The Smart Way to Offer Pool Service Options

Flat monthly pool service pricing sounds simple until trichlor tablets jump in cost, gas hits $6+ a gallon, and you realize you’re absorbing every surprise the market throws at you. I walk through a smarter, more flexible approach: tiered pool service packages that protect your profit while staying clear and fair for customers. If you’ve been hesitant to change your pool service rates, this is the roadmap I’d use to modernize pricing without blowing up your route.

We get specific about what belongs in a base service rate versus what should be billed separately. I explain why many pros still include a predictable maintenance dose of liquid chlorine and muriatic acid, but stop bundling expensive consumables like 3-inch trichlor tablets. You’ll hear a practical way to roll out tablet charges over one to two years, including how to handle customers who will push back and how to keep communication simple.

From there, we build real tiered service levels you can sell: chemical-only pool service, chemical-only plus basket checks, and upgraded tiers that add skimming and brushing while leaving vacuuming as an on-demand upcharge. I also cover add-on revenue that keeps you protected when inflation spikes, including filter cleaning fees and salt cell cleaning for saltwater pools. The goal is a pool maintenance business model where each pool pays for what it truly needs, your invoices stay defensible, and your margins stop getting squeezed.

If you want more pool service business tips like this, subscribe, share the show with a pool pro friend, and leave a review so more techs can find it.

• why standard rate service with all chemicals included no longer pencils out
• how to pass on 3-inch trichlor tablet costs over one to two years
• deciding between itemized billing and a stable monthly maintenance dose
• why filter cleaning should usually be a separate line item
• tiered service levels from chemical-only to near full service
• how to upsell filter cleans on chemical-only accounts
• when to charge for shock, vacuuming, and salt cell cleaning
• us

