Greg Knows Water

As the global recession deepens, many people are worried about their financial future and consequently are under significant stress. People under stress are frequently prone to overreact to simple problems and be less courteous than one might expect.

It is important that employees, officers and representatives of your company do not contribute to the problem. When training dealers, I am frequently asked for advice on how to keep good relationships with customers and competitors.

The Consumer Bill of Rights

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy spoke to the US Congress and outlined his vision for four basic consumer rights. The original four were expanded to the six that are today recognized by consumer rights advocates:

• The right to be safe.
• The right to choose freely.
• The right to be heard.
• The right to be informed.
• The right to education.
• The right to service.

Your customers expect to be treated fairly, honestly and with professionalism.

Be a good neighbor

Your business is physically a member of the local community, but thanks to Internet technology your business is part of an ever-shrinking global village. You, your company and all the employees are constantly under scrutiny by the community.

Be a good neighbor.

• Keep your building and surrounding property clean, safe and organized.
• Keep your vehicles clean and well maintained.
• Ensure that you and your employees dress in a professional manner.
• Maintain appropriate standards of grooming and personal hygiene.
• Train all employees to drive carefully and courteously.
• Be actively involved in the local community.
• Be careful of what you and employees post in chat-rooms, blogs and on social networking sites – your customers are watching.
• Be on time or appropriately early for all appointments.
• Be polite, cheerful, courteous and helpful.

Under-promise and over-deliver

If you truly care about your clients, you should be concerned with their immediate and long-term satisfaction. Take a careful look at your marketing and advertising…are you making promises that you can’t fulfill?

Are people being misled by your advertising? Look at your marketing from the perspective of an end-user and be sure that you can and do perform as promised.

Salespeople should be periodically audited to ensure that their approach, presentation and closing techniques are ethical and customer-oriented.

Make it easy to complain

Give your customers ample opportunity to express their frustration to you. Provide a feedback link on your website. Add verbiage to work orders like “if you didn’t have an EXCELLENT experience today, please call” and provide a toll-free number to call for customer-service issues.

Designate someone in your organization to be responsible for customer satisfaction. Empower that person to make the necessary decisions to keep your customers completely satisfied while protecting your organization.

You can’t please everyone all the time

Regardless of how hard you try, you will disappoint somebody, somewhere; that is an immutable fact of doing business. If a customer comes to your place of business to complain, take the time to listen to them.

If an upset customer calls, empower your employees to transfer the client to someone who can best help them as quickly as possible. Many upset customers simply want to be heard, and the best thing you can do to acknowledge them is simply to listen. When you receive a customer complaint, you should act quickly to understand the problem, present solutions and resolve the issue.

Angry customers

Sometimes, even with your best efforts, someone will remain angry, belligerent or unreasonable. The acronym CARS will help you remember the four keys to defusing most hostile encounters:

• Care – Demonstrate your genuine care and concern for the customer by listening.
• Acknowledge – Let the angry customer know that you understand and empathize with their situation.
• Refocus – Distill the emotions out of the situation and refocus on the issues that need to be resolved.
• Solve – Solve the problem by providing information, suggesting solutions, being helpful and following through.

Be especially careful to avoid phrases and words like ‘I don’t care’ or ‘whatever.’ Regardless of your intentions, you will most likely be misunderstood by the customer as being uncaring and insensitive.

Think carefully about what you say and how you say it.

Self-control

Above all, maintain self-control when dealing with upset customers. Whenever you have anger, abuse or strongly negative emotion directed towards you, it is a natural human tendency to respond with your own anger and frustration.

This is the worst thing that you can do. When you become angry, you are losing self-control and are dangerously close to escalating the situation.

Situations escalate when people respond emotionally to logical problems. The  typical end-result of an escalation is an even angrier customer; the worst-case result is physical violence or threats of violence. None of these are desirable outcomes.

Don’t let people ‘push your buttons’. Sometimes, angry people will resort to profanity, blasphemy or making derogatory comments about your ancestry. These are merely their way of ‘acting-out’ and getting attention – never take this kind of abuse personally.

If you find that your interaction with an angry customer is causing you to get angry also, slow down and disengage from the situation. Disengagement is like a ‘time-out’; it is an opportunity for both of you to compose yourselves and hopefully calm down.

You can disengage by telling them you need to ‘check the customer file’ or ‘talk to a supervisor’. Two to three minutes is usually all that is needed to deescalate more confrontations.

Most normal people will usually notice during this time that they have overreacted and possibly even apologize to you.

