New research has revealed the customer behaviours that tradespeople find most annoying. The survey, filled out by 500 UK tradespeople, was conducted by The Leadership Factor on behalf of IronmongeryDirect. It found that being watched while working tops the list of tradespeople’s annoyances.
The study found that 41% of tradespeople find it irritating when clients won’t leave them alone while working. Male workers are far more likely to be irritated by customers not offering them a drink (16% vs 9%). Women are more bothered by clients calling them outside of business hours (23% vs 13%).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, self-employed people are far more angered by customers who don’t pay on time (33% vs 22%) and ask for discounts (31% vs 23%) than employed individuals. This is, likely due to their own personal income being on the line.
Dominick Sandford, managing director at IronmongeryDirect, said: “Customer interaction is an inevitable and important part of most tradespeople’s lives and, as difficult as it might be, workers need to stay calm and professional, no matter how frustrating their clients get! That’s why we’ve worked with a behaviour expert to offer advice to tradespeople on how to diplomatically deal with each of these customer habits, so that you can keep everyone happy while getting the job done.”
Being constantly asked how they’re getting on is another major annoyance for tradespeople (34%), according to the survey, as is the cheeky request to do additional little jobs ‘while you’re here’ (28%). Advice on how to deal with each of these customer behaviours can be found here.
The 10 customer habits that tradespeople find most annoying are:
