Certa-Pro Puts the Professionalism Back in Home Painting

publication date: Aug 7, 2008

 | 

author/source: John Breech / STAFF

By John Breech / STAFF

Vincent Van Gogh once said, “The only time I feel alive is when I am painting.” If the experts at CertaPro have feelings similar to Van Gogh’s, then they probably feel alive all the time as CertaPro is a company that specializes in interior and exterior house painting. Jeff Bridges, CertaPro’s top man in North Fulton, will be the first one to admit that his company doesn’t just get their kicks from painting. They also get a thrill out of offering incredible customer service. And that’s what makes CertaPro different from the other painting companies.

Anybody who has gone through the process of having their home painted knows it can be an arduous task, but as Bridges explains, it’s usually not the painting that’s the problem. “When you talk to most people about what they liked or didn’t like about a paint job, it’s very rarely about straight lines,” says Bridges. “It’s about ‘The guys didn’t show up,’ ‘They took half my money and never came back,’ ‘They let the dog out because they left the fence open.’ It’s all these inconveniences.”

CertaPro is a company that strives to break the negative stereotypes of painting companies; their business is just as much about customer service as it is painting. Bridges, who has 14 years of project executive experience at IBM under his belt, loves to explain why the CertaPro way is the best way.

“We have what we call a certainty pledge and in the pledge we ask, ‘Where can we keep our ladders, here’s the times we’re going to come, here’s the times we’re going to leave.’”

In other words, these guys are polite to a tee and they’ll leave your home the way they found it, both uncommon occurrences in the world of home painting.

If you hire CertaPro, you’re getting a company that thrives on perfection. Consider this story told by Bridges.

“We painted this house and we specked it using an extremely high end paint on the trim. We painted the house and about ¾’s of the way through, I noticed they were using a good paint, but not what we had specified,” explained Bridges. “Same color, same sheen, same everything and I asked the guys ‘Why are we using this? We were supposed to use this.’ And they said, ‘This is what they gave us at the paint store.’” So how did Bridges remedy the problem?

“I went to the paint store, Sherwin-Williams and I said, ‘Guys I think you gave us the wrong paint,’ and they did. I talked to the manager and they gave us the right paint.” But that’s not all. “So I called [the homeowner] and said look, we were supposed to be done today, but I realized halfway through that we used the wrong paint on the house. And he said ‘I probably would have never noticed.’ And I said, ‘I know you wouldn’t have noticed, but we’re going to go ahead and repaint it, a second coat using the right paint.’” This story seems to emphasize the fact that hiring a perfectionist to paint your house is a good idea.

Speaking of hiring, Bridges doesn’t hire just anyone to work for CertaPro. All potential employees have to prove their painting mettle at Bridges’ own house. That’s right; Bridges volunteers his own home to serve as a perpetual guinea pig. Bridges knows that if they can paint his house correctly, they can do your house the same way. And if they mess up on Bridges’ home, no harm done, because they won’t have a job with CertaPro and therefore will never have a chance to mess up on your house.

On top of great painting and customer service, CertaPro has also been known to help out in the community. When the Greater North Fulton Child Development Center needed to be repainted, bids were getting a little too high for the non-profit, so CertaPro jumped in and offered to do the job at cost, saving the Center upwards of 75 percent in costs.

When it comes down to it, Bridges says that CertaPro offers things that the other painting companies can’t or won’t. “We have a very high standard, ethically, quality-wise, accountability-wise and professional-wise,” says Bridges. That is the CertaPro difference.