The Carpentry Show with Robin Clevitt, powered by Festal's new innovative eighteen volt cordless
range from drills to sours, including dust extraction, all powered by eighteen volt
batteries. Discover more at festal dot co dot UK. Welcome to The Carpentry
Show with Festal on Fixed Radio. I'm Robin Clevitt with you for the next
hour. On today's show, I'm going to talk about the challenges we face
with customers. Okay, it's not always as simple as all customers are tight
or all customers are clueless. The truth often sort of lies somewhere in the
middle. Sometimes things we do or don't do with our explanation can have unforeseen
consequences with our customers. So I've had my producers find some examples shared online
by tradespeople that have had challenging moments with customers, and I'm going to use
those to give some of my advice The Carpentry Show on Fixed Radio. I'm
Robin Clevitt on The Carpentry Show, and today I'm giving some on how to
interact with customers and avoid challenging situations. So to do this, I've asked
my producers to find some challenging customer interactions shared by trades people online. So
here's the first one. I've had a customer agree to a quote which clearly
states at the bottom that VAT is excluded. They're now saying, at the
conclusion of the work that shouldn't apply and they won't pay it, which is
thousands of pounds due to the size of the job. Now that to me
is scary, I mean really really scary, because if you get to the
end of the job and they're basically saying we're not paying the VAT and let's
say it's a ten grand jobs straight away, that's two grand. Two grand
that you've got to find because if you are VAT registered, you've got to
do your return and pay any VAT du regardless of whether you've charged it or
not. You can't go back to the batman and say, by the way,
they haven't paid me. The vatman is not interested in that. The
vatman just wants you to collect what is due to them. So that is
a real problem. And I think that that sort of dispute which we all
kind of get these disputes from time to time where people say, oh,
no, I didn't understand that was included. But the VAT, even if
it's a small line at the beginning somewhere on your estimate or quote. You
know, so this is the price five thousand pounds excluding VAT. The client
should understand what that means. If they don't understand what that means, that
isn't your problem. Okay, you should have the right to go back to
them, But you know how hard it is. They're holding the money.
You're desperate for it. Now. I would say that it sounds to me
like if you've been doing stage payments, so you've been going through the job.
Every time you raise an invoice to them, you'd say, this stage
payment is five thousand pounds vat a thousand okay, because it would be twenty
percent, and then they would pay it so they would know. So this
sounds more like to me, you've done the job, then you've invoiced them
and they've said, oh, we didn't realize we're having to pay the VAT.
I think that that is just out of order and the client is in
the wrong. The trouble with that is they're holding the purse string. Then
they might find a problem with your work and say, actually we don't really
like what you did there, and you didn't quite finish that bit of skirt
in right, and you're untidy and we're not happy, and then all of
a sudden you're into those things. So it is really difficult. So my
advice on that one is make sure that people, even though it's typed somewhere
on an estimate or an email, make sure you say to them as well,
this price is net veted. There's no VAT because I have to charge
that on top. So if it's five grand, it's going to be sixth
grand when you're finish. Alternatively, just price all your work to include the
VAT. Then the customer knows exactly what they're going to pay. So here's
another challenging customer situation. I do a lot of before and after pictures and
film elements of my work for social media. One customer has since found my
social media and asked me to remove the pictures, with the threat of legal
intervention if I don't comply. Now, this is very current, I would
say, in our world, because everything revolves around snapping a picture, putting
it on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube for the benefit of you know, marketing.
You might want someone to see what you've done and you might get another
job, or just because you're like sharing pictures of carpentry work with other carpenters,
you know, like we all do. So this is something that I
think we need to concentrate a lot more on. And even if when you
do an estimate to someone or a quote, and if you say, by
the way, we sometimes take pictures of our work or film our work and
this may be included on our social media platforms for marketing purposes, is this
okay? Get some agreement. It's a little bit like when you get asked
to do TV work. If you've ever been asked to do anything on TV,
the first thing you get is some sort of form to say, by
the way, we have the right to show this anywhere we want to anyone
we want, for the rest of you, in the whole of the universe.
