lost customers

[Piannaman@aol.com]

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
Peter,

My situation is similar to Phil's.  I do some contract work for a store that 
tells the customer that the piano only needs tuning once a year, regardless of 
the fact that it's a new piano and the manufacturers suggest 2-3 times in the 
first year, minimum.  Many of those clients I see only once, and I've gotten 
to the point where I've stopped questioning whether or not they liked my 
service.  It's usually a moot point.  Sometimes they find a new tooner who works on 
the cheap and is a piano teacher for his day job.  Sometimes they just never 
bother getting their pianos tuned again.

I used to take it personally, especially when I often did extra work to get 
the piano functioning the way it's supposed to on the first visit, then got 
stonewalled when I called back to schedule an appointment 6 months later.

If you send a questionnaire card, it will get tossed 9 out of 10 times, IMHO. 
 I have asked people outright whether they thought my work was satisfactory.  
Sometimes I didn't like the answers (like when I missed several unisions in a 
piano where I was teaching a couple of kids all about tuning).  The best 
answer I ever got was, "Oh, I married a piano tuner.!"  I then spent a few minutes 
on the phone talking with her husband.  The more likely response is that it 
isn't as high on the priority list as, say, a cat's annual trip to the vet.

I think the key is to not take it too personally.  When one puts as much into 
his work as many of us do, it's hard not to be hurt by "rejection."  

In a message dated 12/16/04 5:11:41 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
phil@philbondi.com writes:


> Peter, if you're losing '30-50 per year' and gaining '130' you have 
> nothing to worry about. Regardless of how you go about reminding your 
> clientelle about next service(assumimg you do), there are various sundry 
> reasons why people either do not use you anymore or do not tune their 
> piano on a regular basis. I use to take it personally, but I don't 
> anymore. My ratio of gain vs. loss is similar to yours, but I also do 
> contract work for a dealership which feeds me new pianos as well as all 
> of the referrals that come into the store.
> 
> My advice is to continue to do good work at a fair price, and the phone 
> will ring..and you might be surprised when the phone rings from a 
> long-lost client who hasn't serviced their piano since the last time you 
> were there. This happens to me alot.
> 
> Phil Bondi(Fl)



---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/9e/a8/c5/e0/attachment.htm

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--