Resolution

Reasonable people will accept your solution to remedy the situation and you will have succeeded in helping another customer have an excellent experience with your company. After problems have been resolved, they no longer need to be discussed and bringing them up again simply causes negative emotions to surface.

Remember, you will be judged by how you resolve the problems you have with customers, not necessarily by the problems themselves.

Competitors

During tough times, there is a strong temptation for competitors to engage in price wars and less-than-ethical business practices. Never stoop to the level of others who engage in unethical activities; reach out to competitors and keep the communication channels open.

Just because you’re competitors doesn’t mean that you can’t be friendly. Involve yourselves in organizations like the WQA and other local trade organizations where you can interact and become acquainted on neutral ground. Regardless of whether your widget is better than the competitor’s, or vice-versa, you’re all in business to serve your customers by providing them with better water quality to improve their lifestyle.

Petty fighting and unsavory practices sully the entire industry. Be a bright, shining example of integrity, professionalism and customer excellence.

About the author—

Standard ending…no non-profit verbiage

Pull Quotes–

Salespeople should be periodically audited to ensure that their approach, presentation and closing techniques are ethical and customer-oriented.

Designate someone in your organization to be responsible for customer satisfaction. Empower that person to make the necessary decisions to keep your customers completely satisfied while protecting your organization.

Be especially careful to avoid phrases and words like ‘I don’t care’ or ‘whatever.’ Regardless of your intentions, you will most likely be misunderstood by the customer as being uncaring and insensitive.

Water has a dramatic effect on most commercial and industrial processes. Water quality can often be the single most important factor contributing to the success or failure of a process. Whether the application requires filtered, softened, conditioned, or purified water, opportunities abound for the astute dealer to succeed in this sector of the market. Hotels, motels, Laundromats, car washes, factories, government buildings, military installations, and offices are looking for experts who can help them with their water quality requirements.

Residential, Commercial, or Industrial?

What’s in a name? – In this case the difference between success and disaster. Residential water softening has a simple symptom of failure with predictable consequences-hard water that inconveniences the homeowner. In commercial and industrial water treatment, the consequences of failure can be quite severe. The consequences of failure are really what differentiate commercial and industrial applications. If a softener fails for a car wash, the cars aren’t quite as clean; if the softener in a Laundromat fails, the clothes aren’t quite as clean, but if a softener fails for an industrial boiler, the consequences can be catastrophic. One can then logically deduce the following:

So, when you’re evaluating the client’s application be sure to ascertain what the consequences of failure are to ensure that you meet and exceed their expectations for deployment, longevity, and redundancy.

Things to consider

As with anything, the first step to success in the C/I field is to understand what you’re working with. You need to learn about the process that you’re treating water for, understand the environment that your equipment will be in, and also understand the legal implications of the work that you’re doing.

Process Water Quality Requirements

Each process has certain specific water quality criteria. Whether you’re simply creating a particular quality of water as specified by the project engineer, or you’re acting as a problem solver to eliminate complicating factors from their water, it is important to understand the actual water quality required and to create a reasonable set of expectations for yourself and the client. Consult with the manufacturer of equipment used in your client’s process to ensure that you consider their operational water quality requirements for optimal performance as well as warranty validation.

Site Survey

Visit the jobsite, meet with your prospect and observe the potential location of the treatment equipment. This frequently overlooked step will save you numerous complications and hassles, as well as demonstrate to your prospect that you are committed to serving their needs. The Site survey will help you in further understanding the process and developing a complete logistical snapshot of the project.

Ask the following questions

-How far is this jobsite from my office (Travel time for installation and service)?

-What time of day can the installation team have access to the facility?

-What times of day are convenient to the client (if any) for us to install a bypass loop?

-Are there any dimensional constraints to the system (doorways, height, floor space)?

-Are there any weight limitations (equipment to sit on a platform or to be wall-mounted)?

-Is there an adequate electrical supply for water treatment equipment ?

-Is there an adequate drain for the water treatment equipment ?

-Are there any specific environmental challenges to deal with (temperature, humidity, vibration, intrinsically safe environment)?

-Are there any specific drainage restrictions for this project (acid/alkaline discharge, discharge salinity etc…)?

-Are there any specific legal requirements to meet for this particular project (increased liability insurance, HAZMAT, OSHA, local licensing, corporate procurement programs, union participation, tribal authority, security clearances, GSA, state purchasing agencies etc…)?

Don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions, it’s much more fun to ask questions now than to wish that you had later.

Process Water and Operational Requirements

Define what your client wants and what you can reasonably deliver.

-What is the quality of water required?

