In restoration, technical competence is the entry price. Water extraction, structural drying, and scope development are table stakes. The companies that build lasting businesses do so on customer experience — the communication, the empathy, the reliability, and the ability to bring genuine order to chaos for people in genuinely difficult moments.
The People-First Framework
Tom Gissler, President of Restoration One, shared his people-first leadership philosophy on Episode 22 of Head, Heart & Boots. His core principle: if you want better business from people, make their business better. For commercial accounts, this meant investing in partners’ success — generating leads for them, organizing events in their verticals, being useful in ways that went beyond restoration services. The result: partners who wanted to reciprocate by sending business, rather than vendors who were managed on price.
Communication as a Competitive Differentiator
The most consistent complaint about restoration companies — from property owners, insurance adjusters, and commercial clients — is communication failure. Jobs start and then go quiet. Supplements sit without follow-up. Status updates require chasing. In an industry where the customer is already stressed and the insurance process is already opaque, proactive communication is a genuine differentiator.
The standard to aim for: customers should never have to call you to find out what’s happening on their job. You call them first, before they have a reason to worry. This requires discipline and systems, not just good intentions.
The Referral Architecture
The most durable restoration businesses generate significant revenue from referrals — from adjusters who trust the company’s documentation, from commercial accounts who recommend to peer properties, and from residential customers who tell neighbors. Referrals are the output of consistent customer experience delivered at scale. They cannot be purchased; they can only be earned.
Frequently Asked Questions
What customer experience metric matters most in restoration?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) — specifically, the percentage of customers who would recommend your company without being asked. In restoration, this is heavily driven by communication quality and how well the company managed the insurance process on the customer’s behalf.
How do you create a consistent customer experience across multiple crews?
Through documented communication protocols (who calls the customer, when, with what information), training that emphasizes the customer experience as a core competency — not just technical performance — and post-job follow-up that captures feedback before it becomes a negative review.
How important are online reviews for restoration companies?
Increasingly important. Insurance adjusters and commercial property managers research restoration companies online before making referral decisions. A strong review profile (quantity and recency) is a competitive asset. A poor or thin review profile is a liability that affects referrals from people who never contact the company directly.
How do you build a customer experience system without a large team?
Start with communication protocols: a defined touchpoint schedule (daily updates during active drying, twice-weekly during reconstruction), a template for carrier communication, and a post-job review request. These three systems, consistently applied, produce a customer experience that is dramatically above the industry average without requiring significant overhead.