Don't know if any of you guys know of AvE, he has his own Youtube channel.
This guy is brilliant.
A few years ago he did a vid on his 3 simple rules of troubleshooting.
I printed them off and had them pinned up in the office, in the shop, in the warehouse, because it makes so much sense.
So laminate this one and keep it with the other one and when someone questions your motives, just show it to them
Here they are
1. Do the easiest thing first
2. Don't rely on the people that tried and failed prior
3. 90% of problems are between the driver's seat and the steering wheel
Bonus: If it can go wrong, it WILL go wrong. (Murphy's Law)
Link to his vid
I was already pretty much using this philosophy during my working career, but good to have it written down.
As far as customer watching. I always told them that having someone watching over my shoulder made me slow down, or I would put the tools down and ask them if they wanted to have a conversation, I was still on the clock on the tools or not. I found most people would go off after a bit.
As for sharing what you did, I have never had and issue. Sure they might grumble but I got it running when it was broken before.
Had one fellow call me up. I wasn't working for myself, but he was in a bit of a bind.
I know a bit about logging machines, and he had a model that there are not very many of. The machine was down. They had a company come out and try but not
in their field of expertise. I'm not knocking the kid that tried but he just didn't know the system.
So I got out there on my day off. Thought to myself, what the heck is going on, it was doing some really funky stuff. After about 4 hours, I found THE WIRE that was in the wrong place.
Flashed up the machine, hit the button and everything worked as it should.
The owner was like, you got it, YOU GOT IT!!!
By the time the smoke cleared, I was about 8 hours into it.
My wife and I got taken out for lunch the next day and there was an envelope of cash in my hand when we parted.
He told us at lunch that the machine had been down for 4 days while they tried to figure out what was wrong. How much money had he lost in downtime?
So if you have the skill to get it running when the others can't, don't be afraid to charge. Set a minimum call out rate, I would go with 4 hours. Make sure that the customer knows that even if you find the loose wire in the first 10 minutes, they will still have to pay the call out. Charge for mileage, it costs a lot of money to buy that truck, outfit it and keep it running.
I find most people are okay with it as long as they see results.