-What flow rate is required?

-What delivery pressure is required?

-How many hours of runtime will be required per day/operating cycle?

-How much water will be used per day/operating cycle?

-Is any major change (increase/decrease) in water consumption to be expected in   the near future?

-What level of redundancy is required?

-Does any of the equipment require an ASME stamp?

-Is an engineer’s stamp required for the equipment design?

-How soon does the client expect the system to be installed and fully operational?

-Who will maintain this system?

-What are the consequences of failure?

-What payment terms does the client expect?

Reasonable expectations are the key to healthy commercial/industrial relations. Your C/I client has a dramatically different set of expectations that a homeowner. Plan for an escalated response to all service issues, as well as a more critical analysis of product water quality.

Water Sample Analysis

Draw samples of the client’s raw water and have them tested for organic and inorganic impurities that will have an effect on the process, as well as those contaminants that could interfere with the treatment process itself.

I recommend the following minimum testing panel, regardless of the application to get you started:-

Hardness as CaCo3

Iron

Copper

TDS

pH

Total Alkalinity

Free Chlorine

Total Chlorine

Perform additional tests as needed, especially if the water supply in non-municipal.

Armed with an influent water quality analysis, you’re ready to compare the raw water against the process water requirements. Use appropriate certified testing facilities as needed; one should never be “cheap” when it comes to water testing for commercial and industrial applications.

Equipment Selection

Work closely with your equipment vendor to ensure that you specify an appropriate solution for this project. Who is liable is the incorrect equipment or technology is specified, and what recourse do you have to protect yourself? Be sure that the equipment

Service and Maintenance

While periodic service is important on residential water treatment systems, it is critical on commercial and industrial systems. Consult with the equipment manufacturer on preventative maintenance schedules and discuss with the client to ensure that the equipment is properly maintained. The goal is to fix problems while they are cheap and easy with a minimum of operational downtime. If the system includes consumables like acid, caustic, coagulants, chlorine neutralizers, SP-5000, Pur-Gard or other performance enhancers, be sure to create a consumables replacement schedule and to facilitate easy procurement of consumables by your clients.

Documentation, Contracts and Purchase Orders

Carefully document the expectations of both parties with a procurement and installation timeline. Peruse all purchase orders and letters of engagement before accepting them to ensure that the terms are as originally negotiated and that you understand lien releases, delay penalties and other commercial terms that may be a surprise to some. Don’t be afraid to engage the service of a commercial attorney to advise you on your rights and responsibilities before entering into a contract.

Installation

Installation should be contracted or performed by your in-house installation team to be on time and within the criteria agreed to by the client. Be sure to adhere to all local codes as well as industry best practices. Treat the client’s facility with respect by being punctual, clean and orderly on the jobsite. Respect their corporate culture and be sensitive to dress codes, and jobsite behavior.

System Startup & Commissioning

While selection, sizing and installation are important, the startup cannot be overlooked. This important step involved systematic pressurization, sanitization, and flushing of the water treatment equipment as well as the water-using piping, fixtures and apparatus to ensure a consistent baseline of operations. Once the system has been commissioned, draw samples of the effluent product water and have them tested by the same testing facility as the original tests for uniformity. Save copies of pre and post-treatment test data in your project binder.

Operator training

Unless you’re planning on having one of your own employees on-site 24/7, you’re going to have to train your client and someone on their staff on the proper operation and maintenance of the water treatment system. Take the time to train carefully as many problems are caused by operator error, which usually stems from inadequate training.

Documentation and drawings

Be prepared to provide three copies of all O&M manuals to the client. Some clients may also require “redline” (record drawings in some areas) drawings that document the final “as-built” construction of the treatment device/s. For your own purposes, you should carefully document and photograph the installation location and each component in operational condition to simplify troubleshooting and training.

Commercial and Industrial water treatment is not for everyone, so be sure that you carefully analyze the risks and benefits and the impact it will have on your company before you over-commit yourself. Take advantage of the WQA’s new educational materials on the commercial/industrial sector and enjoy this exciting and challenging segment of our industry.

As a plumbing professional, you work with water every day. You know how to deliver it, you know how to route it around a home and you know how to drain it away after it has been used.

This is what you do and have done for years; you know what you’re doing. So why aren’t you comfortable ‘getting your feet wet’ in the water treatment industry?

Maybe it is just a lack of education and no partner who you can trust to help you succeed.

Water quality affects every aspect of life in today’s modern society. This multi-billion dollar industry affects homes, business and industry at every level. As a plumbing professional, it is your responsibility and privilege to provide your clients with the very best water for their home and family.

