PestBossPro Blog — Running a Pest Control Business

The Customer App: Letting Pest Control Business Customers Book, Pay and Watch the Route

A lot of the phone calls a small pest company gets are simple questions. When are you coming? Can you come back for the ants? How much is mosquito service? Can I update my card? Each call takes a few minutes, and when the owner is also the technician, those minutes come out of the route. A customer app lets customers answer many of those questions themselves, any time of day, without calling.

Self-Service Builds Trust

Reviews and referrals, covered in Reviews and Referrals: How a Pest Control Business Grows by Word of Mouth, grow out of customers feeling looked after. A customer app is part of that. It shows the customer that the company is organized, that their service is on a schedule and that their account is easy to manage. Small companies can offer that just as well as big ones.

Watching Today's Route

On service day, the PestBossPro customer app shows the customer where they are on today's route, for example “You're stop 12 of 20 — the tech is 5 stops away.” That one line answers the most common question a pest company gets.

It also helps the visit go smoothly. A customer who can see the technician is a few stops away knows when to open the gate or bring the dog in. Combined with the automatic on-the-way and arrived texts, it means fewer skipped stops and fewer calls to the office asking where the truck is.

Requesting Service and Signing Up

Pest problems don't wait for business hours. A customer who sees ants on a Sunday evening can request service in the app instead of leaving a voicemail. The request reaches the office, where you can schedule it on the next route through that neighborhood.

Customers can also sign up for services and see your pricing in the app. A quarterly customer who wants to add a mosquito package for the summer, or a rodent program for the garage, doesn't need to call to ask. That makes add-on sales, like those described in Adding Mosquito, Rodent and Termite Programs to a Pest Control Business, much easier.

Cards, Invoices and Payment

Billing questions are some of the most time-consuming calls a small company handles. In the customer app, customers can see their invoices and pay them, and they can update the card on file. When a card expires or declines, sending the customer to the app to update it is faster than taking card numbers over the phone.

With a current card on file, PestBossPro can charge automatically when a technician completes a job or on a schedule, and past-due follow-up goes out on its own for anything still unpaid. Handling the cards that do decline is covered in Declined Cards and Past-Due Accounts in a Pest Control Business.

Alert Preferences

Customers choose which alerts they get: the night before, when they are next on the route, and when the technician arrives. Some customers want every message. Others only want the night-before reminder. Letting them choose in the app keeps the messages useful and keeps customers from feeling flooded.

This also helps your text allowance. Customers only get the alerts they asked for, and every plan includes a monthly allowance of segments sent and received: 500 on Start, 1,000 on Pro and 2,000 on Crew.

Ratings and Referrals

Customers can rate their service and refer others from the app. Ratings give you a quick read on how visits are going; a low rating is a reason to call the customer and fix the problem before it turns into a cancellation. Referrals bring in new customers, often from the same neighborhood, which helps route density.

What Stays With the Office

A customer app doesn't replace the office; it takes the routine questions off its plate. Requests from the app still land with the office, which decides when to schedule a re-service, whether a mosquito sign-up fits this week's routes and how to reply to a customer who asked something unusual. Two-way texting stays open for anything the app doesn't cover. The difference is that the office spends its time on decisions instead of reading out invoice totals and confirming service days over the phone.

Introducing the App to Customers

A customer app only helps if customers use it. Mention it when a new customer signs up, include the link in your reminders and invoices, and point people to it when they call with a question the app can answer. Over time, more of the simple questions get answered without a call, and the office phone gets quieter. To see how the customer app fits with texting, billing and the rest of the business, visit the PestBossPro pest control business software page.