcuts in any app that supports copy and paste. It’s lightweight, respects your privacy, and is completely ad-free—ideal for anyone who types a lot and wants to work smarter, not harder. You can learn more and download it here: https://beeftext.org/ The developer confirms it’s 100% safe and clean: https://github.com/xmichelo/Beeftext/wiki/Beeftext-is-safe Getting started is simple: https://github.com/xmichelo/Beeftext/wiki/Getting-started Pro tip: I use the equals sign (=) as my trigger key since I rarely need it otherwise. For example, typing =hi automatically expands to: Hi, it’s Rob from Wright Restorations Canada. Thank you for reaching out. How can I assist you today? Beeftext is very user-friendly, works in most apps and only takes a few minutes to master. Highly recommended for anyone looking to save time and reduce repetitive typing!
