Edmonton Electrical Contractor Shares How to Identify Awful Customers: Hidden Warning Signs

Edmonton Electrical Contractor | Contractor Share How to Identify Awful Customers: Hidden Warning Signs

Some of these people, or you just know. Again, go with your gut. Go with your gut. This is not the guy you want to deal with. That’s one thing that we’ve talked about in the company before, is sometimes it’s okay to fire a customer.

All right, everybody. Hey, welcome back. This is Halo Power, and I’ve got Kevin here, your Edmonton electrical contractor, who is one of the owners of Halo Power out of Sherwood Park. And tell me a little bit about yourself, man. What’s what’s going on? What’s new with Halo Power today?

Well, you know, we’re really busy with service upgrades right now. Tis the season with service upgrades, panel changes, and yeah, just lots going on. We’re looking after the people in Sherwood Park in Edmonton area, and yeah, things are good.

Right on. So, today you wanted to talk in particular about the different types of customers.

Okay. All right. So, this one might upset some people. Maybe, maybe not. But there are, you know, anybody who’s been in the trades for any amount of time experiences these three or four different types of customers. So the three different types of customers, when you sent this to me I was like, oh yeah, for sure, that’ll be a really good one.

So just so everybody is understanding, on Halo Power you guys have had your channel for a while. Everyone knows you guys are an electrical contractor that works out of Sherwood Park Alberta, but you do all of Edmonton and area as well.

Edmonton. We’ve traveled as far as Jasper, Grand Prairie. Yeah, quite a bit, you know, right? Because you guys do Generac generators, right?

Without us being a Generac dealer, we’re willing to travel because, there’s a lot of electrical companies out there right now that are dabbling generators, but they’re not Generac certified. So at the end of the day, customers are looking for someone they can trust and build a relationship for the long haul.

Perfect. All right, let’s get into customer type number one. So, these customers are the ones who want everything at the cheapest price. The cheap skates.

Oh my god. Yeah.

So, all right. Tell me tell me about the customer type number one.

Well, you know, the the phone rings and you know right away what you’re dealing with because you’ve already got somebody explaining, you know, what we’re going to do for them, how much it should cost because they’ve already done their own research, or they’ve done a Google search on how much it should cost to change a panel.

Sure. They did a chat GPT search and—

Oh yeah. And, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at some of the numbers that comes back when you do a search for this online, but it’s very, very misleading.

So, yeah, we get these customers that expect the world for the absolute cheapest price. Even on the quote side, I always chuckle because, you know, they want a breakdown of a bill of materials and breakdown of the labor and that. And that’s just not what we do. I mean, no, there’s two breakdowns: here’s the price to do it and here’s the price not to do it, which is zero.

So you know, this is a rat. So we’ve learned, you know, you don’t know in the beginning, you just want to get busy and get to work and—and these customers are nothing but a nightmare.

Yeah. Typically the people who want to pay the least are the biggest pain in the butt.

Absolutely they are.

Like I’ve— that’s what I found when any time that I, you know, was working as an electrician. It was the same thing. The people who are always the most picky, the most, you know, nitpicky on the job and nitpicky about the billing and everything, they wanted everything, but they didn’t want to pay for it.

Here’s the thing, like when customers are more than happy and more than willing to pay for them, you’re willing to go the extra mile for them because, like, you’re able to, you know, feed yourself and feed your electricians and your family and all of that. And, you know, for me, like, the customers who usually pay more are the better customers. They usually don’t have any issues or any problems. They’re not nitpicking you. It’s the people who are broke that cause you so much headache. But they got to get the work done. So how do you handle that situation?

You know, sometimes we’ve got to vet our customers over the phone because I’ve lost count of how many times I didn’t ask the right questions while I had that customer on the phone, be it about budget or what their expectations were or that sort of thing. And yeah, there’s been many times now where, well, I’ll just straight up ask customers, you know, what are you—do you have a budget in mind for this type of project? And—and sometimes, “Well, I don’t know,” or, you know, “My brother-in-law said he can do it for $200,” and it’s a $1,000 job, or, you know, “My neighbor’s going to come over and do it, and I’m just trying to compare prices,” and that sort of thing, right? So the big thing is betting, asking the right question, because in the beginning, you know, you want to help everybody and you feel kind of guilty, but I learned very quickly that, you know, being a charity doesn’t get us very far in business and, you know, we love what we do, but I mean, at the end of the day we got mouths to feed with the company and we got to be profitable so we can be around for for another 10 years.

