Just catching up on my blog reading, and noticed this post on Seth's Blog.
We could do that, offer a prize to the nicest customer who called each day. Decide by a quick straw poll at the end of the day, and send them a small prize. There might not be someone outstandingly super-nice every day, but often there is, and we do talk about it, but we would never actually tell them "hey, you're such a pleasure to deal with, we really appreciate your custom", but why shouldn't we? I'd love it if I was that customer.
And, of course, it's great for word-of-mouth marketing:
"Where did you get those lovely flowers?"
"Oh, 0800handyman sent them to me because I am really nice"
Thursday, 28 June 2007
I'm back!
Ok, I'm back from holiday, and ready to blog.
First thing: why can't you flush loo paper down the loo in Greece? I wondered about this quite a lot, it is very odd. Which part of the system is so susceptible to blockage?
It can't be the loo itself, because they (appear to be) exactly the same as the loos you see anywhere in Western Europe.
The pipes within the house? But why? The villa we stayed in seemed fairly new (certainly less than 10yrs old, maybe less than 5), why use narrow diameter pipe if you are designing a modern building from scratch? (You do sometimes use narrow diameter soil pipe in the UK where you are converting an awkward space into bathroom, but then you just add a saniflo to mash and pump everything.)
I didn't risk testing whether this is just a myth, but I did ask our tour operator's rep about it: she said that every year some clients do ignore the instruction, and sure enough the drains get blocked. She (understandably) didn't know which bit of the system got blocked.
Could it be the actual sewage treatment system, not the house drainage? But surely most houses will be using a local septic tank, they can't all be on mains drainage on a mountainous island like Corfu.
I recall Yugoslavia (as it was then) had the same issue with loo-paper-down-the-loo. But of other countries in roughly this area that I have visited (Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Turkey) I am fairly sure none of them have this problem.
I couldn't really figure it out. Anyone know?
First thing: why can't you flush loo paper down the loo in Greece? I wondered about this quite a lot, it is very odd. Which part of the system is so susceptible to blockage?
It can't be the loo itself, because they (appear to be) exactly the same as the loos you see anywhere in Western Europe.
The pipes within the house? But why? The villa we stayed in seemed fairly new (certainly less than 10yrs old, maybe less than 5), why use narrow diameter pipe if you are designing a modern building from scratch? (You do sometimes use narrow diameter soil pipe in the UK where you are converting an awkward space into bathroom, but then you just add a saniflo to mash and pump everything.)
I didn't risk testing whether this is just a myth, but I did ask our tour operator's rep about it: she said that every year some clients do ignore the instruction, and sure enough the drains get blocked. She (understandably) didn't know which bit of the system got blocked.
Could it be the actual sewage treatment system, not the house drainage? But surely most houses will be using a local septic tank, they can't all be on mains drainage on a mountainous island like Corfu.
I recall Yugoslavia (as it was then) had the same issue with loo-paper-down-the-loo. But of other countries in roughly this area that I have visited (Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Turkey) I am fairly sure none of them have this problem.
I couldn't really figure it out. Anyone know?
Friday, 15 June 2007
I'm away, by the way
In case you are wondering why I haven't posted for a while, I'm away. Checking out the handyman industry here.
Friday, 1 June 2007
Manchester / Liverpool handymen still needed
Further to this post, we are still looking for the right candidates to work in our planned branch covering Manchester and Liverpool.
If you think you might be one of the people we are looking for, please complete the application form on our website.
If you think you might be one of the people we are looking for, please complete the application form on our website.
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Silicone sealant in bathrooms
We'd had a few call-backs recently on silicone sealant jobs. A very frequent job that we do is re-sealing baths and showers, where sealant has got old and mouldy and leaky. Removing the old silicon, and resealing with new is the sort of job all of our handymen should be complete experts at, so hearing that some of them weren't was worrying.
So, we had "silicone sealant" as the subject of our masterclass on Friday. Every fourth Friday we have our London team get together over breakfast. This is partly for social reasons - as our guys work mostly alone, they can go for days or weeks without seeing any of their colleagues; and partly to share knowledge and skills. And most times, we pick a topic for one handyman to talk about - whether it be a new technique, a new tool they have discovered, or whatever.
Stan and Don both gave brilliant demonstrations of their silicone sealant technique. Stan had a secret weapon, which he had mentioned before but none of us really understood how effective it was until we saw it in action. The secret weapon is simply an old perfume spray bottle filled with soapy water - spray this onto the silicone, and onto the tiles an inch or so either side of the bead, then (and only then) smooth it off. It is very, very effective, allowing you to produce a perfect smooth bead of silicone with ease. We'd used a mocked-up tile corner using black tiles and white silicone so any imperfections would be very visible. And even under those conditions, Stan's handywork was perfect.