Problem with ‘normal’ water

Every day, thousands of billions of tons of water evaporate from the earth’s surface into the atmosphere. Water vapor eventually cools to form clouds and then falls back to earth as precipitation.

On its way from the clouds to your client’s faucet, soft rainwater dissolves and absorbs a part of almost everything is passes. The falling rain cleans the air as it falls. Unfortunately the impurities that were removed from the air have not left; they have just been relocated by the water.

Rain falls onto the ground, collecting additional sediments like rust, sand and algae. Water eventually finds its way to a surface water supply or percolates downward and collects in an aquifer. As it percolates through the earth, the water can further absorb hardness minerals, iron, heavy metals, radioactivity, organic contaminants and many other complex elements and compounds.

Water can also collect numerous harmful, man-made chemical impurities throughout this cycle. These synthetic chemicals are generally odorless, colorless and tasteless, as well as often life-threatening.

The statement, ‘my parents drank this water for 75 years and it never hurt them’, is no longer a valid excuse to not be concerned with water quality. There has been a massive global increase in harmful chemical waste over the last 50 years.

The scientific and medical community has not had time or the ability to study the long-term effects of the more than 70,000 harmful chemicals that can be found in use today. Approximately 1,000 new synthetic chemical compounds are entering the industrial marketplace each and every year.

Precipitation falls upon commercial and municipal dumpsites, toxic waste sites, industrial refuse depots, military test sites, leach fields, mining operations and farmer’s fields, where it dissolves minute amounts of toxic chemicals and carries them along. The US Government estimated in 1986 that close to two percent of the nation’s groundwater supplies were moderately polluted by sources such as hazardous waste dumps and leaking landfills.

Industrial wastewater is also a major source of water contamination. When certain chemicals come in contact with others, they create new compounds. Chemicals that are considered generally acceptable in controlled amounts may react with other elements and/or chemicals to form new compounds that could be highly carcinogenic.

Chlorine is one of the best-publicized examples; it reacts with organic matter in water and forms deadly trihalomethanes (THMs). As many as 50 percent of your clients refuse to drink their tap water due to health concerns as well as objectionable tastes and odors produced by chlorine and its carcinogenic byproducts.

Hard water

Hard water is probably the single largest threat facing the American home in the 21st century. Hard water can coat your client’s family, home and appliances with thousands of pounds of inorganic mineral rock-scale each and every year.

Hard water slowly destroys everything it touches. Left untreated, it costs money, ruins your client’s lifestyle and can even lower the value of their home.

No one needs to tell them that they’re living with hard water. Soap doesn’t lather easily, glasses are cloudy after washing, a ring forms around the bathtub, faucets and shower heads are crusty, laundering results are poor and there are many other easily recognized signs.

There are several degrees of water hardness. Even moderately hard water can seriously damage the plumbing system in your client’s home and, in time, cause inconvenient and expensive problems.

Hard water is loaded with a variety of impurities that react with soap to form a gummy, insoluble curd. This soap curd clings stubbornly to everything it touches. The ring around a bathtub is curd. That same curd causes hair to become dull and hard to manage.

Soap curd clogs skin pores and prevents natural oils from moisturizing the skin. This dryness causes itching and can even aggravate skin conditions like psoriasis, eczema and acne. Soap curd is especially noticeable by the scummy film it forms on dishes, glassware, walls and floors.

Hardness and other dissolved solids combine to form the residue seen as spots on glasses, crockery, cutlery and shower enclosures. Laundry washed in hard water takes on a gray color and wears out faster than expected. With hard water in your client’s washing machine, it’s almost impossible to wash clothes white – even when you use large amounts of detergent and bleach.

Minerals and insoluble particles in hard water trap dirt and soap curd in the fabric of your client’s clothes and linens. These deposits give fabric a dull gray ‘washed-out’ look and cause the clothing fibers to deteriorate faster.

Baking with hard water imparts an undesirable taste from the hardness minerals into your client’s food. Tea, coffee and other beverages prepared with hard water taste awful and often contain flakes of insoluble hardness minerals.

Perhaps the greatest damage done by hard water is the damage that can’t be easily seen until it is too late. Water heaters, humidifiers, boilers and household pipes become lined with an increasingly thick layer of calcium and magnesium scale. As this scale builds up, the water flow in pipes diminishes to such a point that new piping is sometimes the only option to remedy the situation.

Hard water scale inside a water heater forms an insulating layer that prevents the burners or heating elements from heating the water efficiently. Just one-eighth inch of scale inside the tank can require as much as 30 percent more fuel to heat the water to the desired temperature.

