First, you should pay attention to the general conditions that the company can provide. Competing companies usually have the same conditions for customers, that is why it is very important to pay attention to the certain details and get more familiar with each company.
You can learn more about the conditions offered by the company considering:
- the cost of work;
- the time of work;
- the possibility of urgent repairs;
- an electronic contracting option;
- guarantees.
All these parameters should be considered first, but in fact they are only secondary parameters that you should pay attention to.
Below we have listed the most important points that can help customers while choosing a reliable company.
Preparatory work (the procedure for taking measurements, explaining the nuances to the owner of the house in person and online)
Before you contact a salesman from a roofing company, we strongly recommend you to get acquainted with the issue: you should learn more about the potential problems with roofs, paying attention to the fact where frequent breakdowns may occur, what causes them, and what to pay attention to first, etc.
Why do we recommend it? Because a lot of salesmen are not very experienced in the process of roof installation and maintenance, and sometimes they do not fully understand the issue in depth. Their main goal is to sell you a roof. That is the problem.
In order to save your time, we have a Homeowners Guide on our website, where we listed frequent roof-related problems.
We have repeatedly encountered situations when a customer after reading our guide starts asking salesmen questions, not taking into consideration the fact that they are from the other companies, and they do not have proper answers to the questions. That is why we offer services that help our customers to get the information by the qualified specialists. We want to provide our customers with the useful information about the roof so they can make a decision which specialists they would consider contacting, and which specialists to choose for cooperation and restoration. Therefore, it is always important to use available resources to verify the accuracy of the information that the other companies offer.
Professionalism (narrow specialization, staff turnover, experience of the workers, availability of licenses, certificates and accreditation, etc.)
Recommendation for customers on the preliminary assessment of the professionalism of employees:
- Ask the salesman of the company how experienced their staff is. How many years have the company’s employees or contractors been engaged in roofing work?
The company itself may be young, but it is important to take into consideration how many years the company’s employees have been engaged in roofing work. Our company is a young company, since we opened not so long ago, but we have been working in the field of roofing services for quite a long time. Our employees and contractors have been engaged in roofing services for 17 years, we have cooperated with sellers who have worked in the sales for 25 years, and we know everything about this market.
The age of the company is not an indicator of its quality, since very young specialists who have not really performed roofing work before can be involved in your project. Our company’s specialists have worked in different places and in different companies, but we decided to unite all the best professionals, knowledge and skills in this area and create a new company with a better service and efficiency, since we are aware of all the problems that customers usually face.
- Estimate
After the assessment, you will receive an estimate with an indication of the works. Please carefully read it. A reliable company will specify a complete list of works and materials (with the exact number required for the work completion). This is very important! You should not trust such phrases as: “All the necessary items”, or something like “underlayment” without specification of its type, etc. Such examples do not contain all the necessary information, and thus the company may mislead you. During the working process, they can simply use cheaper materials that will not last long. You should always ask them to provide a complete list of the materials that will be used on the project and explain to you in detail why and for what purposes these materials should be used.
An example of our company’s estimate that we send to our customers:
As you can see, we specify in detail which materials will be used in our work. This helps our customers to understand better where certain amount of the materials has been used.
Evaluation from our customers and public (the number and content of reviews, recommendations from friends, public recognition by non-profit organizations, awards, etc.)
It is important to note that the reviews in Google have the greatest weight and significance for customers, and, of course recommendations from friends and acquaintances who have already tried the services contain the most valuable information.
You might consider checking the dates of reviews from Google, whether the company has new reviews and how often they appear. If the company has few reviews, this may indicate that they are rarely contacted, which means their services might not be high quality.
We also recommend clients to ask different sellers from various companies to give them 2-3 phone numbers of their previous customers so they can call them and get feedback, asking about the quality of the work that has been performed, what they liked and what they didn’t like.
Whether complete information is provided (details, business license number)
Providing such information does not give any guarantees that the company is performing well and offering reliable services. The presence of a license does not mean that the performer would offer a good service. However, it is very important that the workers you hire work in accordance with the law, that is why it is also an important selection criterion.