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Tiered Pricing

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Hey, welcome to the PoolGame Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about tiered pool service. And this is a great way to recapture some profit, especially in a tight market where things get more expensive, which they have been getting this year. And this is a great way to offset some of the costs that are incur you incur out on your pool service route. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. From me, I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. I think the standard rate pool service is probably a thing of the past. And this is where you have the chemicals included. Now, most pool service in my area, now this differs by region, of course. We include a maintenance dose of acid and chlorine in the pool service, and everything else is charged separately because you can't really absorb the cost of the three-inch trichlor tablets any longer. Now, if you haven't passed this cost onto your customer, this is something that you have to eventually do, and this is something you'll do kind of in a slow one or two-year process. The first year, if you have customers that you know are going to complain about it, they're they don't really look at their bill that carefully, they're easygoing. Then right away, of course, send them a letter saying that because of the increase in prices, it's a good time actually right now, with inflation rising, to send this out, letting them know that you can no longer absorb the cost of the three-inch trichlore tablets, and you're gonna purchase the bucket and leave it by their equipment for them. For those that you're gonna get some pushback, and you should know your customers pretty well by now. Go ahead and let them know that you're going to subsidize the tablets and you're going to charge them for half the cost the first year, and then the following year they're gonna have to pay for the entire bucket of tablets, three-inch chlorine tablets. And typically, I sell the customers a 50-pound bucket that seems to last through the whole season into the following year, sometimes even two years, depending on how many tablets you use for that pool, but for sure it'll cover that season, and you know, the 50-pound buckets are pretty standard in the industry. So you can do that by kind of breaking it down into two different customer categories and then passing that cost on. Now, there are some companies that still include everything in the service. I really think that that is going away because of the inflation that happens kind of suddenly where you can't control it. You know, gas here. I just passed the station the other day was six dollars and thirty cents a gallon for gas here in my area of Los Angeles County, which is really a ridiculous amount of money to pay for one gallon of gas that for my truck only gets me about 18 miles. If you're using a routing software like Skimmer, it's really easy to itemize everything for your customer, and then it generates the bill. So this really takes any kind of work out of it. If you want to charge the customer for all chemicals, this app will let you do that, and you won't need to include the maintenance dose any longer in your billing. You'll just charge the customer monthly for everything, you know, for all the chemicals used at the pool. The only problem with that is that the bill is going to vary, and a lot of people are on auto draft and they're gonna get different amounts, and you have to track if they're paying the actual amount. So that's why a lot of people still here in my area do the maintenance dose of liquid chlorine and acid, and then the flat rate pool service rate, and that's every month basically it's the same charge. And then if you add any phosphorymover enzymes, if you're riding a pool X before the season starts or boris to the pool, you don't have to worry too much about that. And the customer knows that there's going to be some extra charges here and there, and of course, you're charging for the filter clean separately. I think this is really important because in my area we have full-size filters in Florida. Maybe you can't really do this, you'll have to just include that in your service price because you have the single cartridge filters and you're cleaning them more often. But where you're having filters like full-size D filters, like we have here, full-size cartridge filters, which are the quad four cartridge filters. You definitely have to charge the customer for the filter cleaning because filter cleaning time does vary, and you can you do them every six months, sometimes every four months, and you don't want to include this because it's a lot of extra work. It's also a good motivator for you or your employees to get paid extra for the filter cleaning, as something that again kind of varies sometimes per pool. Each pool may be have a be on a different schedule. Most pools here are every six months, and this is a way to kind of offset some of the expenses as well. If you include it in your monthly rate and inflation goes up, you kind of lose that filter cleaning rate or the money you would get for the filter cleaning by the inflation, eating that up, and you're essentially cleaning the customer's pool filter for free if that makes sense. What you include in your flat rate service charge is really up to you. Again, you know, maintenance dose of liquid chlorine and of the muretic acid, it's pretty easy to calculate that and that add that into a flat rate service charge. If the pool requires shock, you know, let's say that they had a party or there was a problem and the pool wasn't running effectively or efficiently, some algae grew in there, and you had to raise the chlorine up and you added you know two pounds of cal hypo, that charge goes on the customer's account. Unless, of course, it was your fault, you know, you you left the pool off or something weird happened that you know you're at fault for that, then I wouldn't charge the customer. But usually if it's like a party and you have to bring the chlorine level back up, I charge the customer for that. Now, for those customers that use their pool a lot and they're pretty much killing the pool every week, I definitely would recommend buying a 50-pound bucket of cal hypo and leaving it there at the pool stop and then charging the customer for that. And then you're going to be using that 50-pound bucket of Calhypo to shock the pool during the season, and you're not you don't have to worry about adding it onto their account. They've already paid for it at the beginning of the season, and then you'll just add that chemical to the pool, you know, along with the trichlor tablets if we use that. And a lot of pools are on saltwater systems, and that's why the tri-chloro tablet charge outside of the regular rate does benefit your customers overall because then customers that are on a salt water system aren't being charged a premium for their service when they're not using trichloro tablets that you would absorb in the cost of your business, which you really can't do and you shouldn't be doing in this day and age where the trichloro tablet prices are still pretty elevated over the lows back before the COVID-19 pandemic. Let me talk a little bit about introducing some tiered services to your business. Now, some people balk at this and they're like, I'm only gonna do full service, and there's I'm not gonna deviate from that. If they don't want full service, pool service, I'm not going to take that service account. However, there are some instances where these tiered services work in your favor, especially in my service area where a lot of the pools are new, new builds, new equipment, not a lot of trees or leaves fall into the pools, and there's really not a lot for you to do at that pool. You're trying to find something to do there to kind of fill that 10 or 15 minutes that you're servicing that pool with, and there really isn't a lot. Some pools have automatic covers. Again, other pools are small with no debris around it, with an automatic cleaner. There's not much for you to do there. For those pools, you can do a tiered service. I would say that the chemical only service would be the bottom tier. This is where you go to the pool, and there's a actually a pretty big market for this out there. There was