CTV inspection technology has revolutionized the way pipe problems are discovered, diagnosed and the approaches taken to fix them. With an accurate picture of what they are up against, contractors can now make informed repairs or replacement decisions instead of educated guesses.
This accuracy also helps in estimating and cost control. But what about how this service is marketed to customers? Do most contractors use inspection mostly as a tool for their own use, or do they promote it as a service that positions them ahead of others? It seems the answer is: both.
“TV-line inspection is a main part of the services we offer, but we will use it to get other work,” explains Jason Demuth, field technician for Demuth Inc. Demuth provides pipe cleaning and inspection, and manhole repair and lining in the Chicago area.
“Whatever we find in the pipe, we’ll let the customer know and give them their best options,” Demuth says. The company doesn’t do too much print advertising, but it does list TV inspection on its trucks and business cards.
“Most of our work comes from word-of-mouth, just having been around for a while,” says Demuth. “It comes from having a good name.”
Besides helping locate problem areas in lines, inspection serves as a public relations tool. Property owners are often fascinated with the technology and want to be around while the line is being televised. “A lot of times they don’t know what’s going on, but we try to explain as much as we can,” Demuth says. “It’s pretty easy once they get in there and see what we’re seeing.”
Demuth feels such demonstrations inspire confidence in the company’s opinions and diagnoses. “It’s better than just charging for something where they don’t even understand what they’re paying for,” he says. “Before, there would just be this big hole in their yard and they wondered what we did.
“This way, we give them a videotape of the line and they can see what was actually there. It’s also good because with that tape, no one else can come in there and say something didn’t get done, or that there’s cracked clay pipe when it’s PVC, or whatever. It gives them peace of mind that the job was done right.”
“It’s a service for us that leads to other work,” says owner Mike Williams of Just Drains LLC, a 25-year-old business serving Philadelphia. His business card doesn’t say anything about TV work, and he doesn’t push it.
“If people have never had camera work done before and we’re already on the job, we’ll tell them about it and explain what it does,” he says. “But that’s not going to get us the work, because most folks don’t know about it yet. So we use it to identify the other work that we can do.”
Williams, who went on his first drain-cleaning call at age 6 with his grandfather, sees TV inspection as “a fantastic tool. A lot of times you go into a house and find that the drain problem might have occurred before we were called. If we do get the drain open and find that they’ve had the problem before, we definitely want to get that camera down there and see what’s going on. The camera saves us a lot of time, and so it saves our customers money.”
He finds credibility value in bringing the property owner in while the line is being televised. “If we do offer it to the customer, they feel more comfortable,” he says. “They know you’re not hiding anything, and they’ll definitely call you back. We have the color monitor, the DVD and the VCR. It’s fantastic to have the customer sitting right there with you while you’re doing the job. It is cool, and they love it.”
Williams touts the lasting value of a TV inspection to his customers. “We let them know that having that tape or DVD to show a buyer is a great selling point for a home,” he says. “When someone comes to look at your house, you can show them what’s been done, that the property has been maintained.”
Still, Williams says the primary value of camera work is in generating more work. “A lot of times we’ll find major roots that have grown through the line, and we can show how they’ve knocked the line off course and it needs to be replaced,” he says. “Then we’ll do that line replacement.
“We also get curb traps and repair of leaky water services. Sometimes when we send the camera down a vent here in Philly, where all the services are right next to each other, we can identify that what’s leaking isn’t the customer’s service, but the neighbor’s. We get that work, too. But most of this business happens because we make it a point to educate our customers so they see the value of services we offer.”
Pete Howe Industrial Inc. has been in business in Spencer, Iowa, for 69 years, performing hydrojetting, pumping, grouting and other services. Adam Howe, foreman, says TV inspection is a main service offering and a required service among the company’s all-municipal customer base.
“A lot of the towns we work for want line cleaning and inspection first, so we can make room to do our repairs, see what the town needs, and where they can spend their money most effectively,” Howe says.
Howe likes having the customer there during inspections. He finds it helps establish confidence in the company’s work, resulting in far less push-back on prices. “They can understand what we’re doing,” he says. “They can tell we can see the pipe very clearly, and that we’re doing a good job cleaning, as well.”
At least once per week, a customer asks him to send a camera down a line without cleaning it out first, to save money. “But that often backfires, since it can be too dirty to even see anything, so we end up having to go back and get the jetting truck,” he says. “If we’d done that first, they would really have saved money.”
