New Pool Service Concept Has 50,000 Michigan Pool Owners Swimming Pretty
(April 14, 2011) – In any industry, when demand for service outpaces the supply, customers are left with few options and sub-par experiences. Until recently, this basic business tenet has been painfully obvious to the 50,000+ residential pool owners in Southeast Michigan. Too few quality service techs, and too many pools to service, left owners facing long waits, artificially high prices, and potentially substandard work.
Pietila Pools Services, and “Ask the Pool Guy” Allan Curtis, is setting the industry on its ear with a collaborative service concept. The company, based in Brighton, MI, is contracting with the best pool service technicians in the area to service more pools, with faster turn-around, at fair prices and outstanding quality.
“The pool season is five months at best,” Curtis explains. “Any really good tech is not going to be interested in sitting idle for more than half the year, so they generally leave for warmer climates where they can run their business year round. I don’t blame them, but this definitely leaves a gap in the local service market.”
Curtis aims to make it not only attractive, but financially rewarding, for high quality pool service techs to stay in Michigan. “We are contracting with these good service techs, handling all the marketing, appointment setting, and back end business support so they can do more of what they love, which is servicing residential pools. By letting them focus on their jobs, while we focus on helping grow their businesses, we can serve more pool owners, more quickly, with a higher overall standard of quality.”
The upside for the pool technicians is a higher volume of business, in which they can potentially make enough in five months to last the whole year.
Curtis’ involvement in the pool industry goes back 20+ years. An experienced pool technician himself, Curtis originally purchased Pietila Pools of Farmington Hills from it’s previous owner in 1994 and indulged his passion for creating unique, one-of-a-kind backyard poolscapes. While the design and build side of the business grew, he became less involved in ongoing service and maintenance.
Recently, Curtis began to look at the pool service industry in a new light. “Thanks to people like Gary Vaynerchuk (author of The Thank You Economy), I recognized we had a huge opportunity to provide better customer service, and leverage the outstanding lifetime value of a pool owner. While we used to look season to season, I saw the bigger picture over a pool’s lifetime, as the homeowner remodels, repairs and renovates,” Curtis explains. “If we could treat them better, and stay engaged with them, the customer relationship could be improved dramatically. With our new shared service model, we are able to provide more personalized service, over the lifetime of a pool, with consistently high quality and reliable service.”
The company is leveraging Curtis’ expertise in social media to connect to new customers and new suppliers, while allowing their customer base to stay engaged with them on Facebook and Twitter. It’s a natural way to use the new media to connect with customers where they spend their time, online. In addition to his pool work, Curtis is also a founder of The InSights Group in Brighton, a social media consulting firm and small business incubator. This experience brings a new dimension to his pool service business model that has reach and real impact.
For the 50,000 potential customers in this area, Curtis is delivering quality pool service without the traditional long waits for call backs, and disappointing work, that has plagued so many pool owners. The company is just launching their new collaborative service model, and is confident that they will see more happy customers, and more beautifully-serviced pools, for the 2011 swimming pool season.
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Pietila Pools Services gives the 50,000 residential pool owners in Southeast Michigan a new option in pool services. With a scalable team of trained pool technicians, they provide excellent service with fast turnaround and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Visit the website: www.pietilapoolsservices.com or call them at 248-478-4978. You can also find Al as @askthepoolguy on Facebook/Twitter.