[Talking Technology] My Journey Using a Call Center

“I love technology, and I love to see how businesses in other industries use it and try to mirror that in pest management,” said Cleveland Dixon, owner of Holiday Termite & Pest Control in Springfield, Va.

Dixon always has been an advocate of incorporating unconventional technology into the pest control industry, and in 2008, after observing that companies in other industries were increasingly outsourcing their inbound calls, he set his sights on utilizing a call center for his business.

“The reason why I had this idea is because I had four technicians out in the field and one person in the office,” he said. “So you can imagine that in having only one person in the office while servicing commercial and residential properties, there’s always some emergency either in the field or in the office.”

Dixon said that sometimes those emergencies could slip through the cracks, especially when replacing that administrative person, or if that person were ill, out to lunch or out for multiple days on vacation.

Why did Dixon believe incorporating a call center into his business would be possible? Since Holiday Termite & Pest Control doesn’t quote over the phone, Dixon said most of his incoming calls were simple, and only entailed setting up an appointment for a quote.

He said that if he could find a call center that could take calls, upload data into the system and send it directly to technicians in the field, those calls wouldn’t be missed and his administrative staffer could operate more efficiently and could potentially even be cut.
 

Call Center Goals.

Dixon started the process by sitting down and taking time to think about the specific services his company needed in a call center. Then he turned to Google, and started vetting call centers that he found on the Web. “There were a few things I had in mind that were extremely important to me when calling these folks,” Dixon said.

The first was the location of the call center. It needed to be located on the East Coast because their workers would likely be familiar with his northern Virginia service area, and they would be easily accessible for training.

The center also needed to be able to navigate the cloud-based systems he utilized every day when entering customer information and scheduling services.

Dixon also was in search of a company that staffed employees who had “common sense,” he said.

“As much as we like to predict the calls that are coming into our office, you really have to be able to apply some good common sense with respect to handling the people that are calling,” he said.

After sifting through companies that outsourced their calls overseas, charged on top of initial charges and weren’t familiar enough with the right technology, Dixon found Executive Center Services, a company that typically handled scheduling for doctors’ and dentists’ offices.

“What made me think that they were a good fit was that they were an order-taking service,” said Dixon. “It would just take some minor tweaks to apply this same vision to pest management.”

The company answered calls from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., which was three hours longer than Dixon’s business hours, and the owner had a sister who lived in northern Virginia, so he was familiar with the market.
 

Putting It Into Action.

Once Dixon decided on Executive Center Services, he had to put the right technology and training in place for the call center to do its job.

“In order for us to pull this off, there were some key components that needed to be in place,” Dixon said.

Logistically, he needed a way to get his calls to the call center. “I Googled that too, and found Grasshopper,” Dixon said. For about $40 a month, the Internet-based PBX system (private branch exchange) could send the calls, as well as track and record them.

After he had the technology in place, Dixon had to give the call center employees a quick education on everything pest control.

“I drove down and walked them through everything they needed to do,” he said. He supplied each person working on his account with customized maps of his service area, complete with approximate distances between popular points for reference.

He also developed a zone strategy, in which he divided up northern Virginia into four boxes, so that when calls came in for quotes, the call center could efficiently schedule technicians’ days by zone. (Since this set-up occurred years ago, technology has improved, and Dixon hasn’t needed to plan out such an intensive training schedule when working with new call centers, he said.)

When working with his second call center, Dixon performed remote training using the app Join Me and trained those staffers who would be educating anyone working on his account.

While performing remote training, Dixon also utilized free screen-recording software to create educational videos that call center employees could pull up if they needed a refresher. “I made videos for every function I needed them to do for my business, so they never needed to ask questions, they just watched the video,” he said. The call center employees have access to the videos on a private YouTube channel, as well as a password-protected section of Dixon’s website. They also have access to PDF training guides.
 

Call Center Services.

As technology has improved, call centers have an entire suite of new services available to pest control companies.

