What ever happened to customer service?
 

I've called three landscape designers for an estimate on hardscape/landscape design. Two have zero phone skills, quite rude, don't listen and are not accomodating as far as scheduling a meeting. The third has great follow-up and phone skills plus wants to meet on my schedule. Problem is, he has no worker's comp insurance so I will not do business with him.

What happened to customer service and sales skills? Reminds me of the most talented field engineer we have. The guy can fix anything but we don't let him have too much face time with a customer because he'll invariably say something sexist and rude. No amount of Dale Carnegie training will help. We've tried.

It gone away in the last 10 years or so...

Has a lot to do with parenting (or lack thereof) and education....

Most contractors I've ever dealt with are social retards. Work has fallen out of the sky the past 10-15 years, so they've become accustomed to steady work no matter how they behave.

Legion is right. Last time I needed a contractor, it took a good 7-10 phone calls before one got returned. Finally, my gf dug one up in a Chinese newspaper and they were the best, hardest-working and cheapest around. Two of my friends recently bought landscaping companies and are making money hand over fist and not even taking new customers.

I'm currently trying to get my master bathroom redone. Contacted a referal service (Service Magic) got 3 call from contrators. They all came within a week to do an estimate. That was the week before Xmas. I have only goten one estimate, the other two are still making excuses. What a pain. I want this done but it is not a big job probabaly around 10k or so. But it they don;t want to do it just say so.

I also am having my fireplace refaced with granite and a new mantle installed this was supposed to be finished in Oct. Still no mantle or fireplace screen. Arrrgggg...!

Re: What ever happened to customer service?
 

are you an architect?

Part of the reason my land surveying company has doen so well is that I am very friendly and listen to my clients and potential clients.

You would not believe how many clients I have had come to me from other firms because the other firms wer just plain rude to them.

My how things are changing here now, there is no work and suddenly eveyone is very polite.

Re: Re: What ever happened to customer service?
 

Not an architect. I'm in medical sales.

It works both ways: Sometimes the client is out of control with his or her demands too. I have no problem with a company charging mega $$ as long as they deliver. Like Porsche for example.

Sonic

I don't know about the area where you live, but here in northern VA, the housing boom has created a huge market for contractors. There are not enough of them to handle the demand, so they can get away with being as rude and incompetent as they like.

I suppose eventually, the market will get saturated by folks who want to be in the business and they will have to actually try to earn business again.

The same thing is happening here in NorCal. So much work, not enough good contractors. Even the ones w/o worker's comp gets more work than they can juggle.