S01E22 - The Art of Dealing with Upset Customers: Insights from Two Moose Home Inspections

Transcript

Welcome to Moose Tales. I'm Jon with Two Moose Home Inspections and I have some short home inspection topics I want to share. So, let's dive right in.

if you got an upset customer. Okay. Well, it happens. And what are you going to do about it? Well, kind of depends. I mean, if they're giving you a call and they're really, really upset or they send you an email, real nasty.

And they're really upset. It's really, really easy to take the defensive. It's really easy to say, well, I'm certified. I'm the inspector. I found all these things. I told you this. I told you that. Here's what our policy says. Here's what you signed. Here's all these things. Here's what the code says. Here's all these you know; you can completely do that.

And I think that that will definitely make sure that you get yourself an insurance claim. Because the reality is a person is upset. An individual is upset. Somebody who deserves your time, your respect, your attention is upset. And I think the best thing that we can do as individuals, regardless of what industry you're in, is we can first take the time to listen.

So, what do we do to listen? You just zip it. You just quiet. You don't say anything. You literally say, hey, I heard you had an issue. You want to talk about it? Great. They start talking to you. They tell you the issues that they're having. The whole time, you can either be taking mental notes or take written notes, whatever it may be, to make sure that all of their concerns have been addressed.

Now, the thing is, is it your objective, your responsibility to come in there and say, you said A, B, C, and D? Here's my rebuttal to A, here's my rebuttal to B, here's my rebuttal to C, the answer is no. That is not what you're looking to do. Sometimes even just staying quiet and giving people the opportunity to process their thoughts, process their emotions is something that is way more powerful than you are pushing them to a conclusion.

If they come to a conclusion on their own of wow, actually, you know, come to think of it, I'm being a little unreasonable or whatever it may be. If they come to that conclusion on their own versus you being like you're unreasonable. It's like whenever somebody tells you to calm down, I'm just going to need you to calm down.

Can you call down? Calm down. I am. I am calm. Why are you telling me to calm down? It doesn't work like that. If you can make yourself more calm as the business owner, as the inspector, whatever it may be, make yourself more calm. Make yourself more quiet. Allow yourself to listen to what they're saying and to hear them completely.

Don't just be thinking. What's my rebuttal going to be? Listen to what their actual complaint is, because they might be complaining about something. But that complaint literally has nothing to do with anything else because perhaps they're having a challenging time, because money's a little tight, because they're now house poor, because they may not have the information, they need to know who is going to fix this.

How is this going to be fixed? Is this actually a problem? Is this as scary as I think it is? Because sometimes people are just fearful whenever they have a lack of education about a certain thing. This brings us back to our core values. The first that we have is professionalism first, followed by integrity above all. And lastly, an educator’s mindset.

So, whenever we talk to people, we start with professionalism. Great. We have integrity, meaning we don't lie, we don't manipulate, we don't do any of those things. And we finish up with educator’s mindset, which is I will help educate you on here's a great person to come and fix this issue that you now have.

Here's how you as a DIY can fix the issues that are now present inside of your home. Or here's the information that you need to understand that it isn't actually an issue. You just need to adjust your thermostat and then your house will be warm. That's how a house works. And it may be a little tongue in cheek and a little, you know, poking fun.

but not everybody who is a homeowner necessarily understands how a home works. And so explaining that, well, sometimes you need to turn on the air conditioning or sometimes when you turn on the heater or you have an inflow radiant heat system, whenever you make an adjustment on your thermostat, it can take 4 to 6 hours before you feel that.

And then because of the amount of thermal mass that has been stored inside your house, if you turn down that thermostat, it again will continue heating until it has dissipated and then another 4 to 6 hours, you're going to feel that change. And if a person is used to a forced air or maybe a mini split system that gives you that instant change in temperature,

they're going to think something's wrong with their HVAC system. And is there something wrong? No, it's just a different system that they're unfamiliar with. And if we would have come back with a really hard pushback about, you're such an idiot, how can you not know how this works?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A That would not follow any of our core values and B that ostracizing of a person pushing them away is just going to create conflict, which is going to create problems for business. And that is something that we want to avoid at all costs. So again, we just listen to them and then we educate if that's necessary, because there's something I want you to think.

