Tips from a top service pro: 3 principles for making customers for life
Bronco Pro Kleen has been providing seamless and spotless service in Denver, Colorado for 22 years. After taking over his family’s carpet cleaning business, co-owner Travis Minor vowed to go above and beyond to exceed customer expectations. This dedication earned Bronco Pro a spot on Entrepreneur magazine and Yelp’s 2023 America’s Favorite Mom and Pop Shops list.
“We really believe in recurring business and making customers for life,” Travis said. “That’s our target. Anytime we get into a customer’s house for the first time, we kind of see it as an audition for future business, almost like a job interview.”
Three customer service principles help Bronco Pro ace that audition each time. Discover how this small business inspires reviews and referrals by practicing responsiveness, expectation setting, and transparency.
1. Responsiveness
At Bronco Pro, customer service starts the minute a quote request comes in. The business has a 100% response rate to their customer quote requests on Yelp, and they maintain a 10-minute response time to customer inquiries (at the time of publication).
“The Yelp mobile app helps with that,” Travis said. “I get the email notification every time a customer reaches out to us, and we want to have the best chance of landing that customer. We want to be able to give them information as quickly as possible so that they can make a decision that’s best for them.”
Once a customer books, the Bronco Pro team prioritizes responsiveness and communication during the entire experience—from calling to remind customers when they’re on their way to cleaning swiftly and efficiently.
This strategy has been crucial to landing leads and motivating referrals, Travis said. In fact, timeliness is one of the key terms in Bronco Pro’s Yelp reviews—with the words “fast,” “quick,” “timely,” and “efficient” appearing a total of 58 times in the business’s 220+ reviews, alongside glowing praise from reviewers like Yelp Elite Gabrielle W.:
Pro tip: Follow these tips for providing fast and detailed responses to your messages on Yelp. If you’re constantly on the go, download the Yelp for Business mobile app and set up push notifications so that you or a trusted employee can review and respond to requests in live time.
2. Expectation setting
Missed expectations are one of the most common reasons people leave critical reviews. Customers who aren’t informed about a business can end up feeling frustrated when their expectations go unmet, so the Bronco Pro team eliminates that possibility from the start.
“Anytime we first go into a customer’s home, we like to get feedback and walk the house with them,” Travis said. “We want to know what their expectations are, and we want to be able to get them as much information as possible of what we can, and we cannot do.”
Even the best service pros can’t remove every stain or treat every kind of material. It’s important to be realistic and give the customer the best chance at service possible by inspecting the area and letting them know your limitations, Travis said: “That’s not [information] you could really give customers over the phone. So when we first show up, that’s our first step. We want to make sure that we’re on the same page. We want to make sure that we deliver on their expectations before we ever bring our equipment into the home.”
Because of this process, Bronco Pro surpassed Yelp reviewer Stacey L.’s expectations—even when telling her “no.” After inspecting Stacey’s home, a technician determined one rug was too delicate to clean without damaging it and lowered the original quote to account for the difference. Rather than disappointment, this landed Bronco Pro a 5-star review.
“He was also really honest with some of his responses,” Stacey said. “I thought that was a really nice touch—instead of just saying, ‘You could have told us the material up front,’ or ‘We’re still going to charge you for it because this is what was agreed upon.’”
3. Transparency
Rather than upsell customers on a maintenance plan, Bronco Pro technicians offer advice on low-maintenance, spot cleaning that customers can maintain themselves. It might seem counterintuitive, but by reinforcing their expertise and letting customers know they’re not taking advantage of them, the team ensures Bronco Pro stays top-of-mind when it’s time for the next deep clean.
According to Stacey L., her technician’s transparency put the finishing touch on a lifelong relationship: “Because of that, I could really trust his recommendations and trust this company in general to provide the service that they’re promising, but not at the sake of having to come out more often than is needed, so really that trust is built.”
For us, word of mouth is very big. Return customers are very big. So we just want to give the customers the best experience possible so that they continue to use our services so that they recommend us to friends, neighbors, and family. And if we are able to get a review out of it, that’s just the cherry on top that helps us build our business out even more by getting our information out there.
—Travis Minor, Bronco Pro Kleen
Letting customers speak for themselves is also a powerful tool for the business. Travis encourages transparency online by inspiring customers to leave Yelp reviews, which he said he does by providing great customer service. “We really value the reviews that we get on Yelp. I believe that Yelp is a platform that people trust,” he said.
Although only a small portion of Bronco Pro’s 200+ customers a month end up leaving reviews, those who do provide important context and feedback for the next customer.
These lessons come from an episode of Behind the Review, Yelp & Entrepreneur Media’s weekly podcast. Listen below to hear from Travis and Stacey, or visit the episode page to read more, subscribe to the show, and explore other episodes.