Not only are people answering inbound leads 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they also can adjust the field technicians’ schedules for efficiency.

Using ServicePro’s ServSuite pest control software, Holiday Termite & Pest Control’s call center can schedule services, update and edit customer information, and even optimize technician routes when a job is changed or cancelled.

They also schedule routes to support Dixon’s daily financial goals. “They know how much I want to make on that route daily,” he said.

Using Wufoo, a free software service, any forms filled out on the website are sent directly to the call center, and now customers can schedule free quotes online as well.

“A lot of pest control companies don’t let the customer choose their own date and time because…you already have your schedule preset,” said Dixon. “I would say that 70 percent of the time we can accommodate, but as soon as something doesn’t fit on the schedule, they get on the phone very quickly and get them scheduled. We’ve never had an issue with that. It’s actually starting to show up in reviews about how easy it is to go online and order services.”

In addition to scheduling, the call center employees call ahead the day before an estimate to confirm the appointment.

The call center processes payments, collects on past-due accounts and can process contracts sent in from the field via iPads.

“By the time we finish the job, it’s actually in ServSuite,” said Dixon.

Over time, Dixon even trained his call center employees to work directly with real estate agents, in addition to providing basic scheduling services with customers.

“After we do the inspection, we email a copy of the WDI over to them; they take the information, put it in ServSuite, and send a copy of the invoice and the WDI within the hour to the realtor,” he said.

Although the call center can handle many day-to-day tasks, he does make sure it’s clear to customers that they have reached the Holiday scheduling center.

“That really gets the client in the frame of mind that, ‘OK we’re not talking to people that know anything about pest control, we’re talking to a scheduling service that’s there to schedule my appointment,’” he said.
 

Stumbling Blocks.

Although Dixon said his call center usage has paid for itself many times over, working with the center to become efficient in the pest control industry was a bumpy road. But Dixon knew what he was getting into, since many of his peers’ experiences with call centers also were poor.

“We recorded some of the phone calls so I could hear how things were happening,” said Dixon. “It was bad, you want to run for the hills, but over time it got better. It’s no different than somebody in the office that you have to work with, but for me I looked at this in the long term. If I got this right, what a relief it was going to be for my business.”

Dixon said his greatest difficulties in the beginning were limited technology and steep learning curves.

It took a few years to get Executive Center Services acclimated to his systems. Then, once they were, the company was sold, so Dixon needed to start all over.

“That season was really rough, but guess what? It actually ended up being better over time,” he said.

And all things that were difficult for Dixon when he first implemented the call center became even easier as technology caught up.
 

Benefits.

“It’s the end result that I look at, and the benefits of the call center are really worth the time and effort I’ve put into it,” said Dixon.

Administrative productivity has increased revenue, as have longer business hours. “The calls they were taking between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. more than paid for their service,” he said.

Executive Center Services was acquired by ProComm a few years ago and Dixon has been pleased with this new partnership. ProComm has more than 50 employees, takes calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and has dedicated account managers. They also have the capabilities to record every phone call, and keep current with all of the newest relevant call center technology.

Through his partnership with ProComm, Dixon was introduced to RingCentral, a cloud-based phone system with more advanced features than Grasshopper, including unlimited extensions and a mobile app the technicians could use in the field to directly call customers under the main office’s caller ID. The app also enabled them to send and receive faxes in the field, forward calls and give custom reporting about call times and any missed calls, all for about $60 a month.

“It really took two years for this company to really get good, and now that they’re good, it’s like where do we go from here?” said Dixon. “I had to do a lot of teaching...but I also enjoy learning from them.”
 

Applying it to Your Firm.

Although Dixon committed to making a call center work for his pest management company, he said that he realizes that every business has different needs.

“This really isn’t about using a call center the way I do it, it’s about how you can use it within your business,” said Dixon. “Whatever function there is within your business that you think they can take over for you, it can be beneficial.”

About the author: Laura Straub is a Cleveland-based freelancer.