And it actually uses words like universe. So I do think that you've
got to be so careful. And I have worked for people who just do
not want any pictures of their property, of their work, and I think
I really respect that as well, because a lot of people are private,
and especially if you've got sort of security issues or you don't want people to
see where you live or know where you live. So I do think,
yes, get checked, get your customers to understand that this is what you
do, this is how it works. And for me personally, because a
lot of my customers know I do social media in terms of educational videos on
YouTube and I like to do sort of stuff on Instagram as where it just
sort of goes hand in hand. They do agree with me that I kind
of say to I'm only doing your work if I can make a film or
do some pictures, and generally speaking, they agree with me. But I
also say I'm never going to take a picture of your address, of your
name, of your house, the number of your house, of your location,
of any drawings. If you do a picture of a drawing, make
sure their address is blurred out. Okay, there's more on the way The
Carpentry Show on Fixed Radio. You're listening to The Carpentry Show on Fixed Radio.
I'm Robin Clevitt, and I've been going through some challenging customer interactions share
by tradespeople online, and I've talked about how I would approach each scenario.
So let's get back into it. Here's another one I've quoted a job for
the total amount of seven thousand, six hundred and thirty five pounds. This
is exact because it includes labor and materials. They've come back to me and
said, let's just call it seven and a half grand would be over pricing
it to a more rounded but higher number. Have not caused them to haggle.
I was honest, and I got stung for it. Well, it's
human nature to haggle, and lots of people have got no shame in haggling.
Indeed, when I grew up, I was sort of taught to haggle.
It was the thing that you did, you know, went to the
market to buy a pair of boots and there would be thirty eight quid and
you say you take thirty five mate, every now and then they'd say,
yep, take it. So it was it was just the way. It's
the way of the world. And in some cultures haggling is what you do.
You're expected to haggle. So but I would say, when you're pricing
a job for the general public, especially if you do like you know,
as you say, price it exactly for what it is, labor and materials.
And they'd come back and said seven and a half. You just got
to go back to him and say, sorry, I can only do it
for seven thousand, three hundred and sixty five unless I sorry, I said
that when we're around seven thousand, six hundred and thirty five, unless I
take something off, because you can't actually, you know, unless you're giving
away your time for free. It's really difficult, isn't it. And your
point about rounding it up to a higher number, you can do that.
And I do know a lot of people if they expect someone to haggle.
I mean, look at double glazing. That's how it was sold years ago.
You'd get a salesman out and they would count your windows and they'd sit
you down for a few hours, tire you out, and then they'd say,
and I'll come up with a price, and it's twelve thousand, five
hundred and fifty thousand, and you'd go how much And by the time they
leave, it was down to five thousand, six hundred and fifty because they've
managed to call their manager and he said, we can do a special offer
just tonight if you sign up. So yes, haggling is one of those
things, so yeah, try try to avoid it if possible, and just
stick to your guns and all. So say to people, this is my
best price. Okay, when you give them the price, this is my
best price. I've got no movement on this whatsoever. Okay, So that's
my advice on that one. Here's another one. I've had to come off
the job for a few days due to a family issue. The customer seems
frustrated and doesn't seem to understand or believe me. How can this be better
approached or done differently? If you've listened to stuff that I've talked about in
the past, I often talk about managing expectations, and I think that this
is a classic example. So what do I mean. So you've gone to
start that job and a couple of days in, one of your kids is
ill, and your wife still has to go to work. So you've had
to literally drop what you're doing because your wife's actually doing better than you in
the paid job. And you often hear this, and you have to stay
home with the kids, which means that you just can't go into the job.
And you might be doing a bedroom redecoration or replacing some skirt and you've
got the old one off. It all looks a mess, and the customers
do get the hunt with it. So the only thing I can say about
this is manage their expectations in the first place, and if it is likely
that you won't be there, as long as you tell them that before you
say I'm happy to start. Your work is five days work, but I
might have to take a couple of days out because of family issues. So
I'll do a couple of days this week, and I may do two days
next week and a day a day on the following week, or I may
be able to get it all done in one visit straight away. The customer
can take it or leave it okay. But if you if you don't tell
them anything, they just think, oh, he's off doing another job.
They don't know what you're doing, and they try to contact you, and
you're busy with the little ones at home and you haven't got time to answer
their call. They think you're not answering their calls, and the next thing
you know, you've fallen out with them. So try to avoid that by
managing their ex based expectations. I always think that's the best way to go
there. There's more customer interactions to go through and hopefully learn from, So
stay with me here. On Fix Radio, the Builders station Fix Radio.
