This edition of Ask Annissa deals with the heightened emotions people experience during the holidays and the challenges that creates when disaster strikes.

Culinary disasters create more work for restoration firms.

Extra stress this time of year calls for a lot of care, compassion and grace.

Why focusing on a few specific services can be better for your business than having a laundry list of services offered.

The success of your water damage restoration business is dependent on the quality of work your production staff puts out and the feeling the water damage victim is left with after the fact.

Here are five ways to train and prepare your restoration employees to provide the best customer experience, both in their everyday work and after disasters.

In most cases when a home is damaged by a disaster, the homeowner(s) are already upset by the time the restorer gets there. The last thing a restorer wants to do is add insult to injury by doing or not doing something that could add stress or make the situation worse.

“In a crowded marketplace, it can be hard to cut through the noise and reach customers,” Josh Miller writes. “With a micro approach that focuses on how we can do our jobs more effectively, and a macro approach that communicates our expertise to the marketplace, we can all help promote the credibility and competence of the professionals in our industry.”

“We are so focused on the physical aspects of everything we do in our business and personal lives, we sometimes forget the importance of the emotional connection, a basic human need. We have become transactional and no longer personal. The most successful companies handle problem resolution with a human voice and a can-do attitude to service, while others deal with problem resolution with software and a list of options,” Barry Costa writes.

This practice is very common in many industries. Remember when you booked a plane ticket and were kept in the loop with little to no human interaction about everything from gate changes to check-in reminders to delays? What about the time you scheduled the cable guy to come out for an internet outage, and received automated texts and emails with updates?