Less Stress Less Headaches…Sound Pretty Good?

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Annissa Coy

Hi Everyone,

I am really excited about this post. I know I have been a little lax with posting this past month so please forgive me:) I was traveling to visit my grandkids quite a bit and got pretty side tracked.

But watch out…I’m back and I’m excited!

So I can see by my husband’s Facebook that he has been teasing you all with a little project that we have are working on. Kevin has a reputation for having quite a sense of humor but let me reassure you this is no laughing matter and he’s are not playing around.

Early on in our business we knew that we needed to have good, reliable, easy to use systems in place. Otherwise we would create a great company with even greater headaches. We wanted to enjoy our business not be consumed by it.

Some would say that money is the biggest concern for businesses right now but I would disagree. I think it’s stress and not feeling like we have enough time to take care of everything.

Trust me we have had our share of pain in business. In fact on one extremely painful 12 hour day after being chewed up and spit out by a very ticked off client on the phone I decided enough was enough!

I was tired of not knowing whether or not our clients were all being cared for in the same WOW fashion no matter what technician was on the job? Or wondering if my referrals knew how happy our clients were? Tired of wondering if we had good and consistent communication with our clients on all contact levels? Were we following thru with before, during and after marketing and care of our clients? Wondering how I was going to have enough time in the day to check up on all of these critical touch points in our business!!!

How could we keep up with all of this when we couldn’t afford to hire more staff?

So…

We set out to create something that took only minutes of our time, was super easy to access and easy enough a child could do it.

After many many months of analyzing, tracking and dissecting every stage of our client touch points it became clear what was needed.

So we immediately created it and put it in place and in the first year it completely transformed how we do business. I really don’t know how we survived without it.

Seriously no hype here guys we want to give this to you.

We know that it can help a small business look like a rock star and keep a large company from going crazy:)

So stay tuned and we will post it for all of you real soon.

Till Then,
Annissa

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The Psychology Of A Fire

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Annissa Coy

This is probably the most important topic that I am going to talk about on this blog. It’s the one thing that you can’t be ok at or even pretty good at.

You need to be the best at it.

The range of emotions that someone goes thru when they find themselves going thru a fire in their home is pretty intense. The will feel scared, angry, violated, vulnerable, depressed and confussed.

They might even feel all of these at once:(

This can pose a very intimidating sitiation for any Contents Restoration company to handle. That’s why it’s so important to have the right tools and capabilities in your tool box.

You and your team need to be willing and able to help your client not only thru understanding what to do next but how to do it. This takes compassion, understanding, patience and the ability to connect in a huge way with your client in just a few hours. Most of our fire jobs only last about 7 days. That doesn’t leave me or my team alot of time to build a close relationship with the homeowner. Yet that is exactly what we need to do so they feel comfortable taking our advise and allowing us the kind of freedom we need to get the job done.

The last thing you want is to find yourself in a situation with a homeowner that is suspicous of you and doesn’t trust you. If this is where the relationship is at from the get go, you might as well walk away from the job. It will save you and the client a lot of heartache later on.

Helping them handle the letting go process takes them trusting you and is just as much your job as helping them understand how to talk with their adjuster about the payment process of their claim.

I had the privilege of having Dr, Ned Hallowell, an expert psychologist on ADHD and ADD, tour our Mobile Clean Unit and talk with him about how we walk our clients thru the emotional side of a loss.

His feedback was really awesome!

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I Love What We Do

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Annissa Coy

After cleaning for several days on the home in Idaho we were finally able to give the family back some of their keepsakes.

How cool is it that we get paid for being the Hero!:)

It was so awesome.

See for yourself…

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Family Pictures And Personal Papers??

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Annissa Coy

I have had several emails from students asking “how do you deal with family pictures and personal paper work?”

So I did this short video to show you just how we handle them on our jobsites.

It’s really important to be organized with what we call “return to homeowner boxes.” These are small boxes full of personal papers and photos that we need the homeowners to sort thru and either photo copy things they need to keep or throw away the paperwork that they can live without.

These items (excluding photos) are usually not really important and just aren’t cost effective for us to clean. Sealing them in heavy duty plastic bags keeps any smoke odor or contamination from getting out of the boses and into their house until they have had a chance to go thru them.

Photos we always clean with a chemical sponge and then baggie them according to photo album or container that they were stored in.

Posted in Technical How To | Tagged , ,

Some Of The Items We Saved

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Annissa Coy

This is why we do what we do. To be able to give back even just a little bit of what they had before the fire.

With the technology and specialty processes that we have in this industry we can save more and more items from being on the logged destroyed list.

Sometimes it even astounds us at how much you can do with the right knowledge and equipment.

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Just for Fun :0)

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Annissa Coy

Hey Everyone,

I know this has nothing to do with Fire Restoration but I found it in my archives and thought it might put a smile on your face.

This is my grandson Caden when he was 16 months old. He spends alot of time at Grandpa and Grandma’s office and seems to know his way around some of our equipment.

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Fire Damaged Contents Before Cleaning

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Annissa Coy

The majority of this house was destroyed because of the severe smoke and fire damage.

But we wanted to save as many of the keepsakes as we could for the family.

This video shows you just exactly what we were up against.

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Hazmat Situation

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Annissa Coy

Another family needs our help.

This time the call came from Lewiston Idaho when a daybed caught fire and put a family in the Hospital. They are all ok after just one night but their ordeal is far from over.

I want to give you an inside tour of what it’s like to be on the scene in a hazmat severe fire damage situation. This is Day One.

We are in full PPE gear to protect ourselves. For the video we did not have our full respirators on but did put them on afterwards as we realized that the soot and debris was still heavy in the air.

Now it’s time to start the clean up and restoration process so this family can start healing.

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Certifications What’s Your Thoughts…?

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Annissa Coy

I’ve been really thinking about how our industry has set up the whole Certification process and made it pretty much mandatory if we want to be “accepted” or “approved” as a good company.

What do you all think about the whole system?

What’s the good? The bad? The ugly?

This curious mind wants to know…:)

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Make A Connection

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Annissa Coy

The only thing you should be thinking about when you arrive on an Emergency Call Out is what can I do to connect?

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking no the first thing to think about is…Who is the insurance company? Is there going to be coverage? How long will this take to fix? How am I going to add this job to my already overloaded job board?  Am I right?:)

I get that these are all really good and important things to think about. I teach the “how to do these steps” in my classes. And there is a time to find out these things but its not in the initial moments of arriving on the scene. I mean if there is’nt coverage for this loss let’s say, that’s pretty darn important to know right up front. But you can find that out at the end of your first conversation with the homeowner not the beginning.

People need to know that you really care about what happens to them. Not their insurance policy.

Those first few minutes should be completely commited to making a connection with your potential new client. You won’t find a better time to seal that bond then right at the beginning of your hopefully mutually valuable relationship.

There are lots of ways to connect with someone. And it’s different with each person. The best way I’ve found is to listen. If you ask they will tell you.

People like to tell their story and someone who has just had a fire or a sewer backup has a BIG story to tell.

Ask them “what happened?”

Then listen…

Listen for them to tell you exactly what they need from you and then give it to them.

Instant connection. It’s really that simple.

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