In our collective experience as customers, we can all remember instances where we wished that someone would have cared just a little more. I know that I’ve been burned more times than I can count. Here’s a story about how an exciting purchase turned into a financial headache and how it has shaped decisions about my home inspection service.
Several years ago, I was excited to buy a new-to-me truck. It was a used truck with more than 100,000 miles on it, so I wasn’t expecting perfection, but I opted to have a pre-purchase inspection from a nearby mechanic shop to ensure that any needed repair work wasn’t excessive. The inspection was suspiciously cheap, but I figured it was a marketing tactic to get repair work. The inspection revealed a few nominal repairs totaling less than $1,000 that were needed but no issues that warranted walking away from the truck or haggling the price down with the dealer, so I bought it.
A few days later, I took it to a trusted local off-road shop to fix the issues found during the inspection and upgrade the suspension. I instructed them to keep an eye out for anything else the truck needs so we can fix it. It needed more than $3,500 worth of work that wasn’t mentioned by the shop that performed the pre-purchase inspection. All of the issues were visible without disassembly, with the exception of a spring that was cracked in a concealed spot. I was upset that the last shop didn’t care enough about my needs as a customer to take the inspection seriously. I would have paid more for a thorough report, but I didn’t know any better at the time.
That is just one of many examples of where I have been frustrated because of cut corners, incompetence, or apathy. Through these experiences, I have become a discerning customer. I don’t habitually buy from brands that I haven’t researched beforehand. I don’t shop for discounts. I rarely impulse buy. I have learned that these buying habits lead to suboptimal value. The price that I pay for a product or service is only effectively measured in comparison to what it delivers – that’s the harder part to discern. Oftentimes, what something will cost you isn’t apparent the day you buy it. For example, $20 shoes seem like a great deal until your feet hurt. Anything of importance that I buy in my life is bought with the approach of prioritizing which product or service and company will best serve my needs. The more critical it is, the more diligent research it gets.
Sometimes, that value is in the quality of the item itself, such as my expensive toolbelt that delivers supreme comfort and will last a lifetime. Sometimes, that value is more subjective, where I’m buying based on my values. For example, my family buys groceries almost exclusively from a specific grocery store because I spent hours researching how they source and manage their products. They sell me not on their prices but on the value of consuming food in alignment with my principles and in a way that will promote long-term vitality. Similarly, I prefer clothing from one company not only because their products perform well in my demanding work environment but because they also prioritize sustainability over fast fashion. What I’ve found is that purposeful, intentional buying is a more effective way to use money than a commoditized approach of “everything is the same, so give me the lowest price.”
I’ve built my company upon the same values. I don’t try to be everything to everyone. I fetch plenty of criticisms, but I’m unapologetic about anything that isn’t part of my value proposition. I don’t believe in being too thorough. I don’t believe in being fast. I don’t believe in being cheap. I don’t believe in playing word games. I don’t believe in snake oil add-ons. I do believe in delivering the best service that I can perform for my clients. I do believe in continuously educating myself so that I am better than I was yesterday. I do believe in communicating effectively, which means being clear about significant problems. I do believe in taking the extra time that is required to go beyond what I agreed to do when it matters. I do believe in only selling services to my clients that meaningfully impact their lives.
My clients are, in many ways, people like me. We prefer products and services tailored to our unique needs over low-priced offerings. We are underserved by markets where competitive convergence has taken hold. This leads to a one-size-fits-all product, which doesn’t fit anyone all that well. So, I’ll let my competitors in town keep targeting the same generic mass customer segment. Meanwhile, I’ll keep honing my service to best suit the needs of the niche market of people who are delighted by what I offer. And I want to ensure that my clients never feel like I did after I bought that truck many years ago.
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