GROWING YOUR BUSINESS: Ten commandments of on-site service company

by Dan Beaulieu
Business consultant

I was walking by a prominent Waterville building the other day and could not help but notice this scene. Well, actually, I heard it first when the solitude of my daily walk was shattered by the blasting of the worst loud music I’d ever heard. This music was so loud that Ozzie Osbourne himself would have felt forced to shout, “Turn that bloody music down!”

When I looked around, I spied the source of the noise, a group of shirtless men working on the roof of this city building. As I stood there, I looked at them. I was stunned to see them running around that roof without any means of safety support, by the way. No harnesses, no support belts, nothing, they were just running around; an accident and lawsuit obviously just around the corner. And by the way they were smoking cigarettes while they worked and throwing the butts off the roof and onto the lawn.

As I tried to cross the street, I found myself looking at a mini traffic jam as the company’s (I assumed they were the company’s, since there were no signs on the them) trucks were parked willy-nilly on both sides of the busy street. “Wow,” I thought, “these guys are the epitome of everything a service company can do wrong.” This group of workers had covered just about every bad habit a company like this can possibly have, when suddenly the music stopped and one of them hollered to another one on the ground amidst a jungle of tools scattered all over the beautifully manicured front lawn of the building. “Hey (expletive deleted) get off your (expletive deleted) and bring up another (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted) bucket of (expletive deleted) tar!”

And there it was, a perfect trifecta of everything a service company can possibly do wrong! And on a public site on one of the cities’ busiest street no less. Amazing, simply amazing!

What a learning moment, what a time to ask you to find ten things or more wrong with this picture.

So, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to lay out my ten commandments of an on-site service business.

The ten commandments of an on-site service business:

• Thou shall wear shirts (preferably neat shirts with the company logo on them) at all times.
• Thou shall keep the site neat at all times…no tools and other equipment strewn all over the customer’s property.
• Thou shall not swear, and curse, and use vulgar language, at any time ( I think this might actually be a real commandment).
• Thou shall always consider safety first.
• Thou shall always have clean service vehicle, bearing the company logo and carefully parked so as not to bother the neighbors of passing traffic in any way.
• Thou shall not play music, any music, regardless of personal taste too loudly…if at all.
• Thou shall not smoke on the job, and that means vaping as well.
• Thou shall have some kind of sign proudly signifying what company is doing the work on this building. (Although in this particular case, I’m not sure an identifying sign would have been a good idea.)
• Thou shall disturb the occupants of the building as little as possible. I’m sure the occupants of this building got a lot of work done this day.

And finally, the tenth and most holy of all these commandments:

• Thou shall all do their best to represent this company in the most professional way possible at all times.

Follow these ten commandments diligently and your business will also be growing to the point of thriving.