How a repairs company grew from 0 to more than 10,000 customers in 7 years

In one line, what do you do and what is your most significant achievement?

Repairs.sg makes repair and maintenance easy for more than ten thousand customers.

Who are you and what business did you start?

My name is Zames, and I am the co-founder of Repairs.sg. We are an electrical, plumbing, ventilation, and air-conditioner services company.

What's your backstory?

When I first started, I noticed many people were searching online for repair services, but few service providers were online. I saw the potential to acquire customers easily through the internet. And since I have always loved fixing things around my home and tinkering with electronics, I thought, why not try to start something around that opportunity?

In the beginning, I didn't have all the answers or a detailed business plan, but still being in school at the time, it was more about the journey and the excitement of trying something new than building a real business.

What should be the first steps to take to enter your industry?

I think the best way I could set myself up to do well in any industry is to know that I care enough about it to persevere even when things get hard. So, how I would get started in my industry is first to get a taste of it so I can decide whether I am interested in and can commit to it.

To do this, I would start by finding a service that I would enjoy doing and can deliver better than the average competitor could. Then I would jump straight in and find my first customers to find out if the industry is one in which I could find passion and if I can actually deliver a valuable service to customers.

I believe there is no point in spending time creating a business plan, over-analysing the market, or creating a brand at this stage.

How did you spend your First 100 Days of launching your business?

I spent my first hundred days using low-cost methods to find customers to serve.

The process I used is called search engine optimisation (SEO). This process is no longer fast or low-cost and has become much more complex.

I used the Google Ads Keyword Planner Tool to identify high-volume search terms, then wrote content to align with those specific user intents so that our website shows up in top positions on Google.

If I had to start again today, I would leverage platforms like Carousell to acquire my first customers and build a positive reputation for my business. I would not use SEO because it would take me at least six months to a year to see even a fraction of the results I saw within my first hundred days.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain partnerships/customers?

The underlying strength of our industry has been the inherent necessity of our services. Every homeowner needs our services from time to time. But beyond that, genuinely prioritising our partners' and customers' needs and experiences is the most straightforward yet effective strategy for fostering lasting relationships.

What has taken you from 0 to 100?

Obsessing over our customers' experience. From day one, we understood that while the services we offer are a necessity, every service provider offers the same baseline service. Our services and competitor's are differentiated through price and customers' experience. By keeping our customers at the heart of all we do, we ensure that our brand remains their first choice in a sea of alternatives.

What is one underrated thing in your industry that business owners should start doing/using?

Really good software! Our obsession with our customers' experience is the reason we are where we are right now. However, the complexity of our industry makes it hard to maintain consistent customer service at scale. No two services are truly identical, even if they appear so on the surface, so there was no cookie-cutter experience we could duplicate for each customer.

Running our business with information scribbled on random pieces of paper and communicating over messy group chats worked okay when we had one service vehicle. But as we expanded from one to three vehicles, we faced growing pains and started falling short of our standards.

Everything changed when we transitioned our entire business operations to an amazing business service management software. The late nights organising heaps of documents, overwhelming stress tracking payments, and frustration of invoicing and quoting for jobs, all vanished overnight. We started moving faster than ever before and everything became clear.

If you want to grow a service business to something meaningful, I cannot emphasise enough how important good software is to your business.

What was one failure you had to go through that others in your industry should look out for?

Reflecting on our seven-year journey, my critical mistake was not prioritising shaping and nurturing our internal culture. My aversion to confrontation led me to overlook behaviour that did not align with the values I wanted to uphold. The company's culture nearly transformed into something I could not recognise. Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the renowned venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, encapsulates this challenge exceptionally well in his book, "What You Do Is Who You Are"

Culture is not like a mission statement; you can't just set it up and have it last forever. There's a saying in the military that if you see something below standard and do nothing, then you've set a new standard. This is also true of culture. If you see something off-culture and ignore it, you've created a new culture.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Worksite - Operations, customer relationship management, invoicing and quoting, and payments

Google Workspace - File management, communications

WhatsApp Business - Communications

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Things have never been more exciting at our company. We recently purchased our fifth service vehicle, and we are getting it set up for service. But more than that, after years of being solely an electrical services company, we've embarked on a new chapter by introducing plumbing and air-conditioning services.

As we look forward, our vision is to become the one service provider a person would need and want to take care of their property. Though we have a long journey ahead of us, our amazing team's exceptional talent and dedication continually moves us forward. Every step we take brings us closer to that vision, and I'm confident in our journey ahead.