Andrew Prchal of Gunner Roofing on Overcoming Startup Mistakes, Rewriting Industry Standards, and Mastering the Human Element of Operations

As part of our series about the five things a business should do to create a Wow! customer experience, I had the pleasure of interviewing Andrew Prchal.

Andrew co-founded Gunner Roofing with his brother Eddie, and in his current role oversees the company’s day-to-day operations, project management, sales team, and customer service. Prior to the start of Gunner in 2013, Andrew’s background helping co-develop and introduce the Phil-UP Water Filter with Eddie as well as his work at a prestigious law firm in Arizona provided on-the-job experience in operations and organization, customer service, marketing, building a brand from the ground up, distribution, customer service, and more. Years later, these skills have laid the groundwork for the high-level customer service that Gunner has become known for, going above and beyond for customers by offering the human touch and creating long-standing relationships.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

My brother, Eddie, and I were always entrepreneurs. We sold gadgets in middle school, had a smoothie nutrition store in college and developed a water filter in Arizona. We were wrapping things up in Arizona when my brother’s future brother-in-law called about an opportunity to install roofs. He said he was trying to get roofs installed before his solar systems went up but was having trouble finding people to meet deadlines. Coming from Arizona where the majority of businesses were common, household chain names (i.e., Chipotle, Home Depot, Walgreens, etc.), we couldn’t believe you had a guaranteed job and people weren’t showing up. We decided to come to the east coast to see it for ourselves. Sure enough, we found an industry that didn’t know the meaning or importance of the customer experience. We knew that this was an industry we could make a difference in.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

I think our “funniest mistake” is one I love to tell people about to show just how far we’ve come. Before I tell this story, I would like to brag about us, so people know we’ve come a long way. We are currently recognized as the highest-ranking roofing, siding and window company by three manufacturing powerhouses: GAF, James Hardie and Andersen Windows. Rewind the clocks and you’ll find my brother and I leaving Arizona (a desert) and coming to the east coast to start a roofing business.

We partnered with a solar company to install their roofs before the solar was to go on. We had our very first roof lined up and on the install date, I showed up ready to go at 8 am and the crew was nowhere to be found. I called the crew in a panic and asked them where they were, and they said, “It’s raining; we can’t install a roof in the rain!” Coming from Arizona where the weatherman is always right because it’s always sunny, we never thought about weather playing a factor in installs.

This was our “You’re not in Kansas anymore” moment. We quickly realized we would have to rely on our manufactures, distributors and customers to quickly learn and understand this industry. Our manufactures taught us how to install the products, our distributors taught us about the industry, and our customers taught us the importance of extending a customer experience that people were not currently getting in this industry.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

We’ll start with “The G’s.” My brother and I had an awesome childhood but later in life, our mom got sick from an extremely rare type of cancer and passed away. On the same day she passed away, we were casualties of the Great Recession, and our home was taken away from us. We struggled for the next few years as Eddie and I really had no place to go. The G’s brought us in and gave us a place to live for the next 6 months until we could get on our feet. There is no success we will ever have that made us feel as good as having them in our life at a time we most needed them.

The second person is Chip Beck, one of the top aerobatic pilots in the country. The first time I ever met Chip was flying to Disneyland, when he asked me if I had ever flown upside down before. I looked at him and said no, and with two clicks of the center stick we were upside down, two more we were back to normal. He smiled and laughed and said, “now you have!”. Chip taught me what it meant to push the limits and more importantly, the importance of dedication to my craft to succeed.

Thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main focus of our interview. This might be intuitive, but I think it’s helpful to specifically articulate it. In your words, can you share a few reasons why great customer service and a great customer experience is essential for success in business?

When we started Gunner, our biggest advantage was that we came from the homeowner side of things. We experienced the frustrations of getting a quote, signing a contract, and then being forgotten and installation problems. These three simple things are the core of our business.

