Welcome to our forum.
Anything is possible, for a price. I'd hate to have to pay the price for a "we promise under all situations to have a tech at your house at an exact moment". Imagine the overstaffing and resulting labor rates that such a system would require.No thanks.
Are you serious? How do you account for traffic, A job that takes longer than expected. Any thing that happens to a tech on an everyday basis. Unless a tech is underbooked and has the ability to sit and wait for 30 miniutes after every job, then the concept of "to the miniute" is unrealistic.
Is your tech's time any more valuable than the customer's? If not, why is it fair to expect them to schedule to be home for 2-3 hours, but not for the tech to sit for 30 minutes?!
Hey Stuart, start me at 85K a year plus a company truck (maybe a another Hummer), paid vacation, 401K, and pay half my medical and I would consider Colorado.
Lose the Redneck accent, buy a better bike that doesn't hurt my ears to be around, stop playing with guns, seek help for your Nascar addiction and leave the X-Box out there and I MIGHT consider everything but the Hummer...I can't afford the gas or parts on two of them!Oh! I almost forgot...you would probably have to lose that pair of ugly old black crocs so I'm sure it wouldn't work for you!
...Who do you think would end up paying for that...
I have to say I'm surprised that a thread about customer preferences has taken this turn. I'd think you'd be more interested in how Gary is able to make scheduled appointments work, than a rationalization of current approaches. I didn't want to sidetrack this thread, but since it is yours, and you are interested in this tangent, I'll keep going. No one would hang out at the Mechanics shop when you get your car worked on and if it takes longer than expected you wouldn't expect them to reimburse your time would you? I wouldn't begrudge someone taking the time to do the job correctly. What I wouldn't care for is having them know I was waiting, but then go lunch before starting my car, and not let me know so that I could go eat too. Or worse yet, be backed up when I come in for an appointment, but not tell me so I can make other arrangements. I used to go to a nearby tire shop for oil changes that didn't take appointments, but always told me it would be a 15-30 minute wait. After a couple of 1 - 2 hour visits I gave up on them. If they had just been realistic, I would have come back another time, and I'd still be a customer. Not communicating also cost them a sale of a couple of sets of tires. IMO, Respect for the customer, their time, and communication are probably as important as technical skill in creating a positive service experience.When you have to call a professional for service it sucks to have to be at the mercy of their schedule but that's kind of how the system works. I've often complained about having to wait an extra hour at the Dr.'s office so that I could pay more than my rent to see him one his schedule but I go anyway. Funny you should bring that one up. My wife's clinic has gone to a new scheduling system where they estimate the time required for a patient's stated reason for the visit more accurately. They also leave more blanks in the schedule, so that there are slots available for same-day appointments, and allowing physicians to spend more time with a patient if necessary without backing up the schedule. When those blanks aren't needed, the physicians use the time for charting, paperwork and study -- things they usually left for the end of the day. Their appointment day runs longer, but their actual time worked remains the same. The patients are much happier, able to get in to see the doc on the same day for urgent needs, able to see on a board how close the doc is to on-time when they check in, and rarely waiting more than a few minutes. The staff is also happier, not constantly behind, and with some flexibility in their day. The downside is that routine visits often are scheduled out two weeks or more.What we are trying to accomplish is a happy medium where we can fix the problem while trying to appease the customers schedule...If your worried that you need to be there because you don't trust them to do the service correct without you home your probably using the wrong service.I like to be around when service is done on site, for the reasons I stated before, and because I prefer not to have strangers in or around my house unattended. You know and trust your service people, the customer may not have met them before. I don't prejudge someone's service ability by their appearance -- but I may be a little concerned about a seedy type I've never met before roaming my property.I still think that unless we are able to charge enough to employ more tech's per customer base there is no other way to do this than to give a "window of opportunity" and unless special circumstances apply, like an indoor spa or power in the house I think that the only fair way to do it is charge more if we need to meet a specific deadline.If it is a busy day, I would have no problem paying a reasonable charge for being able to schedule a time, rather than sit home waiting for someone to show up. As I said, I think the best compromise is establishing a window that both sides can plan around, but then communicating so no one is sitting around longer than necessary.We are unique in the respect that we drive all over the mountains, sometimes the tech doesn't have cell service and often we are held up by weather. In most cases we can't expect things to go perfectly enough for us to be somewhere at a dead set time unless it is in the first few calls of the day.Obviously in some situations, a "call before we come" approach may not always work.Here I've been going on about wasting time, and I've spent way more time here than I should.