After referring business  to my trades people over the years, I noticed many of the trades people were disorganized and never had time to get more efficient because they were so busy and could not stop to  implement anything  My  customers always suffered so it reflected back on me.   There are only so many times I could apologize why the stone mason never got the message, and didn't call back right away, so I got a new stone mason who does.  The system also need competent people to work IT .   In the last five years I have seen the business dwindle for all kind of reasons as I watched  all of us spend all kinds of money to  advertise our products and was trying  to figure out a way to  to to make us all a little more competitive and organized, while giving the customer something they have never seen before.  It all had to be a reasonable cost TO THE TRADES PERSON TO GIVE VALUE TO THEM , while increasing the deployment to trades to the customer getting them service like they have never had before.  

So I came up with   416333FAST.ca    which is a phone number and a web site

There are two  components  to the  333FAST network

1 The WEB SITE and your own  booking system at  416333FAST.CA

2 The phone system   4163333278  IS 333FAST

Both  are having the same numbers to make it easy to customers to remember us as a group rather than us individually.

In THEORY if  there are  20 of us handing out business cards  and advertising  416 333fast  on our vehicles then we all have a better advantage of getting more business.

1.  The web site  will allow customers to book you  and other trades people at the same time.  The  web address is 416333FAST.ca   or .com

Each of your e-mail addresses are connected to the ones  within the site.  Except your New ones you have are ten times better than yours

mine was ocdia@rogers.com  now is handyman@333fast.ca

The electrician is alex_olevsky@yahoo.ca     and  the customer sees power@333fast.ca

This is much easier for a customer to remember and no need to keep spelling it over and over. Every one knows how to spell these always pushing  the 333FAST SLOGAN

We don't really want to be called, we just want people to book us in for either quotes or jobs.  And that is basically it.

When someone makes a booking, they have to sign-in once.

Try it     

if you cannot see this picture, above,  then click here to book it in.

and then they can book whoever they want for that ever they want .

For example. 

When a customer signs in they  leave a form in the following format.

Their name

Address

hm phone number

wk number   and cell number

and that they want  done for each trade person

the customers email address and

when the appointment is for

Tuesday September 12 2008 at 4:00PM

In comes to you in for form of an email  it will be forwarded to you  i.e.  Handyman@333FAST.ca    to the customer it will look very professional.  

The customer will get a confirmation of the appointment and you as the tradesperson will also get  an email with all the customer information along with the  day and time the customer wanted to book you for.  You can choose to leave those time for those customers  or you can go back into the system to  change the dates of the appointments.  Try to keep those times if you can.

Each if you will have to download a program off our site to change the appointments.  In my case I just follow my business  by the appointments my customers make  but each of you may have a different way of dealing with this  so you should tell me so I know and if I can think of something  that may be better I will let you know.

A day before the appointment, the system will send aout a reminder e-mail to you and the customer reminding both of you  about the appointment.  This will reduce misunderstandings.

This will also save you lots of time because you no longer have to write every thing down pulling over to write customer information down which takes a lot of time and if your English is not that good and customers do you understand you and you don't understand customers, it will save you even more time because our booking system will put you and the customer on the same page, saving you and the customer lots and lots of time.

We are working on a new form  do when a customer wants a quote on something,  and you print out the booking from the quote section, It will look like a very basic quote sheet which you can print out twice; giving one to the customer  and keeping one for yourself.

This way you need a clip board and a piece of carbon  between the sheets  so when you write the info down you can leave one with the customer  and  one you keep with you  but that is if you want to be dependant of paper

As soon as paper comes into the mix that you will need to find a way to print it without having to go back to your office to do it because this wastes the most amount of time.  Also when you mail it out from him this also wastes time.  The customer just emailed you a booking, you should be able to email them back a quote and an onvoice and avail the whole paper thing.

If however you really need  the paper then these steps can be followed

In this case, it is wise to use a dot matrix printer  using NCR  paper.  Why???

Because you only have to print it out once and  all the customer information prints on both pieces of paper the same time.

The form will look like this   but if you have any ideas to make it better for you, please let me know.  Because your quote sheet is ready to go.

If you really want to become efficient you can get a BlackBerry phone with  a data package and put a printer in your vehicle and print the estimate right in your vehicle saving time  going back to your office  and either mailing it for going back tot he customer to drop it off.  You could also email it directly to the customer saving even more time.