In any business, there is competition; most companies out there sell the same products or service. When you take away the products/service side of things, really all that is left is the customer experience. This is extremely crucial to any business even the largest of companies. There are several reasons to focus on customer experience including positive reviews, repeat business, and referrals. The internet has created a space where people can go online and voice their opinion about an experience they had with a company. Previously, your voice only traveled amongst the circle that you knew. Now you have the attention of hundreds of millions of people. Over the past few years, we have seen a shift in customer service. Companies are asking for feedback, reviews, and even surveys on what your experience with them was. This can’t be a coincidence. When you have a positive customer experience, not only do you want to talk about it, but you tend to re-use that companies’ services or go back to buy products. Personally, I would never recommend a company that I had a bad experience with to a friend or family member. From a business aspect, this can decrease a customer base and make growth stagnant. This is the exact reason why we have many repeat customers and referrals that are interested in projects that were able to offer.

We have all had times either in a store, or online, when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive, and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?

I absolutely love this question. I have read a million business books and follow so many business owners. I think most business owners start their business to solve a problem. Solving the problem usually provides an excellent customer experience.

What I have noticed, even in our own business, is customer experience isn’t something you set and forget. It’s something to be worked at every day. Every new employee you hire has to have the same commitment to the customer experience that you as an owner has.

This is where the disconnect happens. It’s when a company gets bigger, and the owners aren’t always the face of what the customer sees. One thing we’ve learned to do is bring up customer experience in every interview and incorporate it into every aspect of our training of new employees. We make sure every employee that comes onboard knows that as owners, we highly value a positive experience for our customers.

Do you think that more competition helps force companies to improve the customer experience they offer? Are there other external pressures that can force a company to improve the customer experience?

There are two things that drive a company to improve the customer experience. Number one is competition. The best part of competition is that when you hear of something a competitor is doing better than you, it makes you want to raise the bar. Not only that, but when you are just starting out and trying to take down the big guy, you can expedite years of trial and error by studying your competition.

The second thing that forces you to improve your customer experience is your customer. A lot of business owners get confused that they are the ones that pay the bills. It is the customer that pays the bills, and when they stop paying, it means you’re doing something wrong. It is listening to your customers that pushes you to improve your customer experience.

Can you share with us a story from your experience about a customer who was “Wowed” by the experience you provided?

Yes, and I would like to provide my favorite review of all time to speak for itself:

Gunner Roofing did an outstanding first-class job from beginning to end. I give them my highest recommendation, 100%. I’m the ‘man of the house’ since my father passed away many years ago, and we had an extremely damaged roof that hadn’t been worked on in at least 30 years. When I read about the building collapse in Miami in June 2021, I decided that — cost be what it may — I had to get to work on our roof. I looked up several different roofing companies in the Northeast, but Gunner was by far the top-rated. I found them via the app Thumbtack. I got a call from Leo on a fateful Saturday afternoon. I knew I was in good hands because he told me what I needed to hear, not necessarily what I wanted to hear, and he asked many good probing questions. He explained to me that there would be almost no way to repair the roof for the $9,000 budget I was hoping for, but, if I was able to pay more, he thought his team could fix all our roof’s problems. We had holes in the roof, dripping skylights, animals in the crawl space, exposures, and rotting wood. They even said they would totally replace all our gutters. Leo broke down the cost of repairing everything, and he told me a man named Anthony would do a thorough inspection. Anthony arrived a few days later and looked at everything for 2 hours. He let us know that the roof was in worse condition than we thought. It would be now much more expensive to fix. To help spread out the cost, Gunner connected me with Wells Fargo, where I was able to get approved for a loan at 0% APR if I paid it back within 18 months. I agreed to do this because it was clear that the roof was in really bad condition, and I wanted my mom to be safe. Gunner helped me with all the paperwork, and I would usually only need to e-sign things. They handled insurance and the local permits. Gunner even sent a representative, Becky, all the way down from Connecticut to meet me in Lower Manhattan, where I was working, so I could physically sign some permit paperwork. This is first-rate service. When the work on our roof finally begun, it was so exciting. We had drone photography, constant updates, a dumpster, porta potties, all materials, expert craftsmanship, and a user-friendly website. My mother told me how proud she was to have all this work going on so seamlessly. The neighbors wanted to know how we found Gunner. In the end, the job was done in stunning fashion. I never knew a roof could look so sexy. Gunner cleaned up everything and removed all extra materials. Two days later, New York had one of the most bizarre rainfalls in history. The New York Times reported that “The rain was shocking in its intensity. More than three inches fell in a single hour in Central Park Wednesday night, shattering a record that had been set just days before by Tropical Storm Henri. Across the region, more than half a foot of rain fell within a few hours, and several places in New York and New Jersey reported more than nine inches. The deluge turned streets to rivers across the Northeast and trapped people in flooded basement apartments. Emergency workers in boats rescued people stranded on the roofs of their cars.” And yet my mom slept through it, not even realizing that there was a major storm. In the old days, she would have been putting out bucket after bucket, tarpaulin after tarpaulin, for when the rain rushed in through the holes in the old roof. Now that’s a thing of the past! That’s how amazing a job Gunner Roofing did. I told them God bless them, I thanked God we found this team, and I could not be more pleased with their work and the peace of mind that comes with it. Most of all, my mom, a proud woman, told me she was treated with great respect, and she said all workers were truly first-class professionals.

