Working with Service Providers

Have you ever felt frustrated, stressed or upset when working with a service provider? Sometimes it can be difficult to communicate with a professional when you don't have the terminology or knowledge about your project or when your service provider doesn't understand your needs. Tell us about an experience you have had with a service provider, good or bad, and share the kind of support or tools you think could have helped you get through the project?

There are a lot of factors to consider when choosing a service provider and sometimes you just don't have the time. From start to finish, communication is a big part of working with a contractor. The project needs to be clearly outlined, a time frame needs to be estimated, a cost estimate needs to be provided, follow up is essential and flexibility is required. Many times when starting a project, other projects are discovered and the scope of the original project changes. With the steps of this process in mind it is no wonder that miscommunication can happen and that frustration or stress can develop.

Through experience, we have developed relationships with many reputable, reliable and trustworthy service providers. By understanding the in's and out's of this process we can really save our clients time and stress in order to complete well done projects. This doesn't mean every project goes off without a hitch; but we are experts in making sure these hitches don't hinder the integrity of the project.

Valuing Time and Money

These days it’s a daily question – “how’s your business surviving ?” My answer is always the same – we’re doing really well. Now that’s not to say that we haven’t seen things change in the past few months but as a business we’re feeling really positive about our current position and our future. We’ve retained all of our clients and have signed up many new ones that are using us consistently as well. We are even opening a second office in the Spring which means adding an additional staff person and many new opportunities. Of course, like many other companies, we’ve had a few clients that are using us less frequently than they have in the past, but that is to be expected. Overall, morale is good . We are enjoying our work because in many instances its valued even more by our clients because they are working longer hours and have more stress and less time to focus on their personal lives.
People often think that a person must value either their time or their money – but we offer people the opportunity to do both. Our flexible model allows our clients to utilize our support when needed and budget the amount of money they allocate to our services accordingly. We’re here to help them regardless of whether they use us one hour a month or 15 hours a week. Good economy or not, our business model is the same – we offer personal assistance to people on an as needed basis to make their lives simplified.

Life as a problem solver

We’re problem solvers.

The “come up with a creative solution to this specific problem” problem solvers, yes, we do that everyday. But what I’m referring to is the “staying on a problem until its fixed” type of problem solvers. Our client’s rely on us for our persistence and ability to see projects through until completion.

We pride ourselves on our resolve -- daily phone calls, insistent questions, detailed follow up -- the most professional forms of persistence.

Everyone has experienced the frustration of calling customer service call centers. Dealing with the endless wait times, talking to representatives who haven’t been schooled in customer service, and the frustration of a manager not being available to get a matter resolved. You’d imagine that no one would sign up willingly to tackle these types of tasks because they can be maddening. But we do! Our clients can’t wait to pass these seemingly small projects to us because these calls often produce so much stress and feel like such a complete waste of time. Yet they need to get done!

We still get miffed at companies or service professionals who just don’t seem to care about their work. The ones who don’t show up for an appointment and don’t bother to call, or do show up but don’t complete their work properly requiring a second visit. It’s important to our clients that we know how to handle these difficult situations and that we solve the problem for them.

Have you had a difficult experience with a company or service professional that you would like to share with us?

Buried under Lights, Garland, Gifts and Wrapping Paper!

Soon after excitedly launching our blog in October, we found ourselves in the midst of the holidays. You’ll have to forgive our blog absence.

Thanksgiving through New Years is a very busy time for everyone, which also means that the Fini Concierge team is called upon more than usual by our clients. We find ourselves buried in gifts, wrapping paper, Christmas trees, lights and holiday cards!

Although many of us (me included) make a vow to start our shopping and card addressing early, most of us break our promise to not make the season any more stressful than it needs to be and end up waiting longer than we should to start tackling our holiday lists. This is why I totally sympathize with some of our clients who are still making requests for help with holiday preparations just days (and sometimes even hours!) before their holiday celebrations.

But despite the stress and rush of the season, it’s actually fun and rewarding to help people with all of their holiday tasks. This year we put up nearly a dozen Christmas trees and hung our fair share of wreathes and garland. We bought countless gifts, addressed hundreds of holiday cards and wrapped dozens and dozens of packages. There were many hours spent in lines to send off packages at the post office and UPS. We helped coordinate several corporate outings and festive holiday parties.

Then of course there’s the clean up. The returning of gifts, the break down and storage of holiday decorations and the last minute travel plans to get away for New Years.

It’s a tiring time of year but at the end of the season we feel good about being part of what is a happy and magical time. We get the chance to help people to surprise a loved one with that perfect gift they’ve been dying for or take the hassle out of buying and putting up a Christmas tree when their time is more happily spent decorating it with their kids. Throwing a holiday bash is possible because someone had some help pulling together all the small details and a co-worker gets recognized with a thoughtful gift because they didn’t have to find the time to purchase it.

The details that we take care of during the holiday season are often those tasks that people dread but we’re a part of the spirit and thoughtfulness that makes the season special.

What do you enjoy most about the holidays? How could an “additional” hand help you out during the season?
-Chantal

Never Enough Time

It’s Sunday morning at 11:00, we have two choices – join our friends, who we haven’t seen in months, for brunch or tackle that long list of errands and huge pile of laundry that desperately needs to get done.

Its 7:30pm on a Thursday night – go to the gym for the first time this week or make it to the dry cleaner in time to pick up the clothes we need for our weekend away…and oh shoot, we’ve been so busy at work that we forgot to make that hotel reservation.

Never enough time and always an endless list of life’s details weighing on our minds.

These were the dilemmas of our everyday lives. And we knew we weren’t alone.

It was on those busy days that we would dream about how great it would be if there was a personal assistant for the ‘everyday’ person. Wasn’t there someone we could call on when we needed some help? Then we could see our friends for brunch and eat pancakes with ease because everything was being handled. Thinking about it was easy, but who was doing it?

We had a vision. We would create the solution.

Since that “A-Ha” moment, its become our life’s calling: helping others escape the torment we often felt . Our model has always been grounded in the idea that we wanted to create a choice, free from hassle or complications, for people to live with less stress and more time to do the things they wanted to be doing. These were and continue to be our motivation for Fini Concierge – a company providing personal assistance on an as-needed basis.

Today, we have three years of experience behind us and know that we’ve helped to change many people’s lives for the better.

We’re excited to share how we’ve helped our clients lead less stressful lives and gain more enjoyment out of daily living. Although we still often struggle to figure out the balance in our own lives (we thought we were busy then!), we plan to share with you what the concierge industry is all about, plus the successes and lessons we’ve encountered on our own journey of building a business.

Can you identify with the torments of busy daily life – with too much to do and never enough time? We’d love to hear your experiences and what solutions you use to minimize your stress and enjoy life more.

Chantal and Eddie