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There’s a quiet crisis happening inside most restoration businesses, and it has nothing to do with labor shortages, insurance delays, or supply chain issues. According to Joey Coleman, chief experience composer at Design Symphony and author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Never Lose a Customer Again, the real problem is far more fundamental: the industry is obsessed with finding new customers while systematically neglecting the ones it already has.

“If I were to ask you to raise your hand if you have a system in your business designed to address the buyer’s remorse we scientifically know every single customer will feel—very few hands would go up,” Coleman told attendees gathered at the Restoration Industry Association’s 80th anniversary celebration. “And yet, we know buyer’s remorse is real. We know we feel it ourselves as customers.”

The 43-to-1 imbalance

Coleman opened his keynote with a deceptively simple piece of research. He searched Amazon for books with the word “sales” in the title, subtitle, keywords, and reviews—then did the same for “marketing.” Combined, those two searches returned just over 1.3 million books. He then searched every phrase that describes what happens after the sale: customer experience, customer service, customer loyalty, customer retention, customer satisfaction, and relationship management. Even counting duplicates, the total barely reached 30,000 books.

“What that tells us,” Coleman said, “is that for every 43 books written about how to get a customer, there is one book written about how to keep a customer. Is it any wonder we over index on acquisition?”

What’s happening in your customer’s mind right now

The moment a homeowner or business owner signs a contract with a restoration company, their brain releases dopamine. They feel relief, excitement, and hope. But that feeling is fleeting. Almost immediately, the dopamine recedes—and doubt rushes in to fill the void.

What if they go over budget? What if it takes longer than they said? What if it doesn’t look as good as they imagined?

Coleman cited research from the restoration industry showing that even after receiving multiple estimates and making a deliberate choice, only 28% of customers feel confident in their decision. That means more than 70% are experiencing some form of buyer’s remorse at the very moment you’re back at the office celebrating the signed contract.

“We’re high-fiving each other going, ‘We landed the deal!’ Meanwhile, at our customer’s home, they’re thinking, ‘I hope I made the right choice,'” Coleman said. And most businesses, he noted, have no process in place to address it.

The first 100 days: a make-or-break window

Coleman’s research—drawn from studying businesses of all sizes across industries—reveals a sobering pattern: between 20% and 70% of new customers will decide to stop doing business with a company before the 100-day anniversary of their relationship. The numbers are industry-specific. Auto dealers see 68% attrition. Restaurants fall between 40% and 70%. Software companies run around 22%. But every sector is affected.

Some attendees pushed back: Restoration projects can easily run longer than 100 days. Coleman was ready for that objection.

“What the research shows is that the decision about whether a customer is going to say nice things about you, write a review, or become a referral source—all of that happens in the first 100 days,” he said. “We have to get the foundation right.”

What’s more alarming, he said, is that most business owners have no idea what their own 100-day attrition rate is. They’re not tracking it. It’s not even on their dashboard.

“We’re so focused on getting new ones that we’re not paying attention to whether the ones we already signed are staying with us,” Coleman said.

The cost of that inattention compounds quickly. Early customer loss means lost revenue, lost upsell opportunity, and lost referrals—and in an industry built on relationships and word-of-mouth, that last category may be the most damaging of all.

“How good would your business be if everyone you’d ever done a project with came back and did another engagement with you before the end of the year?” Coleman asked the room. “Those are people already in your database. You know their name, their email, their phone number. And so many of us are focused on finding the next new person instead of going deeper with the relationships we already have.”

The dating analogy — and why your business structure works against you

Coleman used an extended dating metaphor to describe the disconnect many restoration companies create between their sales process and their service delivery. You meet someone, strike up a conversation, exchange numbers. You go for coffee, then dinner, then meet the friends and the parents. Finally, you’re both all in. You host a big celebration—and then you grab the new customer by the hand, walk them toward the future, throw open the door and say: “Honey, I’d like to introduce you to Bob. He’s our junior project manager in training. He’ll be handling your project from here.”

“If we did this in our personal lives, we’d get slapped,” Coleman said, to knowing laughter. “And yet this is how most businesses in this industry are structured.”

He wasn’t calling for a complete overhaul of business models. He was making a more targeted point: The person who builds trust during the sales process is rarely the person swinging the hammer. That handoff creates a trust gap. Bridging it requires intentional communication and deliberate relationship-building throughout the entire project lifecycle.

Six tools, eight phases

Coleman introduced a framework built around six communication tools and eight phases of the customer journey, which he calls the First 100 Days system.

The six tools are:

1. In-person interactions
2. Email
3. Physical mail
4. Phone calls and texts
5. Video
6. Gifts and surprises

“You have something many of my clients wish they had,” Coleman told restoration professionals. “You’re inside the homes and workplaces of your customers on a regular basis. So many businesses that sell online never get the chance for in-person interaction. Are you training your crews to make personal and emotional connections—not just to fix the problem?”

