Vent: A customer's offhand comment made me redo my whole sensor placement method

Some guy in Orlando told me his last installer put a door sensor too close to the hinge and it kept breaking. I used to just slap them on wherever was fastest. Now I measure exactly 2 inches from the hinge every time. It adds maybe 10 seconds per sensor but I haven't had a callback for a broken one in 6 months. Makes me wonder what other little habits I have that are actually causing problems down the line. Anybody else had a random comment from a customer or homeowner change how you do things?

2 comments

2 Comments

rosejackson8d ago

Oh man, this hits close to home for me too! I had a customer once mention that the way I crimped my RJ45 connectors was causing intermittent signal drops, and I thought I was doing it perfectly fine. It was such a small thing, but once I changed my technique based on that offhand comment, I literally never had a failed termination again. It's wild how we get set in our ways and don't question the little steps until someone points them out. I think most of us have at least one or two of those "I never thought about that until someone said something" moments that end up making our work way more solid in the long run.

blake_martinez8d ago

Wait, are we really giving customers that much credit for changing how we work? I get that RoseJackson had a good experience with that RJ45 tip, but most of the time customers dont know the first thing about the technical side of what we do. They just see something that looks wrong to them and say something that might not even be the real issue. How many times have you reworked something based on a comment and then had to do it again a month later because that wasnt actually the problem? Ive learned the hard way to take customer advice with a big grain of salt because most of them are just guessing from a place of frustration. Your mileage may vary though, I guess some people get lucky with helpful comments.