someone in my group in Northern California that bought a complete chemical-only pool route. I think it was like 80 or 90 accounts, and all of these were just chemical only, and he did really well with this purchase. Chemical only basically are for those owners of the pool where they don't want to mess with the chemistry. This is a lot of people who fall into this category. They don't want to go to the pool store, they don't want to check their chemicals. They have no problem maintaining their pool, otherwise, you know, skimming the pool, checking the skimmer basket, making sure the automatic cleaner is working. A lot of them may have robotic pool cleaners in their pool, but they do need someone to come by and make sure that the pool is balanced, you know, with the LSI, they don't have time to do that. So they hire you just to add chemicals to the pool. And these rates vary by region. You'll have to find out what your rate is in your area. Is it$85 a month,$95 a month, you know, 110? Again, every area is different, so you're gonna have to kind of price it and find out what you should be charging for this. But these are great service accounts to have because if you have 15 pools in your route that are full service and you're going through your day doing those pools, you can add probably four or five of these chemical-only pools to that same day. Maybe go to go to 12 full service pools, five chemical only stops. And if they fall inside your pool route, you go in there, check the chemistry, balance the LSI, add what you need to add to the pool, and then you move on to your next stop. So it's one of those things where these are a great way to break up your full service days, and it's a great way to capture a market out there that exists in a lot of areas where the customer doesn't really want you to clean their pool, but they do want you to check and balance their pool for them. The next level up in this service would be chemical only's plus basket. And this means that you're checking the skimmer basket and pump basket for the customer, you're kind of inspecting the equipment and looking at it to make sure that everything is running correctly. And this is one level up from chemical only because you're cleaning the baskets as well, and it is it doesn't take you much more time at the stop to do that, and of course, you have to charge a little bit for your time doing this. I should add that for all these chemical-only services, you should also be upselling the customer on your filter cleanings that you do on your regular service accounts. So if they don't want to do their filters, you'll clean the filter for them as well as part of the service. Of course, you're charging extra each time you clean the filter for them, and so the chemical-only and then the filter cleanings every four to six months, however, that falls on your schedule, will be extra extra money for you, and it takes that out of the equation for the customer. It also kind of helps you with these chemical-only stops because one thing you have to ensure is that the filtration system is running well, that the filter is clean. And a lot of times, if you're doing these chemical-only stops and the customer is not cleaning their filter on a regular basis, that actually hampers your ability to balance the pool. So it's really wise to upsell them on the filter cleaning service as well as a chemical-only service. And I think this is really easy to do because if they don't have time to balance their pool and maintain the chemistry, they usually don't have time to clean their filter either. And doing the basic maintenance is all they actually really have time for. So I think this is something you can easily upsell. So you have chemical only, chemical only, and baskets, and then you can go to this next level, which is chemicals, chemical only, plus baskets, plus skimming the pool. And you can also add brushing the pool as the next level up as well. So I'll cover that and put it all in one category. So chemical only, baskets, skimming the pool, and then the next level up from that would be skimming and brushing the pool. Now you're not vacuuming the pool. This is very close to your full service rate, by the way, because now you're checking the chemicals, you're doing the baskets, you're skimming and you're brushing, but you're not vacuuming the pool. Now, on these occasions where there's a windstorm or the customer wants you to vacuum, you just charge charge them an upcharge on that for the time it takes you to vacuum the pool. They may text you and say that the pool's really dirty. Can you vacuum the pool when you're there? Hopefully you have a vacuum system on your truck, the bottom feeder, the shrimp, the riptide, hammerhead, and if you have the bottom feeder and shrimp, hopefully you have the cartridge filter adapter assembly where you can vacuum the dirt out as well as some leaf debris. And you'll vacuum the pool when you need to at that point. In most cases, a customer is pretty proactive and they'll take care of their pool and they won't ask you to do that. Usually they'll have a cleaner, you know, automatic cleaner, robotic pool cleaner, and they'll take care of that, and you're just doing your skimming and brushing. And again, this is pretty close to your full service rate. So if you're charging, you know, 190 a month for full service, then charging 170 or 160 for this service is pretty fair. It's pretty close to your full service rate, but you're not vacuuming the pool, and that's kind of you're not brushing the tiles or doing the actual full service that you normally do. And full service, of course, should be checking the chemicals, adding the chemicals to the pool, checking the baskets, brushing, skimming, cleaning the tiles, vacuuming the pool. And this is your full service that you're you're actually providing for the customer. And then the filter cleaning is separate, something you do extra. Any chemicals you're adding to the pool besides your maintenance dose is extra. Now, for the chemical-only service, you want to clarify what they're actually getting included in there. And of course, you're charging for the three-inch trichlor tablet outside of the chemical-only service. Usually that's the case, unless the pool's really small. If it's a saltwater pool, then you're not charging for that. Now, as far as salt cell cleaning, now this is something that a lot of people are implementing. If they haven't, if you haven't, you may want to charge for the salt cell cleaning, you know,$35 or$55, depending on your area, or even$65. And this, even with the chemical-only service, if they have a salt water generator, you're charging them to clean the salt cell every three months, every six months, as well as the filter cleaning separately. And so all of this really helps offset the inflation in the industry because you're charging a lot of stuff outside of a flat rate service that's hard to adjust sometimes on the fly. If gas prices jump from five dollars to six fifty, you're losing money at that point, and it's hard to implement an increase on your price immediately. But with all these outside charges, filter cleaning, salt cell cleaning, trichlor tablets, you really can offset some of that inflation right away and not worry too much about raising your rates immediately. And sometimes the crisis ends and prices drop back down slightly, and the price increase wasn't necessary. But if you're including everything in your service rate, and you don't have these tiered services as well, then you're kind of hurting because when inflation and something hits, there's no way to offset it. And this is a really simple and easy way to implement these things in your business, offset you know, rapid inflation, kind of spikes in the market. And I would urge you to implement these tiered services and look at what you're charging the customer for in your all-inclusive service rate as well. And this is just a great way to fight inflation and increase your profits in your pool service business. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, swingingpoollearning.com. On the banner, click on the podcast icon. That'll take you to a drop drop down menu with over 1900 podcasts there. And if you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at poolguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have the rest of your week and God bless.