Bill BrownFounder of ServiceTitan Hacks community (9k+ pros) | INC 5000 Contractor | Helping contractors win with AI & Automation

What's your "OH-💩" Number? How Pricing Perception Impacts Home Service Reviews

21 Jan 2025

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Speaker argues customers have pre-formed cost expectations (their "oh-💩 number") often without factual basis. Through anecdotes — e.g., wildly different mechanic quotes ($200 vs $5,000) and neighbors giving opposite reviews for the same HVAC price — the speaker links pricing perception to review outcomes and customer dissatisfaction.

I think when a customer calls, they have an expectation of what it's going to cost. In their mind, that expectation might have zero facts behind it. It's more like what they hope it's going to cost. Right. And so I talked to my guys. I remember, what's your oh number? And they said, what do you mean? I said, let's say you get up in the morning and you turn on your car and it doesn't start and you have to take it in. You're not a mechanic. You can't fix it. You don't know the mechanic. What's the dollar amount that he would show you to fix it? And you'd go, oh, that's a problem. The range of dollar amounts from one guy to another was huge. One guy was like 200 bucks. One guy was like 5,000. So if you got a bill for 4,500 to fix your car, you'd be okay with it? He's like, yeah, I think that's what our customers are experiencing, right? So we would go into a real nice neighborhood and we'd go in and, you know, a blower motor replacement might be like 1200 bucks. And you get it done, and then you go in that same neighborhood to the neighbor, tell them the same price, and they give you a one star review. It's. It's like, what the heck?