Painting Around Vancouver’s Customers During the Holidays: How to Not Deter Shoppers

With this unprecedented global pandemic still delivering surprises and uncertainties to small businesses, the last thing you want to do right now is interrupt business to make facility repairs.

Yet the fact remains that your store isn’t going to paint itself. At some point, and ideally before the holiday season arrives, you need to find time to get your building looking its best.

Even under the best of circumstances, it can be a challenge to schedule a painting job that doesn’t somehow inconvenience your loyal customers and your hard-working employees. Your staff will have to spend extra time posting signage, re-routing traffic and explaining to customers what is going on.

Your customers will have to alter their usual habits and patterns to continue shopping with you while painting is in progress.

It nearly goes without saying that your choice of Vancouver WA commercial painters will be a huge part of your project’s success. But even after you have chosen your painting crew, you still need to take some additional steps to have the most successful outcome.

These five tips will help you get your building, retail store or restaurant repainted and ready before the holiday season arrives.

But First, A Word About Insurance Liability

When you have your painting project dates set, it is time to contact your business insurer to find out whether your existing coverage imposes any limitations on what you can do while your customers are on the premises.

You may need to temporarily increase your liability coverage to protect your business just in case of an unforeseen accident such as a slip and fall. Your insurer will be able to advise you so you can make the safest and most economical decision.

Be sure to ask your commercial painting company to provide a copy of their active policy so you can verify they have their own independent insurance coverage in place.

Now let’s take a look at small business best practices to follow when scheduling commercial interior painters to repaint your building.

1. Post Clear and Visible Signage to Guide Customers

Signage is your friend whenever you have to make repairs to your premises during business hours. In fact, the more signs, the better. Make sure your signs are posted at average eye level and feature clear, large print.

You will need a few types of signs. The first type is simple: you just want to tell customers which areas are restricted or off limits. Keep your signage consistent throughout your building. If you use “restricted work area” in one part of your building, then use that same verbiage everywhere else as well.

The second type of sign you need is to guide your customers through your store. Think of these signs like detour signs on the road. If your customers can’t walk through using their usual route, you need to tell them where to go instead.

The third type of signage is for emergency and safety purposes. If the painting project limits access to the normal emergency exits, you need to post an updated building diagram with instructions about where the new emergency exits are located.

Posting staff near the work site can assist customers who may not speak the language well or may have missed seeing the signs for some reason. You also want to tell your staff to keep a close eye on curious children who may be tempted to try to slip into the restricted areas to have a look around.

2. Create a Workflow Plan Section by Section

The next best practice to follow is to plan out in advance how the painting project will proceed day by day. This will also help you identify the best times to complete large sections that need to be repainted.

The ultimate goal, however, is to keep the painters and paint supplies separate from the customers. Unfortunately, “wet paint” signs are not enough of a deterrent. Children in particular may not see the signs or may be tempted to test out how dry the paint really is for themselves.

For this reason, you want to keep at least 10 feet of clear space in between the start of the work zone and the start of the customer zone. Make sure you have staff present in this clear space zone at all times so no paint supplies or materials are ever left unsupervised.

3. Wherever Possible Keep Peak Customer Hours Free

When it comes to picking the hours when painting will be done, you will always have to balance potential loss of business with potential increase in painting expenses.

The faster the painters can complete the job, the less your job is likely to cost. However, you don’t want to alienate or irritate your customers either.

The best compromise for many business owners is to simply restrict painting to non-peak business hours. Depending on your industry, this may mean painting on weekends, in the early morning or late evening hours or even while your building is closed to the public.

4. Be Sure to Keep Painting Supplies and Materials Away from Customers

No matter how diligently you prepare and how conscientious you are about clearly communicating with customers, you still can’t take the risk of leaving any paint materials or supplies in public areas.

These types of materials always need to be stored in a secure restricted area and used in well-ventilated spaces far away from customers.

The area where the painting materials, supplies and equipment gets stored should be lockable and secure. While painting is in progress, your staff should always be stationed nearby to keep customers away from the work zone.

5. Be Willing to Bring the Five-Star Customer Service

Business owners aren’t the only ones who have been thrown off by this year’s unexpected events. Your customers are likely also feeling the pressure to prepare for the holidays, shop and plan and do more in less time.

You want to meet them where they are and make it easy for them to find what they need quickly, pay and go on to the next item on their preparation list.

If you can mobilize to deliver your very best customer service, your customers may be so happy they don’t even notice you’ve got some painting going on in the background. And they will remember how well you treated them the next time they are in a hurry to get something they need.

If you haven’t already done so, consider posting signage letting customers know you are happy to take their orders by phone or online and deliver it to them curbside.

You can also post these messages on your social media accounts and on your website so customers can shop with you without having to come inside while your painting is being done.

Contact Fresh Look Commercial Painting

Our expert, knowledgeable and professional commercial painters have more than two decades of expertise working with all types of paint and finishes, textures and substrates.

Every business is different, and we specialize in designing the optimal workflow for different industries and business types to deliver high-value work in less time.

Give Fresh Look Painting in Vancouver WA a call or visit us online to schedule your free consultation.