You may remember the bonanza locksmiths once had a few years ago when AAA was paying locksmiths to unlock vehicles. At that time some locksmiths depended almost exclusively on emergency calls from insurance providers like AAA and made a nice five figure income. Vehicle insurance companies later found that having their own service vehicles was apparently less costly and the amount of emergency calls to locksmiths has dried up considerably.
A January, 2016 New York Times article explains how the locksmith industry has been infiltrated by bait-and-switch operators who quote low prices for emergency lockout services and then demand three or four times the quoted price when the service person arrives at the job. The article also claims that the service person is usually poorly trained and usually breaks the lock during the opening procedure. This is not a new revelation as locksmiths have known about scammers for several years.
Lockout calls to either legitimate locksmiths or to bait-and-switch operators have one thing in common. It is either feast or famine. There is no way of developing a lockout job. You have to wait for the phone to ring. The only way scammers are profitable is because they overcharge each of the small amount of customer lockout jobs they receive.
The New York Times article also describes how Google is being used by bait-and-switch operators to generate business. This is a much more important issue. A successful business of any kind requires a base of return customers. It is much easier to build a customer base by making commercial customers happy than by trying to pacify an already unhappy person who has just locked themselves out of their car of home.
Telephone Yellow Pages once made advertising a simple procedure. A listing near the top of the locksmith heading remained there for 12 months. Today the internet is king. Everybody has a cell phone and the locksmith heading is a touchscreen away. Search engines like Google can change the order of locksmith listings at will.
Business advertising is important. Read Steve Young's article in this issue for some important pointers for developing you website and building your base of return customers.
Plan to meet the Locksmith Ledger crew at the ALOA convention in Orlando, FL, July31-August 7.
