Tips for Picking the Right Office Fitout Provider
Any good Queensland business owner knows the importance of a good office fitout and how it benefits their business. Therefore, when they look for fitouts in Brisbane, they’re searching for companies that they can trust, that they can be confident in providing the best-possible services. Alas, finding these fitout companies isn’t as easy as just picking the best fruit from the pile!
When it comes to choosing an office fitout provider, there are a number of important factors to consider, and we’ve listed some of the most important ones below.
1. Transparency and Trust
When you’re doing a complete office fitout, it isn’t going to come cheap. That’s just a fact of life. Your best chance of securing the best results is to have at the very least a contractor who is transparent, fair, and honest. This all begins with a strong first impression, so keep a close note of your first impressions when meeting different contractors and builders.
When they enter your space, are they polite? Do they seem genuinely interested and engaged in what you’re telling them, or do they look as though they’re just going through the motions? How friendly and open are they when you ask them questions about their service? Do they seem to avoid answering certain things? Do they appear to be like “yes men” always agreeing with everything you say and offering no real feedback? Both of these things should be red flags.
2. Not Necessarily the Cheapest Quote
It’s tempting to go for the lowest tender, but think twice before doing so. The lowest bid may also have been made because they’re going to fob you off with substandard materials and finishes that will only serve to ultimately disappoint.
Using the cheapest tender may also prove to be a false economy if their below-par work eventually requires that you call in one of the more expensive contractors to fix things that go wrong, or upgrade to something closer to what you wanted to get from the beginning.
3. Look For a Stellar Online Reputation
One of the joys of the Internet is that just about any company, even when not operating a full online presence with a fancy website and eCommerce store, has an online reputation thanks to customer reviews via Google and other sources. Be sure to give your contractors a search and read through their reviews.
There’s no need to abandon a particular contractor on the first sight of a single bad review. Remember that some online reviews are written in real spite with some serious axes being ground. The better thing to do is to look for patterns of negative reviews where different users across perhaps 6 months or a year have all complained about similar things. There are your red flags right there.
4. A Focus on Quality
When you’re discussing options with your contractor, how do they react to your ideas? Do their own recommendations line up with what you’re saying, or do the suppliers seem to be always focused on trying to convince you to purchase the more expensive option that they insist is superior.
Taking their recommendations is fine, but it should be quite easy to tell when they recommend out of genuine concern or from a perspective of trying to maximise your satisfaction as opposed to just up-selling all the time. Listen out for those who explain in more detail why they recommend products, and those who connect their recommendation directly to a demand or desire that you’d mentioned previously
5. Design Capabilities
Finally, it’s always a good rule of thumb to favour suppliers who also have a design department or in-house designer or team. It’s a reflection of greater capabilities, and reveals that the company is more specialised in this area as opposed to general contractors who might not know as much about office design specifically.
