Setting up appointments

[Annie Grieshop]

That's a really neat idea, John, and I intend to borrow it!  It's useful
information, and it makes the customer an "active partner" in piano
maintenance.  It also puts the technician on a professional level (similar
to doctors) that is familiar to customers.  Good stuff!

I realize that your info card is not meant to uncover all the problems a
piano might have, but I do want to ask the list, in general:  how do you
help your customers communicate better (short of having them in the room,
reproducing the problem)?

In my experience, customers often know that something is wrong but have no
idea how to describe it.  I've had ping-y hammers described as "a clicking
noise", and a console that was in decent tune but had a broken damper rod
hanger refered to as "badly out of tune".  In both cases, the players were
able to pinpoint the problem (when I asked them to demonstrate), but they
had no language for saying what it was.

Thanks,
Annie

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org]On
> Behalf Of John Formsma
> Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2007 9:44 AM
> To: Pianotech List
> Subject: Re: Setting up appointments
>
>
> I think it is something we should try, to see if it works for us
> individually. One thing I'm trying is handing a card at the beginning
> of an appointment. It has several objectives, like helping me keep
> records up to date, and to let me know anything the customer may be
> interested in in addition to tuning.
>
> I've attached these as PDF files.
>
> I haven't been doing this long, so I don't know exactly how it will
> work long term.
>
> JF
>
> On 6/1/07, Matthew Todd <toddpianoworks at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > After you've tuned your clients piano, does it work well to
> schedule their
> > six month or 1 year tuning before you leave?  Does the client
> normally agree
> > to scheduling that far out?
> >
> > I got to thinking about this after observing my wife's doctor's
> > appointments.  After she finishes one app. she goes to the app.
> desk to get
> > the next date scheduled, and it is written on a card, then
> given to her.  A
> > few days before her app. she gets a call from the dr. reminding her.
> >
> > Have any of you tried this system for our field?  Could this
> give us more
> > income rather than just tuning, and then call in six months in
> hopes that
> > you can schedule another tuning?
> >
> > Is it also possible to implement a cancellation policy?
> >
> > Thanks for the advice and tips!
> > Matthew
> >
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