Great roofing work is about more than just repairs and installations. Providing prompt, responsive and thorough service to your customers is an essential component of roofing business success. Since so many homeowners find roofers through word of mouth or online reviews, satisfying one customer can lead to more new business. How can you ensure that you’re doing everything you can to provide great service?

Building roofing customer management strategies into your best practices can go a long way to meeting customer needs even in your busiest seasons. When you implement a few simple processes, your business can give customers the service they’re looking for in an efficient, scalable way.

Keep Records of Customer Interactions

Ever find yourself struggling to remember what your customer said about a job? Or have a customer insist they gave you instructions but can’t find a record of what those were? Keeping detailed records and notes of all your customer interactions is the first step to improving staff accountability and providing better service.

After every meeting with a customer, by anyone on your team, you should write down what was said, anything important that you need to remember, and any special instructions. Things that are especially crucial to note include customer availability, directions for keeping the rest of the property clean and undamaged, timelines for deliveries, and the main problems the customer is having. One of the easiest ways to meet customer expectations is to write down what the customer needs and wants, and then try to carry it out.

It’s equally important to keep your notes and records in a central location, easily accessible to everyone on your team. A roofing customer management software database like AccuLynx can help you keep track of your notes once you take them. In the AccuLynx platform, each job file has a place for notes and instructions, date- and time-stamped so you know which information is most up-to-date. And since AccuLynx is cloud-based, all the information you store is available to your team members at any time, whether they’re in the field or in the office.

Take Pictures

Now that your team members have smartphones, you don’t have to stick to written notes about your jobs. Photos are a valuable tool for good roofing customer management. Taking pictures of the roof before and after your work can help show customers what you did—without having to bring them up to the roof. It can also provide documentation in case future problems arise. And when it comes to making sure you remove the gutter on one side only or avoid dropping shingles into the pool, sometimes it’s easier to show rather than tell your crews.

Read: Impress Customers With Mobile Roofing Customer Management Technology

The AccuLynx mobile app provides the option to take photos directly in the platform and store them with the rest of your job notes. You can add annotations to the photos, like arrows pointing to the damage or the pitch measurements of the roof. Every team member will have access to these pictures as well as the notes. By utilizing the photo tool, your team can give customers a clearer picture of the benefits of your work, and ensure that you leave the job site better than you found it.

Improve Your Communication

Breakdowns in communication are often at the root of problems with customer management. Whether it’s instructions that get missed, confusion about what your work entails, or teams that aren’t on the same page, improving communication can go a long way towards improving customer service.

One of the first steps towards improving communication is making sure everyone on your team is using a single, consistent channel. If some of your team communications are delivered over text message while others are in email and still others in person, it will be difficult to refer back to these conversations at a later date, and easy for a team member to unintentionally fall out of the loop.

Get Demo: See how AccuLynx can help you with roofing customer management

In the AccuLynx business management software platform, roofers can easily send messages to the rest of their teams directly in the software. By using AccuLynx to communicate, your business can track messages, associate them with a specific job, and refer back to them, no matter how long ago they were sent. And since they’re all stored in our cloud-based system, they’re easier to save, access and organize than an email or text. With improved, more trackable communication, your whole team will be on the same page—so you can provide your customer with efficient, seamless service.

Don’t Forget to Follow Up

Your work doesn’t stop when the job is complete. The most successful roofers build better relationships with customers by following up once they complete a job. It’s important to understand what you did well, if there’s something the customer isn’t happy about, and whether there’s anything you can learn from this job for similar work in the future. In addition, reaching out to customers after the work is complete makes them feel valued, and demonstrates that you’re willing to listen to feedback.

On the AccuLynx dashboard, it’s easy to view all the jobs that have been recently completed. You can see at a glance which customers you need to follow up with. And when you’ve identified these customers, you can alert your team members within AccuLynx to remind them to reach out. Following up with recent customers is great practice—and AccuLynx makes it easier to remember this important task.

Great roofing customer management isn’t out of reach, even if you’re busy. When you keep track of your customers’ expectations and needs, and use tools like roofing software to help meet those needs, you can deliver great service more efficiently.