Trades people come right into the heart of your home, so how do you know when you can trust your plumber? Mica May; Director of Stopcocks Women Plumbers addresses the thorny question of trust.
How important is feeling secure in your home to you? Do you trust your plumber?
The other day one of our plumbers phoned up the office from the beach. She’s in the middle of her very well deserved holiday, away from it all with her children and calls me just to say hello and catch up. I’m certain this doesn’t happen in many plumbing companies.
It set me thinking about just how very different we are at Stopcocks Women Plumbers.
Here, the conversation with our customers and our plumbers is ongoing. Another customer, a landlady emailed to tell us how delighted one of her tenants is, not just with the quality of work, but because her plumber explained everything “I feel much happier and safer and she explained everything to me” she said.
Maybe it’s because we’re a company of female plumbers but it is definitely a culture we want to strengthen and continue, because being able to trust your plumber when they come into your home is essential.
When customers phone us they often tell us about what has happened before, with other plumbing companies and how much they wish they’d found us sooner. We understand just how important it is that you can trust your plumber will complete the work well and that you can trust your plumber to charge you fairly and we also understand just how important it is to feel safe in your home.
This is not just a simple matter of knowing you won’t be attacked by your plumber, this is about your feeling that you can trust your plumber as an individual. Do you trust your plumber as a person? How can you even make that decision?
Well, when we started here at Stopcocks Women Plumbers, and even before, when there was just Hattie our founder beavering away on her own as Stopcocks Woman Plumber, the foundation was always to keep in touch and keep promises – which includes turning up and turning up on time. As our business has got bigger it has become possible to have more structure and support and the element that makes all the difference is keeping in touch with our customers.
Communication is what enables any of us to trust anyone; and it’s no different with plumbers. It might be that the bunch of skills required to become a plumber are very close on our genes to surliness and unreliability, because we see a lot of plumbers not keeping in touch with their customers and not doing what they say they’ll do. Of course that breaks trust.
But we’re going to keep on doing what we do and talk to our customers, from that first email or phone call we promise we’ll be clear and we promise we’ll keep in touch. We’ll tell you when we’re coming and we’ll keep to that and we’ll explain exactly what we’re doing and why and we’ll give you the information to make informed choices so that your job comes in within your budget and timeframe. And we’ll help you understand how your house works so that you feel safer.
We want you to be able to trust your plumber and we want that plumber to be a Stopcocks Woman Plumber. Call us on 0800 8620010
