Tipped for a Job Well Done
A lot of trust is required from the customer when using a moving company’s service. The customer must know that their possessions are in safe hands. For the professional movers, there are certain steps that can be taken to provide the needs for a job to go well, and in turn may give you a higher probability to earn a tip.
First off, never expect a tip. With the day and age that we live in now, expecting cash, credit or check from someone can be the equivalent of an arm or leg. Moving is an expensive and often times very stressful process, most customers do not know to tip, wont tip, or are too scatter brained to remember.
If a mover does a poor job of packing the customer’s belongings, has a bad attitude, treats possessions with disrespect or drags his feet, the customer will pick up on it and can hurt the probability of a tip and a referral. Most of the time customers are more worried about the job getting done that they overlook that their movers are a professional service provider. This is due to the fact that you are literally moving their possessions that they have accumulated over their life span.
Depending on the customer, tips are distributed in different ways. A cold bottle of water or lunch for the men can be their means of incentive for you. Others will talk you up by telling you they will refer you to their friends, family and co-workers. Many will buy you breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. The customer’s age and mindset will affect your outcome of incentive of a job well done.
A very big form of controversy on a job is when a customer distributes a certain amount of money to certain people. Most customers will recognize if there is a three man crew, and two of them are hard workers and the other seems to drag their feet. This can cause animosity if one or more people get more money than the rest. It is up to the customer, and how a job is done, to determine what form of incentive you will get no matter how much, or how little.
For management, a tip can be a very crucial part in a movers salary, but making sure that a tip is in the back of the movers mind is essential to their job performance. This will avoid the “hope is lost so I don’t care” phase. Keep in mind that sometimes a job can go flawlessly, you can have a model customer, but they offer you no water, food or a tip. Tips depend solely on customers, so having a “no tip” mind, is the best route for you to go.
3 Responses
About 30 years ago, I became a professional mover, after joining a local moving company to gain experience. At 6’5 265lbs, it was obvious to most customers who the brunt of the heavy work went to. In 5 years,I never dropped, scratched, or dented, anything.
Besides my moving day pay 92% of clients gave our company, referrals, and I often received triple or quadruple, the tips. I always felt out was because I took pride in my work, was working my way through college, and always moving the large, delicate items.
Many times customers do offer drinks, and food. They want you to care about their lifetime of memories, just as much as they do. Quite often they would hand me money personally, after giving out a envelope tip to be split equally. Most of the other guys, knew why I was typed this way, but sometimes a new guy would run his mouth enough to get fired. I never hit these guys, our said anything in front of customers, but once we drive away, IT’S A DIFFERENT STORY. I’m a IT Professional now, who, is often questioned buy others for my choice of profession. I enjoy fixing computers, and it’s great to own my own business. Nuff said.
Great article, though and very on point!
Customer referrals are the ultimate form of tip. That’s money right there. For someone to refer my services to their family and close friends is the ultimate compliment. Having said that, only 1 in 30 jobs I do go online and write a review. It seems that once the job is done folk tend to forget about about us. Most of the time a tip is the only way I have to know we did a good job.
In the case of reviews you need to ask your customers to take action. Sending a follow up email saying something like “we hope you had a wonderful moving experience, if so please take a moment and leave us a review, if for any reason you were dissatisfied people give us a call and let us know so we can make it right.” Customers generally are pretty caught up in their lives and recent move that unless you ask for a review few will do it. Calls to Action right there =)