PestBossPro Blog — Running a Pest Control Business

Customer Communication in a Pest Control Business: Reminders, Texts and Post-Treatment Instructions

Recurring pest control has an odd problem: when it works, nothing happens. No ants, no wasps, no mice. The customer may go months without seeing a pest or a technician, and eventually they start to wonder what they are paying for. Good communication solves that. It tells the customer the work is happening, what was done and what to do next, without asking them to do anything.

Every Technician Speaks for the Company

The customer manners covered in Training New Technicians in a Pest Control Business: Ride-Alongs, Records and the Tech App are one half of customer communication. The other half happens before and after the visit, through texts, emails and the office. In a small company, those messages can do much of the work a big company's customer service team would do.

Before the Visit: Reminders

A reminder the night before tells the customer you are coming. It gives them a chance to open the gate, bring the dog inside, move the kids' toys off the lawn or let you know they need to reschedule. Each of those saves a wasted trip or a skipped stop.

In PestBossPro, customers choose their own alerts: the night before, when they are next on the route, and when the technician arrives. Some customers want all three. Others only want one. Letting them choose means they get what they find useful instead of what they find annoying.

During the Visit: On the Way and Arrived

The tech app sends an “on the way” text and an “arrived” text automatically as the technician works the route. The technician doesn't type anything; the texts go out as they move through their stops.

These two messages do more than you might expect. A customer who is working from home knows to keep the dog in. A customer at work knows the service happened today. And a customer who sees the arrived text every quarter never wonders whether anyone came.

After the Visit: Post-Treatment Instructions

Once a treatment is done, the customer needs to know what to do. PestBossPro sends automatic post-treatment instruction emails, for example to keep kids and pets off treated areas until dry. Write these instructions in plain words and keep them short. They should match what the product label says about re-entry, and you may want different instructions for different services, such as a perimeter treatment, a mosquito barrier spray or an interior treatment.

These emails protect the customer, and they protect you. A customer who was told to keep the dog off the lawn until it dried has fewer reasons to call with a complaint.

Two-Way Texting With the Office

Customers reply to texts. They ask if you can come Thursday instead, send a photo of a wasp nest, or mention they saw mice in the garage. With two-way texting in PestBossPro, those replies come to the office instead of to a technician's personal phone, so nothing gets lost when a technician is on a ladder.

Reply quickly, even if it is just “Got it, we will add that to your next visit.” Fast replies build more trust than long ones.

Those replies are also an early warning system. A customer who texts about ants twice in a month is a customer who may be thinking about cancelling. A customer who mentions moving is a chance to ask for a referral to the new owner. Read the texts as a picture of how your customers feel about the service, not just as a queue of requests to clear. When something comes up more than once, such as complaints about a certain neighborhood or a certain kind of pest, that is worth bringing up at the next technician check-in.

Keep Messages Short and Plain

Text messages are billed in segments, and every plan includes a monthly allowance: 500, 1,000 or 2,000 segments sent and received on Start, Pro and Crew. Short, plain messages use fewer segments and are easier to read. A few tips:

• Lead with the point: “Your pest service is tomorrow.”
• Skip fancy symbols and long sign-offs.
• Put longer explanations in email, not text.
• Use the company name so customers know who is texting.

Texting is available for customers in the US and Canada.

Communication Keeps Customers

A customer who hears from you before, during and after every visit is a customer who stays. The customer app, covered in The Customer App: Letting Pest Control Business Customers Book, Pay and Watch the Route, takes this further by letting customers see the route and manage their own account. To see how reminders, texts and emails fit into PestBossPro, visit the PestBossPro pest control business software page.