Farewell to those cold, dry months, and hello to warmth! As we say goodbye to chilly days and nights, plumbers are also waving goodbye to their busiest season. The frequent issues with burst pipes and malfunctioning water heaters due to the cold are now behind us. Looking back, do you feel that you were fully equipped to capitalize on this peak season for your business? What improvements could be made for next time?

In this blog, we’ll dive into three ways that you can fully leverage your peak season for business. That way, when September rolls around again, you’ll be ready to go!

1. Offer Top Tier Customer Service

2. Employ Digital Solutions

3. Foster Relationships that Encourage Growth

Offer Top Tier Customer Service

Offering top tier customer service isn’t optional if you’re trying to leverage your peak season for business. Unfortunately, good customer service is a rarity nowadays, but this fact is something you can use to your advantage. During busy season, your plumbing business can experience exponential growth by booking appointments efficiently, never missing a phone call, remembering the golden rule, and following up with your clients. When you offer top tier customer service, you immediately open the door for positive word of mouth reviews—and that’s vital during busy season.

Book Appointments Efficiently

One aspect of offering good customer service is booking appointments efficiently. Having a plumbing issue is no joke, and when your potential client is calling around to find plumbing services for their home, they’re also searching for peace of mind. It’s crucial that you’re able to quickly provide that peace of mind with an appointment that’s booked pronto! After all, booking an appointment quickly can make the difference between a one-time job and a lifelong customer.

To book appointments efficiently, you should offer your potential clients the opportunity to book your plumbing services directly from your website. You should also answer all of the phone calls that come through to your business, which leads us to the next customer service point . . .  

Never Miss a Phone Call

When we say never miss a phone call, we mean never! When you miss a call, you miss the opportunity to show off your business’s customer service and to potentially book an appointment.

Never missing a phone call can be difficult when you consider the fact that in the plumbing business, pipes aren’t just busting between the business hours of nine in the morning and five in the evening—and customers aren’t waiting for business hours to start making phone calls to have them serviced, either. You can find ways to be more available to your clients around the clock in this post!

Remember the Golden Rule

We’ve all heard it about a million times by now. It’s a phrase that feels like it’s as old as time itself: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” While it’s important to book appointments efficiently and to never miss phone calls, all of that is in vain if you aren’t treating your current customers and potential clients with kindness and understanding.

Have you ever experienced bad customer service while simply trying to get to the root of a problem? How did that affect the way you spoke about that business? It’s important to remember that the quality of customer care your business implements can be the difference between growing your business during busy season and losing business during busy season.

Follow up with your Clients

After a job is done, a follow-up call or e-mail asking about the service can enhance customer satisfaction and help gather valuable feedback. Is there anything your client wished you would’ve done differently? Maybe they have questions surrounding ongoing plumbing maintenance. Even if there’s no questions on their part, you can also use this opportunity to remind them about ongoing maintenance services and booking future appointments.

This aspect of customer service can be easy to neglect; once a job is completed, there's a natural inclination to simply check it off the to-do list. However, for maximizing your business during peak season, it's essential to keep the job on your to-do list until you've completed a follow-up with your client.

Is your plumbing business struggling in the area of good customer service? Check out this post that outlines steps to effectively revamp your business’s customer service practices.

Employ Digital Solutions

Even though the digital world poses several distractions to all of us on a day-to-day basis, there are strategies you can implement to enhance your plumbing business's presence online. By actively participating in the digital world, you make it easier for potential clients to find your services, which is imperative during the peak season. Three methods of employing digital solutions include making the most of social media marketing, tailoring ads to your audience, and making adjustments to your website's SEO.

Make the Most of Social Media Marketing

Every day, your potential clients are scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the like. Does your plumbing business pop up on your potential clients’ feeds? Are they aware of how helpful and knowledgeable your business is in the plumbing arena?

Social media is how you can begin to pose your business as an authority in the world of plumbing. Whether you’re sharing preventative maintenance tips or funny plumbing memes, it’s important that your business catches your audience’s eye. That way, your business will come to mind when their inevitable need for plumbing maintenance arises.

Tailor Ads to your Audience

Use customer data to target your ads more effectively. For instance, if you notice an increase in calls about frozen pipes in January, start your advertising engines in December. Tailor your messaging to the seasonal problems your customers face.

Employing digital solutions involves closely watching online trends, and this requires careful monitoring before taking action. Prepare in advance for your venture into the digital realm during your busy season!

Make Adjustments to your Website’s SEO

“SEO” is an acronym that stands for “search engine optimization.” When you perform a search on the world wide web, there’s a whole process that occurs behind the scenes to provide you with relevant blue links that will best answer your query.

When your potential customers search “plumbing services near me,” does your business pop up? Are there blue links to your business’s site that answer your potential clients’ plumbing questions? If not, you should consider optimizing your site for various search engines. (Bear in mind: Google is the most popular!)

If you have no idea how to begin to make adjustments to your website’s SEO, this post serves an excellent beginner’s guide!

Foster Relationships that Encourage Growth

To maximize profits during peak season, it's crucial to assess your company's customer service practices and enhance your presence in the digital landscape. After delving into your internal operations and the digital realm, there remains one more area to focus on: the human resources in your community! You can foster relationships that encourage growth by being active in your community and by sparking conversation with other trade workers in your area.

Be Active in Your Community

Get involved in local events and sponsor community projects. Maybe you could even do some work for a school for a discounted price. All of this increases your visibility and enhances your reputation as a reliable, community-focused plumbing business. It’s also a great way to network with potential customers and other local businesses.

If you’re committed to a job well done, there’s really no downside to this method of leveraging your busy season.

Talk to Other Trade Workers in your Area

What are other trade workers in your area doing to make the most of their peak seasons? There’s only one way to find out: connect with them! Since electricians and HVAC technicians encounter the same round-the-clock challenges as you, they're likely to offer valuable insights on how they maximize their busy seasons throughout the year. Remind them of the valuable insights you could offer them, as well!

To go about this, you could start a Facebook group for trade workers in your area, host a gathering at a cool venue, or even go door-to-door with your business card in hand!

Conclusion

As we close this chapter on cold weather, as well as the peak season for plumbing, it's time to reflect on the strategic adjustments that need to be made to truly leverage your next peak season. If you make it a point to improve your business’s customer service, employ digital solutions, and foster relationships that encourage growth, you’re guaranteed to experience a more successful busy season than the last.

It’s important to start employing these strategies now, as it’s impossible to fit all of this into your schedule overnight! Maybe you have a plumbing Instagram account to create, or maybe it’s time you start following up with your clients you’ve had in the last week. Maybe you can explore avenues for being available to your callers 24/7. Whatever it is that you’ll be adding to your to-do list, Dexcomm is ready to help you in any way we can!