So now we are issuing everyone with a little water-spray bottle, and now that everyone knows what 0800handyman silicone work should look like we hopefully won't have any more sub-standard siliconing.
So, we had "silicone sealant" as the subject of our masterclass on Friday. Every fourth Friday we have our London team get together over breakfast. This is partly for social reasons - as our guys work mostly alone, they can go for days or weeks without seeing any of their colleagues; and partly to share knowledge and skills. And most times, we pick a topic for one handyman to talk about - whether it be a new technique, a new tool they have discovered, or whatever.
Stan and Don both gave brilliant demonstrations of their silicone sealant technique. Stan had a secret weapon, which he had mentioned before but none of us really understood how effective it was until we saw it in action. The secret weapon is simply an old perfume spray bottle filled with soapy water - spray this onto the silicone, and onto the tiles an inch or so either side of the bead, then (and only then) smooth it off. It is very, very effective, allowing you to produce a perfect smooth bead of silicone with ease. We'd used a mocked-up tile corner using black tiles and white silicone so any imperfections would be very visible. And even under those conditions, Stan's handywork was perfect.
So now we are issuing everyone with a little water-spray bottle, and now that everyone knows what 0800handyman silicone work should look like we hopefully won't have any more sub-standard siliconing.
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Meeting with National Britannia / Safecontractor
So I went up to Caerphilly to meet with representatives of National Britannia (including their divisional managing director, James Ostler) to discuss the curfuffle I have created over our SafeContractor renewal.
I was actually quite impressed: National Britannia have put a lot of thought into what I have said, and took my concerns very seriously. Broadly speaking, this was the outcome of the meeting:
1. NatBrit agree that overloading people with information is counter-productive
2. Our risk assessments are very good, and do a good job of communicating information to our handymen
3. They would prefer to see more paperwork documenting the work we have done to produce those risk assessments (i.e. why we have chosen those risks not others; our process for identifying new risks, etc.)
This is also what the HSE hinted at: that the paperwork we issue to handymen is excellent, but we should have more 'back-office' paperwork to back it up.
NatBrit are going to re-audit our application and issue a revised list of additional things they'd like to see. I doubt if producing this extra paperwork will make our business any more safe, but it probably won't make it less safe (assuming, that is, that they don't ask us to issue more bumf to our handymen, just have it filed away for occasional review in the office) Once I know what new paperwork they would like to see, I will decide whether it is commercially worth the extra time and effort needed to produce it.
One question I did pose, which to their credit they did consider very carefully (and, I suspect, discussed further after I left) was this: "would you ever reject a risk assessment because it was too long-winded?". If one really does believe that over-loading people with excessive information is counter-productive, then it follows that you must reject some risk assessments for being too long. A 2,500 word document about, say, using a Stanley knife is unlikely to be an effective document and should be rejected. NatBrit didn't think they had yet rejected anything for ticking too many boxes, but maybe they will start doing that now?
I was actually quite impressed: National Britannia have put a lot of thought into what I have said, and took my concerns very seriously. Broadly speaking, this was the outcome of the meeting:
1. NatBrit agree that overloading people with information is counter-productive
2. Our risk assessments are very good, and do a good job of communicating information to our handymen
3. They would prefer to see more paperwork documenting the work we have done to produce those risk assessments (i.e. why we have chosen those risks not others; our process for identifying new risks, etc.)
This is also what the HSE hinted at: that the paperwork we issue to handymen is excellent, but we should have more 'back-office' paperwork to back it up.
NatBrit are going to re-audit our application and issue a revised list of additional things they'd like to see. I doubt if producing this extra paperwork will make our business any more safe, but it probably won't make it less safe (assuming, that is, that they don't ask us to issue more bumf to our handymen, just have it filed away for occasional review in the office) Once I know what new paperwork they would like to see, I will decide whether it is commercially worth the extra time and effort needed to produce it.
One question I did pose, which to their credit they did consider very carefully (and, I suspect, discussed further after I left) was this: "would you ever reject a risk assessment because it was too long-winded?". If one really does believe that over-loading people with excessive information is counter-productive, then it follows that you must reject some risk assessments for being too long. A 2,500 word document about, say, using a Stanley knife is unlikely to be an effective document and should be rejected. NatBrit didn't think they had yet rejected anything for ticking too many boxes, but maybe they will start doing that now?
Friday, 25 May 2007
Greenthumb
I love Greenthumb. These are the guys that spread magic fertiliser stuff on your lawn four times a year to make it look lush and green. Why is that so special? Why not just buy the magic fertiliser stuff from B&Q and do it yourself?