Time to crack on. This is the Carpentry Show with Festival. I'm Robin
Clevitt on today's show. I've looked at some cases shared online with a customer
and the tradesperson communications have broken down or have gone a bit sideways to see
what we can learn from them. So here's more scenarios found by my producers
online. I have a customer that's texting me and phoning me about their job
at unusual and unsociable times. They're a bit of a warrior and if I
don't reply, they get frustrated. I'm not sure if I should say anything,
but the midnight texts need to stop. This is a classic. If
you're self employed, working for the general public, or even working for sort
of larger firms, you do get sort of people just thinking you're accessible all
the time, and it's I don't think it's on really. I think that
that's the most frustrating thing. When your phone's beeping and you look at it
and it's from the client. You don't want to open the message, but
you do want to open the message, and if it's WhatsApp, as soon
as you open it, they know you've seen it, which is the worst
thing as well, and it can be really intrusive, and it can also
create a lot of anxiety. And it's the anxiety and stress that makes our
work sometimes not that enjoyable. So personally, I'm very lucky because after all
of my years of being in this trade and working generally for the general public,
so I mean people's houses, I've learned how sort of to make them
not communicate with me out of ours. It's not that I turn around to
them and say you can't text me before before eight o'clock in the morning and
after five pm in the evening. Of course I wouldn't do that. If
there was a real problem, they could do that. But I think what
I do is the fact that I can foresee when they're going to actually potentially
get in touch with me about something. Okay, for example, you might
have had a bit of timber landed late in the day. You haven't got
time to move. It's blocking the drive. What I will do in that
case is tell them that it's blocking the drive. I won't let them discover
it that it's blocking the drive. Otherwise they'll get back and they'll say there's
some timber all over the drive. What do we do? So it's little
things like that is predicting the question. If you think that someone is a
warrior, then you unfortunately have to hold their hand a bit and predict when
that warrior is going to start contacting you. And I think it is out
of order when you get a text at midnight or something like that and it
says, by the way, we're not over happy with the fact that this
doesn't look as we wanted it, because that's the last thing you need.
You're not going to sleep, it's going to keep you awake the next day.
You're going to be sort of unhappy. You're going to go to work,
and there's going to be an atmosphere. So I do think that you
need to sometimes tell clients what their worries are. So you need to address
them. If you think they're going to come in and think this looks like
it's going wrong, tell them why it's not going wrong and put their mind
at rest. So you've just got to sort of look after them and imagine
if you were in their shoes. I think that's the only thing you can
do. This one is someone on a large scale job. So I've had
other trades come and go on a house build. A neighbor is accusing the
scaffolders of damaging to their vehicle, damage to their vehicle. I don't really
want to drag the scaffolders into this. I'm not sure I even believe the
neighbors. It's a nightmare. Now. This has happened to me, and
it was terrible. I've said the story before, I'm going to repeat it
again. One of my best friends, Carl Downing, who's in Norway carpenter,
he was very sick, had to have a kidney transplant. He was
halfway through a loft conversion. He called me and he said to me,
Robin, can you just drop what you're doing and come and just help me
get my job a bit forever long? I'm just not capable of doing it.
I'm on dialysis now, sort of like for eight hours a day,
which is which is horrible. Okay. So I turn up there and the
scaffolder had put the scaffold up, so there's nothing wrong with that. And
we were going to be taking down a big gable wall and that involves a
lot of dust and a lot of mess, and right next to his house.
It was a nice house he had in South Fields in South London,
expensive houses. Next to it was a little mews and a little sort of
driveway. And I was only up on the scaffold for about five minutes and
this guy comes out of this how said. He looks up at me and
says to me, if there's any dust on this car at all, I'm
not happy about the scaffolds, any us on this car at all. I'm
going to sue you. Sort of think it was just so offensive, I
mean really offensive talking to me like I was the dirt on his shoe.
And I was like, look, I'm here to do a job. I'm
going to do my best to keep it tidy. I said, we'll put
some plastic on the boards on the scaffolding, will put plastic up the scaffold
handrails, and we'll put some stuff on to stop anything coming down. And
he was just a complete and utter nightmare, this guy. So if this
has happened to you and then someone comes to you and said the scaffolders have
damaged their vehicle, it's really hard to prove otherwise unless you've got pictures of
the vehicle before, or they've got pictures. I mean, it's just really
difficult. It's one of those things that you sometimes just have to take on
the chin, even though you think you're in the right. You can get
into an argument with them, but generally speaking, they're going to sort of
always want to win and it's just going to cause sort of frictions. I
think you just have to again predict if there could be a liabel liability sort
of thing with a neighbor, or sort of see if there's a possibility that
someone's going to just sort of like take take you on, so to speak.
