At 12:55 PM 12/17/97 -0600, you wrote: >Hi There, > >I have been asked to provide a service contract to a local church for tuning >and repairs. > >Does anyone have such a document? If so please email me with info! Thanks in >advance, and Seasons Greetings! >Regards, >Don Rose I know that this topic is a month old, but it died out while everyone was busy with Christmas tunings. I was hoping to reply then, but I think this topic is a classic and worth reviving. My goal is to have a steady customer base, hopefully with very nice pianos that I can tune every 6 months or 3 months. But it usually turns out that I end up tuning for people every 9 months, or 1 year, or 2 years, because they forgot to call, or something came up, etc. If I can get a written agreement with a customer to tune their piano on a regular basis, it will bring in more steady income for me, and the customer will have their piano well taken care of. It helps if I pre-schedule the customer appointments 6 months in advance, while we are talking at the end of the tuning. Then when 5 1/2 months rolls around, I can send out a post card to remind them, and then call about a week beforehand to make sure that the schedule is still okay. Then I try to call the night before as a reminder, to eliminate "no-shows". The more customers I can sign up on an service contract, the busier I will be and the more money I can make. I am not working another part-time job now, but I am not working full-time in customers houses either. But if I ask every customer to re-schedule in 6 months and also ask for three referrals, I am confident I will be so busy that I will be able to start picking the pianos I want to work on in a few years (Come on, let me dream a little bit!). The PTG Business Resource Manual has a section (for RPT's only) at the back which has sample Invoices, and forms for inspecting and appraising pianos, and a sample Piano Service Proposal which I have adapted to fit on my letterhead. Basically the piano service proposal is an agreement between the piano technician and the piano owner. It lists the piano (or pianos) and also lists the agreed upon service schedule for each piano. At the bottom of the page is a place to put the price for each service call, and an agreement about how much extra work you can do without asking permission from the piano owner in case of a broken string, etc. (I always try to get approval first anyway). There is also some wording that says that the price will be adjusted to the Consumer Price Index every ________ (you fill in the blank, but you can put every 6 months or 12 months or however often you want to review your price schedule). The important thing is that you and the customer can both agree on what will be done to the pianos, the frequency of service, and the fee. And you both need to sign it, and then give one copy to the customer. The agreement is self-renewing, and every year it will continue at the new price unless they move away or you go out of business. I only have about 20 customers who have agreements with me like this. I wish I had 1000 of them! There are a few caveats I could think of, perhaps Newton will have some more when he returns! (We miss you Newton!) 1. Make sure and specify exactly what work you will be doing and for how much. If not you may find yourself doing much too much work for the smallish amount you are being paid. You might say $XX.XX each for two tunings every January and July. If you will be doing more work than just tuning, make sure and spell it out and detail what you will be doing. For example: $XX.XX for each service call, to include a tuning and an additional one hour of regulation and voicing work. I am still pondering this myself and would welcome suggestions. 2. Reminders: If you start doing this, it is very important to keep track of the customers, because even though you both know that you are going to tune again in 6 months, if you don't remind them, they will forget, contract or no contract. Make sure and send a letter or postcard. 3. Discounts: I would prefer to not give any discounts, but I still have customers that I started tuning for 5 years ago when I was just beginning, and they still are paying a ridiculously low price. Little by little, the fee is getting higher, but it takes a while. Of course discounts might apply when there are lots of pianos in one location without much driving. Also, I don't mind giving a discount to churches that have a full time secretary, because then I can fit them into my schedule if someone else cancels at the last momoent. 4. Scheduling: Ideally you could arrange it so that all of your customers that are in the 1100 block of Main street all get scheduled the same day. That way the driving would be minimized, and you could get more work done in a day. I still don't know how to do this! 5. Hesitancy on the part of the customer: While I am there, at the end of the appointment, I explain the Piano Service Proposal to the customer, and fill it out and sign it. Then I ask them if they would like to do this, and sometimes they say yes and sign. But often they want to talk to their spouse first, and so I leave both copies with them, and they can sign a copy and return it after they decide. If the customer doesn't sign when I am there, however, there is little chance of them signing it, though. But, there are some good benefits of setting up your customers on a service agreeement. 1. You can always know in advance how many customers you will be tuning for the 2nd week of March, and that way you can plan your vacation at the appropriate time. I suppose one could eventually train their customers not to call when you are sitting on the beach sipping margaritas! 2. Steady income: Hopefully you won't end up with 100 tunings in December ( I wish!) and 16 tunings in January. If you can distribute your tunings evenly throughout the year, there won't be as much stress from being too busy, and then stress from not having enough work. Of course, you can always use slow times to catch up on shop work, etc. 3. I would theorize that the customers who will do a service agreement with you would be the ones who care about their pianos. Those are the kind of customers I want. The customers who have me tune every 9 years don't really care about their pianos, and I will be happy to let them call me when they feel like it and charge them the extra for the huge pitch raise. But the ones who really take an interest in their pianos will appreciate the regular service. Eventually one could hope to be seeing more and more of fine pianos every day and seeing less and less of Naugahyde Wurlitzers! I am sure that others have ideas about this also. I am sorry to write so much about this, but I have been thinking about this for a month! And if anyone has an effective service agreement that includes tuning AND regulation AND voicing, I would like to see the wording. Sincerely, David David A. Vanderhoofven, RPT Joplin, Missouri, USA e-mail: dkvander@clandjop.com web page: http://www.clandjop.com/~dkvander/ #pianotech page: http://www.clandjop.com/~dkvander/ircpiano.html
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