Do they want you to feel it or do they want you to fix it? So, whenever somebody is talking to you in your mind, think about it. Do they want me to feel it, or do they want me to fix it? Do they want me to feel like, I'm so sorry, That's tough. I'm empathizing with you. yeah.

Wow. I could understand where you're coming from. Yeah. Whenever you put it that way, that makes a lot of sense. Or do they want you to say, Yeah, well, if you just flip the switch. Yeah. If you just do this. Yeah, if you call. Barb over here, he's going to come and he's going to make a repair. Do they want you to feel it or do they want you to fix it?

And then the real question is, what do they want you to do about it? What is it that you can do for them? Do they want money? I don't know. Because you think about it. You have all your pre-inspection agreements and the pre-inspection agreements explicitly state. Here's what you can get from us. Your money back.

That's the maximum that you're going to get is your money back. So, when somebody says, well, I've been in the house for a year in the heat or just, you know, needs a repair, yes, you're here needs a thermocouple, because from what I can tell, the pilot light is not staying lit. And I think that's a bad thermal couple.

So therefore, I think you need a $60 part. Keep in mind, in fact, the guy is going to charge you like 200. So, expect 300 bucks, give or take, and they're going to replace that thermal couple for you. They're going to try to sell you a new $20,000 system but expect yourself just a $60 part. So, they want money.

Is it my responsibility to pay 300 something dollars for an HVAC specialist to come out and fix that $60 thermocouple? No, they’ve been in the house for a year. That's not my responsibility. And I have everything to back me up 100%. But that's. That's my ace. That's my trump card. I have that just in case they want to make make a big deal about it.

But the reality is, is that once you talk through it, most of the time this stuff resolves itself.

Here's the one pushback that we get that always surprises me is somebody will say, well, if I would have known that I would have asked the seller to make the repair. And I and they would have like they would have made the repair if I had only know this, like, okay, the pushback that you could do to completely alienate the person and make them your enemy is Well, after I talked to your realtor, it turns out that you're buying the house as is.

You were only able to use the home inspection as a way to exit the contract. You were not able to negotiate anything based off of the findings of the home inspection and that the seller 100% was unwilling to make any changes or modifications. And it was already stated in the contract that nothing was going to come of anything with this home inspection.

It was literally just a way for you to say. Am I or am I not in over my head, and do I want to be out and a lot of times these issues that people bring up are minor or they pop up, you know, like months after the home inspection. But you have to keep in mind these people are people.

These people are individuals. These people deserve the respect, deserve the time, deserve You listening to what they have to say because you performed a service for them. They had expectations. They felt like the expectations weren't met. But again, if they come to the conclusion themselves, that's so much more powerful than you pushing the conclusion on them. Now, one of the things that we can do to hopefully counter some of these complaints is show them that we're people to allow our inspectors to interact with them during the inspection.

After the inspection, follow up with emails, make a phone call, do a video chat and say, hey, I'm an inspector, I'm a person, how are you? How am I? What are your dreams and aspirations? Here's a photo of my kids, whatever it may be, while they're at the inspection, while they're talking about the inspection, while they're doing anything in regards to the house.

What that does is it's no longer now Two Moose Home Inspections versus the customer. It is my inspector who I really like versus a problem that I'm kind of having and I'm somewhere in the middle and I think I want to side with the home inspector because like, he was really nice to me. And so, if you can be a person and you can treat other people like real people, you're going to find that you're going to have really good outcomes.

Now, after a couple thousand home inspections, we have not yet had any kind of insurance claim or, you know, anybody taking a small, small claims court or anything like that. You know, like knock on wood, hopefully that continues. But, you know, statistically we're due. But I think that you as a business owner, you as an inspector, you are just a person interacting in whatever career field that you're in.

If you take the time to treat people properly, you'll find that that goes a long way. And especially if you're there as their friend, you're going to find that giving them the information they need to be successful is all you need to avoid any kind of conflict. And with that, that's a POD.