So on my side of things, on my story a little, this
was a funny ending because he said to me this book. He pointed up
to me and as he was having a go at me and shouting, he
said, this is a very expensive car, as if to say I'd never
driven an expensive car anyway. A couple of weeks later, one of my
other customers live around the corner. I said to him, it's my anniversary,
Nigel, and he said, right where you're going and said I'm taking
Becky to Brighton and I'm going to borrow your car, and just just joking
because he had the most amazing Ferrari and he said to me of course you
can. You know, here's the I'll ensure it for you. Pick up
on Friday afternoon. So on Friday afterno picked the car up on the foot
and going straight to see Carl because he loves a car. Cheer him up,
take him around the block, pulled up. The only place to part
was outside. This muse gone inside, Carl being Carl, wanted to ask
me loads of questions about his building work. Before I knew it. Had
a cup of tea and I hear a little two outside. I've gone downstairs
and it's this idiot who sort of pointing the finger at me, telling about
his expensive car. And there's me with the key to the Ferrari and I
just jumped in the car. He looked at him. If I could have
just photographed his reaction when I just gently reversed and just pulled this car out
of the way, it was absolutely priceless. So anyway, there's a few
more. There's a few more scenarios to share with you, and I'll discuss
these before the end of the show. Fixed Radio. That's about it for
today's Carpentry Show, where I've looked at some challenging customer interaction. Share by
tradespeople and talked about what I would have done in each situation, so one
or two final ones. It's so frustrating to invoice the customer on a Monday
and by Friday they've still not paid. I wish there was a way to
create a sense of urgency and hurrying it along. Yes, of course getting
paid is the most important thing. So what do I do. Well?
I always invoice weekly, so if I'm doing a fairly big job, they
get the invoice or the application for payment is called in our case, on
a Thursday, and they have to pay it by Friday, and that was
agreed when we started the job. So they're generally on the bigger jobs.
And even if I'm doing a smaller job like the job I've just completed,
which was only three and a half day's work. Before I started that work,
I said that I generally invoice for a small job like this, I
invoice it on completion and it's paid on completion, so you pay it on
the same day, and they agreed it. So I think that once you've
got that out of the way, in the sort of period where you're agreeing
and everyone's friendly and it's all nice, they can't wait to get the work
done. You can't wait to go and do it then. I think that
that's really important. So you just make sure you confidently say, by the
way, this is the deposit if you need to take a deposit. This
is how much you need to pay me halfway through the job if that's the
case, and this is how much you'll pay me on the day I finish.
And people generally do do that. There's no excuses. What you could
have a card reader now, or you could It's all online banking. I
mean everyone's got access to online banking. Even my mum who's about seventy eight.
She's a wizard with online banking. So there are no excuses as far
as I'm concerned. Okay, So yes, if you invoice them on the
Monday and by the Friday they haven't paid you, you probably waited too long.
I would say, even on the Tuesday, you should send him a
message saying how are we getting on with the payment? Have you had a
chance to go onto you online banking yet? Or something like that, ask
a question. If they ignore you, go out and knock on the door.
But that's my advice on that one. So this one a customer got
a quote from me, and then I never heard back. Now years later
they want to go ahead with the quote as agreed. I don't know whether
to supply a new quote with adjusted amounts or leave it as they seem like
time wastes anyway. Well, straight away, the term quote means that's a
fixed price. So providing you say on your quotes, this quote is only
valued for an amount of time, if it's thirty days, then I've never
you've got any problem here. But if you don't put that on your quote,
and a customer comes back to you after a few years and said,
you know, you said you do our love conversion for thirty five thousand,
we'd like you to go ahead and do it for thirty five thousand because that's
what you quoted. You do have the right to say, actually, I
don't want to do your job because I can't do it for thirty five thousand.
It's at that point then they've got the option of saying how much can
you do it for? And you can then say, well, actually,
with inflation and material rises, shortage of labor, my times, my rates
have gone up as well because I've got a growing family and lots of commitments
is now fifty five thousand. That's up to them, so yeah forget.
If you think their time wastes as well, then definitely don't do the job.
So that's it for today's carpentry Show. You can hear this show again
from ten pm with more great music here on Fixed Radio. This and all
of my previous shows are available as podcasts from wherever you get them online.
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