[Customer Service] Turning Service Calls into Dollars

Tracking service calls to better understand them — and making changes as a result — saved Middleton Lawn & Pest Control more than 33,637 service calls which equates to more than $1 million* over a three-year period, according to Phil “Doc” Nichols, director of pest control and termites for the Orlando-based company. Nichols shared his insight gained through this experience at PestWorld 2008. “One of the worst things we can do is to go out on repeated service calls. The next thing you know, you’ve lost a customer and don’t know why,” Nichols says. “Service call reports can be used to gain information that will make your company money.”

While pest management companies earn revenue on service calls when visiting new customer accounts and existing customer renewals, conducting a callback or follow-up service usually doesn’t generate any income. These non-productive service calls cost money in terms of technician pay, chemical cost as well as vehicle and office expenses – on average, anywhere from $40 to $75 per call for Middleton.

For several years, Middleton used a treatment protocol where technicians treated a home’s interior once every year and revisited to treat the exterior for the next three quarters. In 2004, the company changed its service model to eliminate two of the exterior visits. “You might ask what would cause a company to go from quarterly service to twice-a-year on the outside,” says Nichols. “You have to know and understand your callback rate to make a decision to take the 12,000 customers we had at that time in this direction.”

Middleton enhanced its services and monitored, and sometimes changed, the products used so the company and its technicians had confidence this was a good business decision to make.

“A supplier might tell you he’s got the best invention since bubble gum, and so you give it to your best technicians to use, but how do you test it? I’m a scientist – I need numbers to look at to make decisions – just like when you look at your profit and loss reports,” Nichols explains. “No one uses their gut reaction to recognize if they are making money or not. It’s the same way with tracking your service procedures and products. You know if you are doing services properly if it’s documented in the numbers.”

NUMBERS CRUNCHING. Using computer software, Nichols reviews service call tracking and comparison reports to analyze how well a given treatment procedure and various products are working. By comparing branch locations and technicians, he can see what’s working and what’s not, and adjust procedures or products as needed. As a result, he found that ants, large cockroaches and spiders were generating the most service calls.

“For example, when Tom had four customer-generated service calls for ants one month while Wayne had 13, although they are using the same products and treatment techniques, we had the ability to find out what’s causing the problem,” Nichols says. “We realized we were dealing with ghost ants and were able to design a specific control procedure to control them.”

What Nichols found worked best on the exterior was pre-baiting using honey every 10 to 15 feet and also applying it to their trails, allowing it to set for 10 minutes before inspection. Technicians then treat honey smears where ghost ants are feeding with fipronil at the label rate by spraying a light mist onto the ants and honey smear. The ants will take the insecticide back to the nest. And, if nests can be located, technicians have been trained to treat them with the appropriate product for that site.

On the interior, technicians inspect for ghost ant trails and when found, use chlor-fenapyr to treat cracks and crevices from where they are coming. If the trail is coming from an area that cannot be treated using a crack and crevice procedure, they will place chlorfenapyr onto a cotton swab and lightly treat the trail so ants will take the product back to the nest.

Another challenge Nichols identified through analyzing service reports was large cockroaches. Nichols knew they most likely were entering homes via the garage, but wanted to confirm his theory and conducted a test to determine entry points for these pests. “We placed traps in every entryway, and found that 80 percent of them were coming in through the garage,” explains Nichols. “So, we trained technicians to concentrate more on the garage, using more bait placements and treating cracks and crevices.”

Finally, Nichols also conducted a test on a commercial building with a large spider population to determine a more effective spider control protocol to reduce callbacks. “Using the service call reports, we are able to make logical decisions about the products and services that work for us,” says Nichols. “As a result, when our new procedures really kicked in, we had a substantial decrease in service calls.”

A ‘BIG CHUNK OF CHANGE.’ According to Nichols, in 2004 alone, if Middleton hadn’t changed its service protocol, technicians would have gone out on 16,231 more non-productive service calls. And if a call is worth a conservative estimate of $40, the company’s new approach saved it $649,240 that year.

“If I add all of the years together, over a six year period we saved more than $8 million in the cost of these additional service calls,” Nichols says. “That’s a big chunk of change.”

And, at the same time, the company was able to grow significantly – from 12,000 customers in 2003 to 24,000 customers in 2008.

The author is a frequent contributor to PCT and can be contacted a cbrazell@giemedia.com.