Let me tell you something—if Home Depot does it, you should, too. When I buy something (weekly) from Home Depot online, a few days later Home Depot emails me a customer evaluation form that asks me to judge the quality of my purchase. I liked this idea so much that I adapted it for my own company and called it the Mover Audit Form. While mine was specifically created for the office moving industry, you can modify it for your own business, then use it to ensure that you’re providing the level of service your sales team promised. It’s also a unique marketing tool. Let me explain…
We required all our supervisors to complete the audit form before departing the office buildings where they worked. Specifically, after they loaded their truck(s) and before they drove to the new building, the supervisor filled out the form. Likewise, he filled out another one at the end of the job before returning to our base.
The audit was a tool that ensured our crews followed our standard operating procedures during the move. Among the many questions the form asked were:
If all we did was file the completed forms, supervisors probably would have routinely answered ‘yes’ to all the questions and gone their merry way. But that’s not what we did. We mailed their audits to the respective building managers, and the supervisors knew it.
Here’s where the smart marketing came into play. After every move, we stapled our sales manager’s business card to the completed audit and mailed it without a cover letter to the building managers. Most recipients were confused when they got the form for the first time, and it usually triggered a call to our company asking if we had mailed the form by mistake.
At that point, our sales manager always replied, “We hope it’s okay with you that we sent it. As Certified Office Movers® by the International Office Moving Institute, we are required to act like guests in ‘your house’ so that we’ll be invited back. To prove that we don’t disrupt your building and minimize the risk of damage while we’re there, we’re required to complete the audit and copy you to verify that we ‘walked the walk.’ If you ever feel that we didn’t do all the things we said we did, please let us know so that we can take corrective action.”
If you were a building manager, especially one who didn’t like movers in general because they disrupted your tenants and tore up your building, how do you think you’d react to receiving an audit from our company every time we set foot in your building?
Thanks to that form and our follow-up, our movers always acted professionally inside the office buildings during our moves, and most building managers recommended our company to their tenants.
Whether you’re a mover or other type of service provider, do you realize how simple it would be to adopt this process? When asked, most people don’t like to evaluate their service providers unfavorably at the completion of the job while the crew is standing over them because it’s intimidating. People don’t generally complete emailed surveys, either. However, when they receive a completed favorable audit by the service providers’ corporate days later, they will respond—positively if it’s accurate. If it’s not, they’ll be inclined to contact corporate and complain about the service.
Never be afraid to ask for feedback from your customers. In my opinion, either way it’s a win-win for everyone—the building managers, your customer, and your company.
Among the many questions: Did you install extensive building protection including Mat-A-Doors® to protect the elevators and main entrance doors and Polynite® to protect the carpet?
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For more information on our online office moving training, please visit
https://www.officemoves.com/training/index.html or call Ed Katz at 404.358.2172.