Yeah.

So vet the customer and just tell them, “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’re a good fit for you.”

Yeah. And, you know, most people don’t actually get upset about it. They just, you know, they’ll straight up say, “Okay, well, I appreciate it.” Because the worst thing you want to do is get into a job and think it’s going to go okay, even though your gut is telling you this guy’s going to be a pain in the butt.

Yeah.

And to try and collect from later.

Well, and that’s the other thing, too, right?

Yeah.

You got to get paid.

Yeah.

You got to get paid. So, yeah. So, we stay away from those customers.

Well, it is a business, not a charity. If you guys want, you know, good work done at a reasonable price, like Kevin’s more than happy to come out and do the work for you. If you’re looking for the lowest possible price, look elsewhere.

And that’s it, right? We’re not in business to compete with the Kijiji guy or your neighbor.

You know, and and another video we’ll talk about the the Facebook—

Oh, the face—well, the Facebook groups.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. I’ve got a whole other thing about hubby can electric.

Okay.

Yeah, hubby can do that.

We’ll save that. We’ll be hubby. We’ll save that for another day. All right. So, let’s talk about the know-it-all, the do-it-yourself, the guy who maybe is in another trade, but you know, he knows your trade, too. So let’s talk about those ones. You know, back it up. Like, what do these guys act like?

Well, you walk in the door and they—right away they’re telling you how it is. “Oh, this is what you’re going to do. This is what I want. This is how you’re gonna, you know, how you’re going to wire it.” And a lot of the times they’ve already started the work.

Oh boy.

So, you get in there and they’ve already got to a point that they realize they didn’t know what they were doing, but the big ego got in the way. “So, you’re just going to come in and and finish this for me. Yeah, that’s what I need.” Right. And I’m just like, this isn’t what we do. And usually they—maybe they have a family member who’s an electrician or a buddy or a neighbor or something like that, or they have watched every YouTube video out there to learn how to do it yourself or spending a lot of time doing—watching the DIY shows on on whatever channel it is, you know. So you could tell right away because it’s almost confrontational right off the bat, you know. You know, I love going back and forth with customers, passing ideas back and forth, but a lot of the times these customers are at the same time trying to milk you for more information. You know, they’ve already gotten to a point where they think they know it all, but they’re asking an exorbitant amount of questions and, you know, the red flags go off. It’s just—it’s not the customer we want. I’m all for making sure the customer is comfortable with what we do. We’re all about building relationships, but some of these people are—you just know. Again, go with your gut. Go with your gut. This is not the guy you want to deal with.

So, so this is somebody who wants you to come in and either: a) finish the work in a non-professional way that they started it, or b) they’re just trying to get information from you so they can continue going down the wrong path and getting it without a permit and getting it without inspections and all that kind of stuff, trying to save a buck. Here’s the thing, folks: electricity is dangerous. Electricity causes fires when it’s done incorrectly, or shock hazard and death. So, if you don’t like any of those things, quit mucking about and doing it yourself. Like, call a professional company to do it. You don’t even have to call Halo. Call somebody who—a master electrician or Red Seal electricians on staff—to come and do that work for you. Cuz I don’t know, I never wanted to be fried to death or or, you know, catch a fire in my house doing any electrical. I don’t know about you, but that’s just me, right?

No, absolutely not. Right. And then—and and, you know, on that note, I don’t go in my garage and drill out the cavity in my tooth and then swing by the dentist office to see if he’ll fill it because I’ve already done half the work. Right.

That’s right. Yeah. Half price, right? Half price.

But in the trades, we run into this all the time. And that’s not the customer you want.

Mhm.

Exactly. So again, if you’re a do-it-yourselfer, well, I recommend you don’t do it yourself. If you’re a competent do-it-yourselfer, I still recommend calling an electrician because, you know, things happen, folks. It’s a reason why I don’t touch plumbing. I never touch plumbing because water is so destructive. Like, you get a small leak and you’re in a world of hurt.

Oh, yeah.

So, I don’t touch plumbing. I just don’t do it because I’m not a plumber. I’m—I’m a licensed electrician, oddly enough, but not a plumber. I don’t touch it. Not my thing. Okay. So, let’s let’s talk about the nightmare customer who always changes the schedule and always, you know, changes the scope. The job gets, you know, has some scope creep going on. So, let’s talk about these guys.

