The four pillars of business success

By Emma Peterson. 

Learn how you can train your team for success in a market where service is key.  

When it comes time to get a new roof, customers often don’t actually care about the roof. They care about not having water leaking into their building, they care about their occupant’s safety, but the roof itself is not something they are knowledgeable about — that’s why they hire professionals to take care of it for them! This is why Chad Westbrook, the founder of Service Alignment, tells contractors that customer service is what their sales hinge on. In an interview with the Coffee Shops crew, Chad explained, “If I put myself in my clients’ shoes and I call you as a roofer and you do talk about all this different crazy stuff, which is beautiful, but as a client I don’t know any other stuff. I’m just in the office looking for someone to say they can fix my roof.”  

This is often something that Chad helps train companies and teams on in his work with Service Alignment. He explained that there are four main pillars he uses to guide his trainings: People, process, technology and goals. People refers to your team and making sure you have the right people working the right jobs. From there, you have process, which Chad explained as “how those people work together.” The next pillar is technology, but Chad made sure to emphasize that you should not bring technology in until you have your processes down. He explained, “Technology does not fix process problems so many times I see contractors trying to buy technology to fix a process problem. It won't work.”   

The last and final pillar is goals. Chad explained the importance of this, “Goals allow every one of your employees, and this is you can have a company goal, but every employee that you have needs to understand how they contribute to the divisional goal of the company goal. Because if they don't, they're lost.” This is where efficiency and profit start to come in and he emphasizes the importance of what they are doing, which is not selling a roof but rather a solution. Once these pillars are put into place along with that foundational understanding that customer service is key, your business will begin to flourish. 

If you want to hear Chad talk about implementing the idea of service into company cultures in person, he’ll be presenting it in his ServiceCon talk, “The Service Mindset.” ServiceCon 2025, hosted by Centerpoint Connect is two-day event that will be held from March 12 to March 14, 2025 in Houston, Texas.  

Space is limited, so get your tickets now! Ticket sales will end once tickets are sold out!