Most homeowners who hire a roofing contractor go through the same experience. You spend time getting estimates, you pick the company you trust, you sign the contract, and then the silence starts. Nobody calls to confirm when the crew is coming. Materials show up in your driveway on a Tuesday morning with no warning. You text the salesperson and wait two days for a reply. By the time the job is done, you are relieved it is over rather than proud of the decision you made.
Exterior Building Solutions built a role specifically to fix that. Every EBS customer is assigned a Client Experience Coordinator from the moment they sign. Their name is Keith Stout, and his only job is to make sure none of that happens to you.
From Jefferson County to Your Front Door
Grew up 15 minutes from where he still lives
Keith was born and raised in Jefferson County, Missouri. He still lives 15 minutes from the house he grew up in. When he is not coordinating projects, he is in the woods or on a river. Hunting, fishing, floating, camping. Those are his weekends. He has three kids and, when the weather does not cooperate, a poker game to get to.
That kind of rootedness matters in this business. Keith is not a transplant or a temporary hire filling a new position on an org chart. He is a St. Louis area native who knows the neighborhoods, knows the homeowners, and has no intention of being anywhere else.
How a poker league changed his career
Keith graduated from Missouri State University in 1997 and went straight into sales. First with ADP, then 20 years in pharmaceutical sales, a career that required him to be organized, accountable, and precise with follow-through. He eventually switched gears and moved into estimating for a couple of landscaping companies before landing at EBS.
The way he got in the door is the kind of detail that does not show up in a job posting. He met Ray Hazer, an EBS service technician, through a poker league. Ray helped him get hired. Keith worked alongside him for a stretch doing siding, soffit and fascia, windows, and doors before eventually being moved into the Client Experience Coordinator role. It fits him in a way that two decades of pharmaceutical sales trained him for without either of them knowing it at the time.
What a Client Experience Coordinator Actually Does
The first call nobody else makes
The moment a new customer is assigned to Keith, he picks up the phone. He does not wait for them to reach out. He introduces himself as their Client Experience Coordinator, explains that he will be their main point of contact from that moment until the project is completed, and gives them his personal cell number and email. He tells them he is available around the clock if they have questions. Then he schedules an in-person visit.
That one call takes about five minutes. For most homeowners, it changes everything about how the rest of the project feels. They know someone specific is watching their job. They have a number to call. They are not waiting for something to go wrong before they find out who to contact.
What a normal day looks like
Keith starts each morning by checking and responding to emails. Some customers prefer email, some prefer a call, some text. He works through all of it. Then he checks his CRM task bar and calendar to see which jobs are starting, which are ongoing, and which homeowners he needs to visit in person that day. The rest of the day moves between phone calls to customers with active projects and showing up at job sites to make sure things are going the way they should.
IMAGE 2 16:9 – insert between day-in-the-life section and system section | Keith on a job site or on the phone, candid and natural, good natural light
The system behind the scenes
Keeping multiple projects on track at the same time takes a real system. Keith uses the EBS CRM to set tasks that pop up when action is needed: placing a material order, checking in with a homeowner about their project status, confirming a crew’s arrival time. He keeps alerts on his phone for anything time-sensitive. He also has a notebook on his desk and a large dry-erase board on the wall next to it for anything he needs right in front of his face.
It is a mix of digital and old-school that works. The point is not which tool he uses. The point is that nothing gets forgotten.
What Happens When Something Goes Wrong
The day Mike called in a panic
It was mid-morning on a full roof replacement. Keith’s phone rang and it was the homeowner, Mike, sounding like he had just watched something terrible happen. “We have a problem,” Mike said. “One of your guys just fell through my bathroom ceiling. You better get over here.”
Keith got in his car and drove straight there. What had happened was this: one of the crew members was carrying material across the roof and did not see a hole in the decking where a vent was being replaced. He stepped into it and his legs went through the drywall on the ceiling below. Fortunately, he caught himself and was not hurt. But there was a hole in a homeowner’s bathroom ceiling in the middle of a workday.
Keith got on the phone with the EBS production manager immediately. Within a couple of hours, a repair crew was at Mike’s house. The bathroom ceiling was fixed the same day before the roofing crew left.
Mike was fine about it. More than fine, actually. He was impressed by how fast it was handled. By the time the job was done and the crew packed up, he and Keith were laughing about the whole thing.
Why this story matters more than a five-star review
A review written on a calm day after a job went smoothly tells you something. A story about a worker’s legs going through a bathroom ceiling and the whole thing being resolved before dinner tells you more. It tells you what a company actually does when the pressure is on and the homeowner is understandably not happy. EBS fixed it fast, did not pass the blame, and did not make Mike wait. That is the standard Keith holds every project to, whether the stakes are that high or not.
What Keith Wishes Every Homeowner Knew Before Signing a Contract
After working in the industry long enough to see the same problems show up repeatedly, Keith has a clear view on what goes wrong before the job even starts. The lowest price is the lowest for a reason. It usually means something was overlooked during the inspection, lower quality materials were quoted, or the crew doing the work does not have the experience to back up the number on the page.
“You get what you pay for” is easy to dismiss as a cliche until you are the homeowner who hired the cheapest bid and is now calling EBS to fix what they left behind. Keith says EBS gets a significant amount of business from homeowners in exactly that situation. They learned the hard way that the difference between the lowest bid and a fair one is rarely savings. It is usually a second job.
What It Sounds Like When It All Goes Right
“From the start, they clearly explained what I needed, what I should strongly consider, and what was optional, so it felt like we were solving the problem together.”
-Alex, EBS customer
That quote from a customer named Alex is the one Keith comes back to when someone asks what a good project feels like. Not just the finished roof or the clean driveway at the end. The feeling that someone walked you through every decision, told you what was necessary and what was not, and treated your home like it mattered to them personally.
The compliment Keith values most is simpler than any review score. It is when a customer tells him they would refer EBS to their family. That is the bar. Not just satisfied. Satisfied enough to put their name behind it.
Why This Role Exists at EBS
Keith describes his job in a way that sounds straightforward until you realize most roofing companies never thought to create it. Taking personal ownership of every customer’s experience. Making sure they feel heard, valued, and supported from the first phone call to the final walkthrough. Following through on what was promised. Treating every concern as something worth taking seriously, not something to manage until it goes away.
“No EBS customer should ever have to wonder whether someone is paying attention or advocating for them.”
That is how Keith puts it, and it is the most honest description of what the Client Experience Coordinator role is. Not a title. Not a department. One person, accountable to every customer, until the job is done.
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