Windshield Time Episodes

Once you’re in your own truck, running calls without someone looking over your shoulder, it’s easy to think you’ve made it. You know the equipment. You can do the job. Customers see you as the expert. But are you still getting better? Being a great technician takes more than technical knowledge. Your craft includes how …

Every tech has had this write-up. The outlet in his garage was cracked and gummed up. You told him it wasn’t safe, because it wasn’t. He said no. Here is why. He has never been shocked out there. It has never tripped on him. So what you told him was a story about something that …

You found the problem. You showed them the fix. They said no. So you blame the price. But the price wasn’t the issue. You asked questions to get answers, and that’s all you got. You never gave them a reason to trust you. And you don’t get a do-over. One visit. One house. A limited …

You know which call it happens on. Somewhere after the fourth one, the energy goes. The process gets shortened. The last customer of the day gets a different technician than the first customer did. And you feel it at the end of the day, when there’s nothing left for anybody at home. In this episode …

Chris Elmore was 20 years old, running calls on his own and doing installs. He looked 16. Customers judged him on his appearance, not his technical ability. They would not have confidence in his competence. That is the myth he takes apart in this episode: My work speaks for me. It doesn’t.  The customer can’t …

The customer says, “too expensive,” and your tech hears a closed door. He packs up the checklist, rolls the truck, and writes the ticket off as a cheapskate who was never going to buy. But he didn’t diagnose anything. He guessed. In this episode of Windshield Time, Chris Elmore breaks down the Anatomy of an …

Out of a two-hour service call, you only get about 30 minutes with the customer.  And those 30 minutes decide whether you win the call or lose it. Most techs have never looked at it that way.  They think the job is the diagnosis and the repair, and the conversation is just the stuff that …

The customer gets defensive the second you bring up money. It feels like it came out of nowhere. It didn’t. The whole thing was decided long before that, in the first few minutes, before you ever talked price. Here’s what most techs never think about. The customer at the door is already braced for the …

You fix the water heater. You leave. Two weeks later, the customer calls back because the master bathroom toilet is acting up.  Now you have to figure out how to charge another diagnostic for something you didn’t touch.  Or eat it. Or argue. There’s a better way. You set the bridge before you ever leave …

In 800 to 1,000 hours of classroom training, Chris Elmore received three hours on customer service.  Three.  And he remembers the night they did it. It was basic. It was a bunch of crap like “the customer’s always right.” And that was it. That’s the gap this episode fills. Systems don’t have feelings. They can’t …

Your brain is lying to you. Not once in a while. On every call. You pull up to a house. You see the yard. The cars. The neighborhood. Before you knock on the door, you’ve already decided what this customer can afford. You don’t know you’re doing it. But you are. That’s a cognitive bias.  …

You troubleshoot systems every single day. A water heater isn’t making hot water. Lights are flickering in a bedroom. A compressor isn’t kicking on.  You don’t guess. You don’t panic.  You ask questions, eliminate what it isn’t, find the true condition, and fix it. Now a customer says, “That’s too expensive.” And suddenly you freeze. …