Tuesday 2 December 2008

Commenting on another tradesman's work

Silver Saints employs a team of the most experienced handymen in London. But with experience and knowledge comes the ability to quickly spot shoddy workmanship done by other tradesman or handymen. The difficulty is pointing out to the customer that things are not right without sounding like a salesman trying to build up a job.

We went out to draught proof sash windows in a West London last week. When we arrived we found four of the biggest sash windows I have ever seen. On inspection we found that they were under weighted and as a consequence they did not stay open. The sash cords were also way to thin for the weight of the window. It was clear that the person who had last worked on these windows tried to save on materials costs and as a result had left the customer with very poorly functioning sash windows.

The temptation is always to demonstrate your knowledge to the customer by pointing out all the things that the other tradesman had done wrong. But this doesn't really help anyone. Instead we opted for a direct approach. We simply told the customer that the windows were not functioning very well and asked if she wanted us to sort them out and then draught proof them or if she just wanted us to do the draught proofing. We then gave her a price for both options.

She chose to have the repairs carried out to the windows as well as the draught proofing. In the end everyone was happy and we didn't have to slag off any other tradesman.

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