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This is usually the customer that’s got a big renovation going on and they’ve decided to be their own general contractor and—and they’ve never done this before, but how hard can it be, right? So you establish your scope of work. You get your quote approved. Looks like everything’s good, but you’re sending your electricians in to start on the job. And already things have changed and my phone’s ringing because, “Oh, you know, Mr. Jones says that we’re going to do this,” and, “Well, we’re not going to do that.” And that is, you know, that’s why it is so key when you are providing your quote to put a lot of detail into it. You’re not going to tell them how—we’re not providing an instruction manual for what we’re doing, but we’re very clear on what the scope of work is and what we are and are not including because I learned that the hard way. You’re just going to do a—

Oh, yeah.

“You wire the basement as required.” Oh my god, you’re open—your world—open yourself up to a world of hurt and—

“Oh, I wanted 37 pot lights and I want—”

Yeah, that’s right, because, you know, we—getting back to this nightmare customer—sometimes they don’t they don’t mean to be this way, they’re just so scatterbrained, unorganized, and they’re trying to jockey different trades. And you know what happens—where we’ve got work to do that requires that the drywall is off and then you come in, you know, for your next visit and the drywall’s up.

“Oh, well, can’t you just work around it? What’s the big deal? Well, I don’t want any holes in my wall.”

I can’t see through the walls.

Yeah. Yeah. So, it is just, you know, again, the gut—your gut feeling will tell you if this customer is going to be going to be that kind of a problem because—

Yeah, we’ve had some doozies with, you know, what what I—what I fingers crossed thought was going to be going to be a good job, and you’re just, you know, at the end of the day, it cost you money. Because now you’re jocking to try and get the work done that you were supposed to do and, you know, deal with all these other things that are coming in because you’ve got a customer that is just all over the map and you’re forced to be reactive.

Mhm.

So, sometimes you just have to put your foot down and say, “Listen, you know, this is what we can and can’t do for you, and it’s going to cost you more money. I will request this project if this is the direction it’s going to go.”

Yeah. So two things. Number one, be very clear and direct with what the scope of work is, what you are including in this price. And then B, if anything changes—

Oh, then that’s just a change order, and we will tell you how much it’s going to cost to add that part onto the project.

That’s right.

If you don’t have those two things in place for your business, you’re hooped, because then it’s you against them and they—

Yeah, Google—bad Google reviews really, really hurt a company. But when it’s in a situation like that that is kind of avoidable, but you—you don’t actually have that system in place, which, you know, being in business 10 years, you’ve learned the hard way.

Oh, I’ll write a book, “What Not to Do in Business,” someday, let me tell you.

Right. What to do, what not to do. Okay. So, are there any other customer types that are problem customers or ones that are a little bit, you know, unrealistic and maybe not your favorite? Not—not ones you’d pick out of a hat.

You know, the customer that doesn’t want to do any work with a permit in place.

Yeah, those ones we stay away from. Or they want us to work under a homeowner’s permit. “I’ll—I’ll pull the permit myself.” That sort of thing. I mean, you know, Inhalable Power Solutions, we start the job, we finish the job, we pull the electrical permit, I pull the permit myself. And I mean, as a customer, that’s what you want.

Mhm.

Why would you take the responsibility of pulling a home owner homeowner’s permit, hiring some dude off Kijiji who says he knows what he’s doing, and then he disappears on you, and you’re left with a job that was done incorrectly in a permit on, you know, with a permit that you pulled as a homeowner? The assumption was you were going to do the work yourself anyways, but—but yeah, getting back to the customer, it says, “We’re not we’re not pulling permits for any of this.”

Mhm.

It’s because the electrical might not be the problem. It could be that it’s a renovation where they’re taking out walls. Oh, see this all the time where you’ve got the bungalow, 1970s bungalow, they want to open it up, so they—they’re going to take that wall out between the living room and the kitchen.

It’s a loadbearing wall.

Load bearing wall every time.

Yeah.

Yeah. Now, yeah. You—you’ve been in the trades. You can—you know, how much work is involved to take out a wall and have to put in a support beam that costs, I don’t know, thousands and thousands of—

A little bit of engineering involved in that.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, yeah. I mean, guys, you’re not getting away with anything by not pulling permits for the work. It—it is going to bite you right in the butt down the road, especially when you go down to sell your home.

