Pro Painter Network

How many times have you woken up to a text message from a customer complaining about something that was missed or something that went wrong?

I woke up to this message this morning.

I want to talk about it because this is what we need to do to compete, grow, and separate us from “the average painting company, and Its why I created the PPN originally. To bring like minded contractors together that create happy customers and elevate the trade.

This project was a big project for us. Took my team of 2-4 painters about 3 weeks to complete. we painted cabinets, trim, walls, and ceilings. Took some of the trim from stained woodwork to paint. Originally brought In by the designer because of our reputation of cabinet painting.

On Friday, I went back to do some touchups…for the second time. Sound bad right? I started scheduling to go back to bigger projects, take some pictures, bring them out thank you box (with a bottle of wine) and offer to do some touchups. When I went back last week, she had more touchups than I thought. Most was things were either caulk that had split (we have had a SUPER dry winter), or scuffs from their cleaning crew. We chatted a bunch (as per usual) and I didn’t have enough time to get it all done. So I scheduled to come back, which was then this last Friday. I spent another two hours there.

Keep in mind they have a $2M house and family in town. AND to make it easy, she was SUPER nice about everything, apologing about what the cleaners had done.

I just wanted to make it all right. I fixed a dent on the built they created, re-caulked and painted several areas of baseboard, and touched-up walls that were scuffed by the vaccum cords.

In the past I’ve been very short with customers demanding that they find all the touchups before my team leaves. Thanks not great customer service!

I want to get these types of thank you texts more. I want to go above and beyond for my customers.

I hope this inspires you to provide the best customer service!

What’s up?

It’s been a while since I posted here. Would love to see where everyone’s from. Just give me your city and State. Actually thinking about putting some content up here on a regular basis again. But only if we’ve got people following and listening and watching it.

Using Interactive Voice-AI For Training
(Sales, Customer Service, Leadership Training..)

I've had my head down in the weeds a lot lately on projects, and that's made it hard to publish as many updates as I would ideally like to on the work we've been doing!

Here's a video example of one of the Interactive Voice-AI training modules that we put to practical use: https://www.loom.com/share/ee72ba94058a4bb482a847a0077adc9f?sid=945aa48b-98cc-4f4e-92b0-90c05ca19618

In this video, I use a simple Custom GPT prompt on voice-mode to let our 14 year old son practice door-knocking scripts for a couple of days before he hit the neighborhood to solicit customers for his trashcan cleaning business.

(Results: He spent about 4 hours total running through these modules on varying difficulties, and then hit the streets. 2 hours later, about 30 doors knocked, 7 paying customers + 5 more interested. Pretty good close rate!!)

I've tested quite a few use cases on these in recent months, including:

-For Justin Knox's concealed weapons courses, we've had a version of this voice AI that our students interact with to simulate what it would be like to be interviewed by a detective after you've discharged your weapon in a self-defense scenario. We then take that interview and have GPT convert into "lawyer mode" and outline how they'd prosecute based on the detective interview.

Lessons Learned: Don't discharge your weapon lightly, and the smartest thing to do is to always wait until you have your lawyer before discussing anything!

-When I've been building my accounting team at Housecall Pro, I've started using voice AI simulators for mock call training for my Onboarding Specialists . Take real call transcripts, SOP outlines of the process, and instructions for difficulty ratings and these simulators produce unique and replicable mock client calls of varying difficulties, PLUS they review the rep performance and provide coaching feedback.

My recent onboarding teams gave this great reviews and said it really helped them get comfortable with how they'd be speaking to clients, before ever "going live".

Use cases we're working on:
-Sales training and objection handling. Train on scripting playbooks and sales materials.
( I'm excited to test one I'm calling "the Gauntlet", which is a rapid-fire series of increasingly difficult client objections that the rep needs to handle as smoothly as possible. How far can they get in the Gauntlet??)

-Leadership training: Working on some models trained to help managers and leader handle challenging conversations, practicing things like communicating during performance reviews, setting boundaries, or handling other types of conflict.

Several of you have reached out with questions about these- if you still have some, please send me another DM and I'll do my best to get you feedback!

-MK

PS
This is one of the key topics we'll be demo-ing and showing you how you can build these to utilize and leverage in your own business during our Contractor Lab Live workshop event in Vegas on Oct 3 & 4th. Check it out if you'd like to join!
https://cll.knoxoutai.com/

The Contractor Lab Live Event: The Future of Your Business Join us in Las Vegas, Oct 3 & 4, for an immersive two-day workshop that will revolutionize your contracting business!Powered by Knox Out AI and the Pro Painter Network, this event is designed to propel your company into the future with cutting-edge AI tools and strategies.Tickets are just $497 ea fo