Did that Wow! experience have any long-term ripple effects? Can you share the story?

Yes, it did. We had multiple neighbors come up to us during the project and thank us for fixing this home up. We have also now fixed multiple homes on the same street and even more in a couple mile radius.

Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience. Please share a story or an example for each.

1. The customer experience is a moving target. As an example, when we first started, we thought customer experience meant a great install and a clean job site. Now we provide home renderings, constant communication, project managers, office support staff and more to provide an excellent customer experience.
2. Henry Ford once said, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would say faster horses.” The lesson here is listen to your customers. They knew they wanted something faster but it’s your job as entrepreneur to bring them that…. plus more. Homeowners told us that they wanted immediate pricing on roofs. So, we are empowering them to buy a roof within a couple hours from submitting their quote from the comfort of their own home online.
3. Put yourself in the customers shoes. The best way to wow a customer is to know what makes them say, “Wow! that was an unbelievable customer experience!” We deal with thousands of customers each year and each one has something important to them that creates a great customer experience. Maybe it’s not having our crews start work until 9am because they have a sleeping baby, or maybe it’s making sure we don’t leave nails in the driveway because they recently purchased their dream car. It’s finding out what matters to a customer that creates that wow experience.
4. You can’t always be the face of your company; make sure the people representing you can provide a better customer experience than you can. One of my favorite things is stopping at a job site, meeting a homeowner, having a great conversation with them and then being completely left out of the 5-star Google review. They don’t care that the owner of the company is there; they care about the salesperson and their project manager who they built an unreal relationship with. It is those people that are (and should be!) mentioned in the review.
5. Customer experience starts at the top. If you don’t believe in it, your team won’t either. We treat every customer with the same level of professionalism, respect and service. It doesn’t matter if you want a $100 repair or a $300k roof. You won’t receive any different customer experience!

Are there a few things that can be done so that when a customer or client has a Wow! experience, they inspire others to reach out to you as well?

Yes absolutely! We ask everyone homeowner that we work for leave us a review on Google, Yelp, etc. The biggest compliment a homeowner can give us is recommending us on a public forum. Not only that, but word of mouth isn’t dead. People trust their neighbors and when you do an excellent job, they will tell everyone they need!

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

So, I’m not sure it affects the largest number of people, but it affects many people who are dearest to us. We would like to help immigrants get a clear path to citizenship. A lot of the people we meet in the construction industry are so grateful to be in this country and working. We would love to give them the opportunity to real citizenship.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Gunner Roofing is on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook (@gunnerroofing.com).

My LinkedIn is https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprchal/.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!