Yeah. You go to sell the home and you’re like, “Oh, oh my, this is quite different.” And then that could open up a whole can of worms where, you know, the sale of the home is in jeopardy. And that’s a big problem. You know, anybody trying to save a buck by not pulling permits or wanting to do things incorrectly, you know, safety codes are in place for a reason cuz damage to property and people, right? So it’s best to just do it. It’s not that much money to get the permits. Might be a pain in the in the butt to get the right trades in there, and that might cost money, but at the same time, why would you want to short change your renovation project or, you know, a loadbearing wall installed incorrectly and the house, you know, the roof crashes in on you one day? Why would—why would anybody want to do that? That—that kind of thinking doesn’t work for me. What do you—what do you say on that, Kevin?

Well, this is the classic phone call we get is, “I need an electrician to come in and inspect what we’ve—pull a permit and sign off on the work we did.” And it’s usually on basement developments. And this is a, you know, I—hubby hubby developed the basement 10 years ago, didn’t pull a permit, now we want to sell the house. And so we just need a permit. And then I break the news to them that, you know, we’ve had three code changes since you developed your basement. Had you pulled a permit back when you did it, or the electrician that wired before you pulled a permit, it probably would have passed. But now it is being held to today’s code. The more moment you pull a permit today, it is held to today’s code. So it could mean rewiring the basement just because of the changes with our—involved opening up all the walls.

Absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, we stay away from those because when a customer does not want to pull a permit, they’re hiding something. It’s shoddy work. And the—the DIY crap that we have seen, dangerous in—dangerous work in—in homes where families are living, you know, is—is scary. And, you know, we don’t—you don’t want to walk away from it, but, you know, you don’t want to be involved in that either.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, really there’s not much you can do. I mean, you know, they’re doing it wrong and they’re going to get it done by somebody who will go ahead and help them do it wrong. Unfortunately, but, you know, they’re—they’re putting their property and their lives at risk.

Oh, the—the potential fire hazards are—are just terrifying.

On the flip side. So, we’ve—we’ve talked about the disaster customers, the ones that you don’t want, the ones that are the problem children. Let’s talk about the ideal and likely customer for Halo Power Solutions.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I always tell my guys, and I’ve even chatted with customers about this, that people remember us for how they felt when we were in the home. How we treated them. You—you know, as a professional trades person, the expectation should be that you’re going to come in there and do good work. Like—like we shouldn’t be rewarding an electrician because he did a good job putting in a plug or a switch, right? But the types of customers we’re looking for are those ones that want to build long-term relationships with trades people that they trust and are happy to refer us to their friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, that sort of thing, right? Because that’s how you’re going to get remembered by is—is how you made the customer feel. Did you treat them with respect? If you’re in there teaching their kids how to swear—

Yeah, not so good.

You’re—and—and those are the stories we hear all the time, right, is contract—other contractors came in and they were just belligerent. They looked like what the stereotype would be, right? You know, holes in your sweatpants, the Jack Daniels t-shirt with a pack of smokes hanging out, you tucked in the rolled up sleeve, right? You know, it’s not us at all. So, sometimes my favorite customer is actually the one that has had a bad experience with contractors in the past and they’re already standoffish. You know, they got their arms full and they’re like, “I’m not happy that I have to firm this work out to a contractor,” and boy, when the job’s done and they’re very happy with the experience, the work is the work. It’s all about that customer experience.

Yeah.

So, that’s our customer, you know, someone that expects premium quality work and a—an experience that they’re going to share because everybody knows, you know, if they have a good experience, they’ll tell a few people, but bad experience, boy, they’re going to tell everybody and they’ll crucify you on—on social media and the bad Google reviews and it just goes on and on and on and on.

Yeah.

So, that’s the customers we’re looking for.

Nice. Okay. So, if that sounds like you, if you’re the kind of customer who has had a bad experience in the past and wants to have a good experience with an electrical contractor, look no further than, Halo Power. Kevin, the Edmonton electrical contractor and his crew will come out and do an amazing job for you and that you’ll be happy with. And you also back your work, don’t you?

100%. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes things go sideways and, again, how you deal with that when mistakes happen. Sometimes it hurts in the pocketbook because, you know, it’s going to—it’s going to be a repair out of pocket. But some of the best experiences we’ve had with customers were actually when there were some hiccups and how we dealt with it.

Yeah.

Because again that’s what they remember you for because things don’t always go perfect and—

Yeah.

Yeah. So that’s it. You know, 10 years in business. You know, we’re all about—we’re all about being in business for another 30, 40 years and keep building this—this customer base that knows and trusts us.

Nice.

That’s what we’re after.

Perfect. All right. Thanks a lot, Kevin.

Yeah. Thank you, Trevor. All right. We’ll do it again.

Hey, you bet.