Because it costs more to buy it from B&Q (or any other DIY store), even before you account for your own time trying to spread the damn stuff over your lawn. And it takes ages and ages to painstakingly pour n grams per square meter over your whole lawn.
So, for £21 a time, a lovely chap from Greenthumb comes four times a year and treats our lawn. To buy enough fertiliser to cover our (quite small) lawn does cost more than £21. That is a great business. Imagine if you were a restuarant and you could provide your customers with a gourmet meal for less money than it cost them to go and buy the ingredients in the supermarket.
I don't quite understand the economics of Greenthumb, but I am guessing that:
(a) they are (obviously) paying a wholesale price for the fertiliser stuff
(b) they can spread it over a lawn in a tiny fraction of the time it would take the lawn owner, because they have bought (one) somewhat expensive fertiliser-spreading machine which it would be uneconomic for a single lawn owner to purchase. I've never actually seen Greenthumb administer a "treatment", but my wife tells me they are in and out in less than five minutes
(c) because they don't need supervised access, they can schedule their appointments to perfectly optimise (I like split infinitives; I think it is better to split than cumbersomely not to split one) their own travel time. So they do (I am guessing) a dozen lawns all within a stone's throw of each other, on a particular day, getting a good £250+ revenue per day. And presumably a lawn-treatment-dispensing person costs about £80 / day to employ (less?), minus (say) £5 a pop wholesale cost of the fertiliser, leaves you 40-odd% gross margin.
Then they charge extra for mechanical things over the winter (aerating and that sort of thing, which could easily add 50% to their annual revenue from each customer, if we are anything to go by), so all adds up to a good little business.
Plus they can charge extra to fix nasty things like leatherjackets (cranefly larvae, which live underground and eat grass roots, turning a lawn into a patchy brown area with some tufts of grass). Once you have a beautiful lawn, you are very, very ready to pay a bit more to keep it that way. (I speak as someone with a recently-cleared-up infestation of leatherjackets)
And, finally, I like them because they are focussed. They keep your lawn green, that's it. They don't mow it. They don't weed your flowerbeds, sell you compost or prune your roses. They don't do anything else in your garden at all. They just do lawn-fixing. There's a lot to be said for that - every additional thing you try and do inevitably reduces somewhat your expertise in your core area.
Because it costs more to buy it from B&Q (or any other DIY store), even before you account for your own time trying to spread the damn stuff over your lawn. And it takes ages and ages to painstakingly pour n grams per square meter over your whole lawn.
So, for £21 a time, a lovely chap from Greenthumb comes four times a year and treats our lawn. To buy enough fertiliser to cover our (quite small) lawn does cost more than £21. That is a great business. Imagine if you were a restuarant and you could provide your customers with a gourmet meal for less money than it cost them to go and buy the ingredients in the supermarket.
I don't quite understand the economics of Greenthumb, but I am guessing that:
(a) they are (obviously) paying a wholesale price for the fertiliser stuff
(b) they can spread it over a lawn in a tiny fraction of the time it would take the lawn owner, because they have bought (one) somewhat expensive fertiliser-spreading machine which it would be uneconomic for a single lawn owner to purchase. I've never actually seen Greenthumb administer a "treatment", but my wife tells me they are in and out in less than five minutes
(c) because they don't need supervised access, they can schedule their appointments to perfectly optimise (I like split infinitives; I think it is better to split than cumbersomely not to split one) their own travel time. So they do (I am guessing) a dozen lawns all within a stone's throw of each other, on a particular day, getting a good £250+ revenue per day. And presumably a lawn-treatment-dispensing person costs about £80 / day to employ (less?), minus (say) £5 a pop wholesale cost of the fertiliser, leaves you 40-odd% gross margin.
Then they charge extra for mechanical things over the winter (aerating and that sort of thing, which could easily add 50% to their annual revenue from each customer, if we are anything to go by), so all adds up to a good little business.
Plus they can charge extra to fix nasty things like leatherjackets (cranefly larvae, which live underground and eat grass roots, turning a lawn into a patchy brown area with some tufts of grass). Once you have a beautiful lawn, you are very, very ready to pay a bit more to keep it that way. (I speak as someone with a recently-cleared-up infestation of leatherjackets)
And, finally, I like them because they are focussed. They keep your lawn green, that's it. They don't mow it. They don't weed your flowerbeds, sell you compost or prune your roses. They don't do anything else in your garden at all. They just do lawn-fixing. There's a lot to be said for that - every additional thing you try and do inevitably reduces somewhat your expertise in your core area.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
