The Difference in Service With Allied Restoration

I was contacted from a company yesterday that claimed to specialize in servicing Restoration Companies like ours. He was requesting an in person meeting to sell me on his services and I replied with one sentence: “How are you different from XYZ Company?” It took him two pages to reply. As the Director of Marketing at Allied Restoration, it is my belief that if you should be able to answer that question in a sentence or at most a paragraph. And when we look for new partners or clients, I need to be able to answer that question about them.

How is Allied Restoration different?

Our Vision Statement is proudly displayed and known by our staff:

The Allied Restoration Family creates consistent experiences that restore peace of mind after disasters by passionately going above and beyond what is expected. We provide Concierge Level service to both the middle market and high net worth.

We solve problems in the most intelligent and economic way possible. We don’t just eliminate water or fire damage. We step back and find the best way. Here’s the thing:

The best way is oftentimes not the most profitable way for us.

I was recently inspired by the telling of a story about the Johnson & Johnson company’s response to the Tylenol Cyanide scare in 1982. Someone had tampered with bottles which led to the death of 7 people and Johnson & Johnson was faced with two conflicting responsibilities:

• Get “in front” of the issue and deal with the response prior to a recall which would be better for their shareholders and profits but could lead to additional deaths.
• Recall everything immediately which could cost them an estimated $100 Million but would be safest for their customers. Obviously, that’s an easy decision behind a computer and when we don’t have any skin in the game, but it took enormous integrity for Johnson & Johnson to do the right thing. The story took hold and their sales, which dropped by 75% immediately rebounded after just one year.

We are faced with Decisions like this every single day.

I got a call a couple of weeks ago from a trusted referral source who asked us to take a look at a property of one of their VIP clients. He had a plumbing leak behind his vanity and the plumber was asking him to remove his vanity to make the repairs. His goals were simple: Keep costs low and avoid filing a claim. Most companies like mine run from situations like these. Doing retail work like this is lower margin and since we don’t get a lot of repeat business (most insureds don’t have even one, let alone multiple claims) so it doesn’t make business sense to build good will at the expense of profits. But Allied Restoration’s vision is about concierge level service. The obvious question was is there a way to do the plumbing repairs without the insured being forced to pay thousands of dollars? We looked at a couple different approaches.

Attempt #1: Creative Plumbing

Many times, plumbers are able to repair a leak without having to damage cabinets by coming at it from a different angle. The previous plumber had created an access hole in the laundry room so we were attempting to access the leak from there, but unfortunately we couldn’t find get to it from there. We utilized our relationships with plumbers to provide this inspection free of charge to the insured.

Attempt #2: The Problem with Vanities.

This vanity had a beautiful, custom cut piece of granite on top of it with a backsplash that also needed to be removed. And when removing cabinets like these, they can crack, scratch or fall apart even with great care. When writing an estimate like this for an insurance company, many restoration contractors will just call for replacing the vanity and granite top which in this case would have cost in excess of $5,000 to remove, dispose of and replace, far more than this client wanted to spend. Our technicians found another way: by carefully removing the vanity and securing the countertops, we were able to save the whole thing for 25% of the price and keep the insured at or near his deductible.

Saving Insureds Time, Hassle and Money is a Trade-Off We Choose Every Time It Makes Sense.

Our clients refer their clients to us, trusting we will make the best recommendation. When they send us into a client’s house to do a repair like this, we come very highly recommended. We could have said, “This is going to cost you $4,500 and there’s no way around it.” And it’s entirely possible that this insured would have paid for that. But we passionately go above and beyond what is expected. We provide Concierge level service. We make all our decisions based on our core values: Teamwork, Accountability, Resourcefulness, Service, Urgency and Stewardship. Feel the Allied Difference!