On email, Coleman was pointed: “No one ever raises their hand when I ask if they love getting more email. And yet it’s the number one tool most organizations use to communicate with their customers.” He’s not opposed to email—he’s opposed to assuming it creates deep connection without thoughtful design.

Physical mail, he argued, is dramatically underused. “You have a mailing address for your customers,” Coleman said. “If you’re only using it to send invoices or promotional offers, you’re missing a massive opportunity to stand out.”

Video—especially one-to-one video—may be the most underutilized tool in the industry. “When you wrap up at a job site and the customer isn’t there, shoot a 60-second video showing them what you did,” Coleman explained. “Text it to them. Every one of your team members has a more powerful video camera in their pocket than what network news used 30 years ago.”

On gifts: “If it has your logo on it, it’s not a gift — it’s a promotional product,” he said. “A real gift is something that makes the customer say, ‘You were listening. You were paying attention.’ That’s the difference.”

The eight phases of his customer journey framework move from Assess—a prospect evaluating whether to hire you —through Admit, Affirm, Activate, Acclimate, Accomplish, Adopt, and finally Advocate, the stage where a loyal customer becomes a vocal champion for your brand.

“So many businesses jump from phase one straight to the advocate phase,” Coleman observed. “They hand in an estimate and immediately say, ‘Would you mind leaving us a Google review?’ We haven’t even ordered the appetizers yet. You have to take them through all the steps.”

Real-world examples that stick

Throughout his keynote, Coleman illustrated each phase with concrete examples from companies across industries—giving restoration professionals frameworks they could adapt immediately.

A financial firm called The Wealth Factor gathers prospects at their headquarters for a three-day workshop before they’ve even become clients. At one session, the CEO personally delivered a six-pack of root beer to a guest— because they’d researched that the attendee’s favorite drink was root beer. The result? The guest was ready to sign before the price was even mentioned. “That’s how you stand out from the competition,” Coleman said. “When you hand in an estimate with something that says, ‘I see you—I know what matters to you’—it completely changes the conversation.”

A gym supply company called Zogics sends a personalized video in their order confirmation email—not a slick production, but a genuine message from a real employee, calling the customer by name. “It creates personal and emotional connection before they even receive the product.”

A debt consolidation company called Total Debt Freedom addresses buyer’s remorse directly with a short introductory video sent two days after sign-up—featuring both the salesperson and the account rep who will manage the relationship going forward. The salesperson essentially said: I’ve handed you off to someone even better equipped than me, and here’s what your next four years will look like.

An HR software company called Policy Medical sends new customers a set of 20 illustrated cards detailing every step of the implementation process, along with a picture frame to complete a mosaic as each milestone is reached. Before the puzzle, average implementation took 170 days. After: 67 days. “When we design for our customers, we have to think about what lights them up—not what lights us up,” Coleman explained.

Two things you can do next week

Coleman closed with two practical imperatives that require no budget approval and no new technology: observe and communicate.

For observe, crews are inside customers’ homes and businesses every day. What’s on the walls? What’s on the shelves? Is there a team banner, kids’ toys in the basement, or photos from a family vacation? “Are your teams bringing that intelligence back?” Coleman asked. “Are you using it when it comes time to communicate, to give gifts, to celebrate individual customers?”

Coleman shared a story from a stay at the Mandarin Oriental in Las Vegas, where he accidentally spilled cough syrup across his toiletries. When he returned to his room hours later, every affected item had been cleaned, dried, and laid out on a fresh towel—with a handwritten note: “I hope you’re feeling better, Mr. Coleman.—Kelly.” No training manual told Kelly to do that. She simply observed, and she acted with humanity.

For staying in touch, Coleman described his travel coordinator Larry, who manages all his flights. On a delayed family trip, Larry sent 51 text messages over the course of nearly three hours—weather updates, rebooking options, and hotel alternatives—all unsolicited, all genuinely helpful. “In that moment, I felt seen,” he said. “I felt valued. I felt cared for.”

He drew the parallel directly: “The number one complaint customers have about restoration professionals is they don’t know what’s going on. None of you in this room are immune to that. Stay in touch. Not just when there’s a problem—but proactively, consistently, throughout the entire project.”

The bottom line

Coleman closed with the math—and a challenge. Research from Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School, and Frederick Reichheld shows that retaining just 5% more customers can increase profits by 25% to 100%. Because most restoration businesses are already running fixed overhead, each additional project with an existing customer is more profitable than the last.

“I know I’m the ‘lovey-dovey, hold onto your customers forever’ guy,” Coleman said with a grin. “But I’m also the guy who says: if you want to affect your bottom line—quickly and sustainably — pay attention to the first 100 days. The math works.”

The question he left every attendee with: If you don’t prioritize your customers, someone else will. What is your First 100 Days solution going to be?