THE CRIMES OF HARD WATER

Increased water heating costs

Damaged clothing

Excessive soap consumption

Pipe scaling

Faucet and fixture deterioration

Skin problems

Unpalatable food

Undesirable tastes and odors

Environmental efficiency

Progressive plumbers are adopting environmentally efficient practices both for the benefit of the environment and for LEED credits on their projects. These LEED credits are US Green Building Council rating measurements for the environmental effectiveness of construction.

Softening, conditioning, or filtering the water in your client’s home will not only enhance their lifestyle, but also help them lower their net carbon footprint. Many devices on the market are touted as ‘salt-free softeners, which claim softening alternatives.

Look for products that have been certified by credible third-parties like the DVGW (Deutsche Vereinigung des Gas- und Wasserfaches e.V. – Technisch-wissenschaftlicher Verein). This is the German Technical and Scientific Association for Gas and Water certification effectiveness for hardness scale control.

Partnerships that work

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make in your water treatment adventure is to find a vendor who doesn’t just ‘sell you stuff,’ but is actually interested in your success. Good vendors not only will provide you with innovative products and solutions; they will also be able to train and support you.

There are many great vendors who will be able to guide, counsel and mentor you in the nuances of this exciting industry. Look for vendors who have talented people on staff who have actually run a water treatment dealership, understand plumbing codes and especially how to run a business.

Equipment considerations

When selecting water treatment equipment for your clients, consider the following:

High water hardness: The harder the water, the larger the system must be to remove contaminants effectively. If the system is too large, however, it will waste water and salt while potentially allowing your client’s system to be contaminated with bacteria. Resist the urge to oversize, in spite of what that salesman may tell you.

High water pressure: Municipalities in many regions could never have foreseen the massive population influx that has occurred. Cities are now forced to increase net pressures in piping distribution systems to push as much water as they can to new housing developments. These high pressures can raise attrition rates and cause premature failure in equipment. Look for equipment that is built to the highest quality standards.

Low water temperatures: Although cold water tastes good, it is not good at all for water softening, conditioning or filtration equipment. Cold water has been proven to reduce system operating capacities by as much as 60 percent. Improperly sized systems will have a much greater chance of failing when the winter influent water is as cold as it is here. Look for systems with high kinetic resins and proper electronic controls

Chlorine and chloramine: All ion-exchange based water softening, conditioning and filtration systems can degrade at a minimum average rate of  five to 10 percent per year (attrition) due to chlorine alone. Choose systems that contain high quality media with slower chlorine attrition rate than traditional softening resins.

Iron and heavy metals: Resin attrition is further exacerbated by factors such as high water consumption, inadequate regenerations, elevated chlorine levels, iron and heavy metals in water. Even after leaving the city plant meeting or exceeding US EPA minimum standards, water can absorb and collect contaminants such as copper, zinc, lead, rust, manganese and a host of others before it even reaches your client’s home. These are obviously potentially harmful to humans, but even more dangerous to the water equipment unless it is specifically designed to address these threats.

Heterotrophic plate count bacteria (HPCs): Most cities produce water that is free of harmful bacteria and safe to consume. However, HPCs can exist in piping, water meters, fittings and regulating valves. These HPCs are benign but can be the growth medium for potentially pathogenic bacteria. HPCs can grow and colonize in a water system in as little as four days, even with chlorine or chloramines in the water. If the water system that you installed is not specifically sized and designed to address HPC growth issues, then it could be a ticking bacterial time bomb. Look for systems that incorporate electronic disinfectant injection during each regeneration cycle to minimize the risk of bacterial contamination in your client’s home.

Future-proof: Look for water treatment equipment that is designed to adapt to future technologies. Many reputable vendors now provide systems with built-in software upgrade ports and handheld programmers to ensure that you can keep your clients systems current with the latest software technologies. Look for equipment than can also be expanded or upgraded in the field to enhance capacity and accommodate for resin attrition.

Continuing education is key

Learn everything that you possibly can about this exciting field. Publications like WC&P magazine are packed with helpful information; read the articles and make use of the ‘Ask the Expert’ feature now published in their new on-line ezine, POU-POeNews. Both are available for free domestic subscription at www.wcponline.com.

There are also a number of great industry organizations. WQA  provides excellent training and certification courses.

As a plumbing professional, your clients are counting on you to steer them in the right direction and protect them from the impurities that can be found in water. You are the local water quality expert.

Welcome to the water improvement industry; your life will never be the same!