Wednesday, February 11, 2009

New Orleans Locksmith Pop-A-Lock

New Orleans is one of the flagship cities for Pop-A-Lock. It one of the first markets that was developed in the franchise system and continues to be a leader. I've had the pleasure of working for Pop-A-Lock of New Orleans back in 2002-2004 before transferring to the Las Vegas Pop-A-Lock.

The work crew in New Orleans is very stable, if you used Pop-A-Lock 5 years ago, chances are that you will have the same technician service you if you are in the same area. I've done ride along with a number of technicians and locksmiths in the big easy and the level of knowledge of the city is stunning. I'm not talking just about knowing major areas and major commercial areas, I mean down to in depth knowledge of residential streets and convoluted industrial areas.

The organization of the city is based on well thought out zones that are staffed with overlapping coverage. The CBD, Metarie, Kenner, Gretna, Westwego and even down to Chalmette are densely covered with service people. The filter of time has resulted in a very strong operations strategy with extremely well trained and seasoned veterans working the city.

Seeing this operation from the inside out, I can tell you that 'old fashioned' customer service drives the entire business. If you call and say that you have locked your child in your vehicle, the entire city reorganizes to get you help. Regardless of what they are doing, where they are going, the closest couple of people start immediately heading over to help you, usually more than one is dispatched in case they run into traffic. I've always thought that people simply would not believe the level of dedication by both the management but down to the individual locksmiths to legitimately take care of people.

Every year I have the opportunity to work with the New Orleans Locksmiths to do continuing education. We cover all the fundamentals of Lock Bypass, Life Safety Considerations, Authorization for Entry as well as new locks and techniques that have developed over the past year. The irony is that I usually learn as much from this experience as the locksmiths do, they all have interesting stories of 'exceptions to the rule' and unusual conditions which jobs had to be completed.

New Orleans can cut and program nearly any type of key. They recently invested in the technology to cut laser type keys such as BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, Audi and Lexus. This really rounded out complete locksmith service for the area. I know it may sound a bit corny but one of the most irritating things for a locksmith is to have to tell a customer, "Sorry, we can't help you." Particularly in areas like New Orleans, where the individual locksmiths take their work so personal and take the view that their customers are real people with real problems and not just 'somebody calling'.

If you have ever had service from Pop-A-Lock of New Orleans, please feel free to post a comment to back up what I'm saying or just send a comment to me directly. The thank you letters that we get from customers are held in such high regard and are distributed down to the techs. (We have software that records the details of every call we take and the owner can look up any call to see who did it, even if it is several years old).

You can learn more about the #1 New Orleans locksmith by visiting their local website www.locksmithneworleans.com or by visiting the corporate home page for Pop-A-Lock www.popalock.com.

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