The Pest Academy File #4 | The Importance of Educating Your Clients | A Pest Control Podcast

Anthony sits and talks about the importance of educating your client. This can result in more 5-star reviews, client referrals, and a smooth process of operating your business.

Transcript

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Hello, welcome to another episode of the Pest Files. As always, I'm your host, Anthony. I'm a business owner and operator of a pest control company out of the state of California. So let's jump into it. Today's topic: educating your clients. It's something everyone, no matter what position you're in, whether you're office personnel, business owner, manager, or route technician, you will run into this, whether you like it or not. And if you do not have the proper system in place or training, it's gonna not only nip you in the butt, but your entire company. And well, it could start hitting your reviews. Everyone wants the four to five star review range, right? Well, if you don't have proper client education or a system in place for it, this is where it's gonna start hitting your reviews and start to hit your overall satisfaction, your client satisfaction. So, what's the definition of educating your client in the pest control industry? Well, it's understanding the expectations versus reality of our job. And each client is gonna have a different range of expectations, and the service you provide will have a different range of realities. Now, for the most part, it's gonna be pretty simple. When you go and service a client, I'd say about a good 90, maybe 85 to 90 percent of your clients are going to be pretty trivial. They're gonna be textbook. Now, you will have a good 10 to 15 percent of clients where perhaps things don't go so well, or there might be different factors in play that might affect the quality of service and the reality of what the client is expecting might differ. Now, I'm not saying problem clients do not exist, obviously, as a business owner, I know they do. In fact, the funny story is I had to walk out of a restaurant service I was doing. Um, one thing about being a very small company is you kind of attract certain clientele because of the affordable pricing that I can get away with. And the business owner of this restaurant essentially refused to do the proper procedures, the proper service plan for the German cockroach infestation they had. And I told him time and time again, this is what you need to do. We need to do a weekly service your first month and monthly. The only thing he wanted to do, period, was every 60 days. Now, I should have rejected him for declining me in the first place, but I'm too nice of a person, and I want to help him. And he said, Hey, I just bought the business, I need help, I cannot afford anyone else, your price is the best, and I can only afford it every 60 days, and I need somebody. Please help me. So my kind heart, which gets me in trouble sometimes, said, Okay, I'll help you. But I educated him right off the bat. I said, This is the process you need, and I will not guarantee that the German cockroaches will be gone with the current service plan you have. Right off the bat. He did not, I didn't promise him any false hopes or anything like that. I never told him, hey, every single cockroach will be gone because I'm gonna be here doing every 60 days for your service, and that's it. Never promised him one ounce of success, pretty much. I said, Hey, I'll pause it or reduce it, you know, I'll definitely reduce the population, but I am not guaranteeing work, and I made sure that my client knew that. So pretty much when you set the ground floor, when you set the foundation with clients, the main thing is that you let them know, okay, this is the reality of the service you're going to get. Now, the tough part is understanding their expectation. The biggest thing is you do not want to let clients expect the world and you cannot deliver the world because that is where your five-star reviews and your good reviews and your client satisfaction will start to lessen. So I'm a firm believer that every pest control company needs to do this because at the end of the day, we do all affect each other, right? Um, time and time again, how many times do you get a sale because another company's screwing up? Or maybe it's not even that company, maybe it's just a route technician where the route technician is blatantly not doing things, checking rodent stations, replacing glue boards in a restaurant, removing webs around a home. And because of that, the client's unsatisfied, and now they're looking for a new company. So things we do in the pest control industry affect each other, businesses, route technicians, and it affects our expectation versus reality, it affects our client satisfaction because a lot of times clients they will shop for five-star service and they will not care for the price, right? So what are proper things to say to the client? First, you start with a system, you need to develop a system for your business, for your training, to have all of your route technicians and even your office personnel to understand this is what you tell the clients. The big thing is ants. Majority of labels for any ant products, whether that be gel bait or non-repellent products, like Alpine WSG, those labels are pretty generous in terms of it, might take about five to ten to fourteen days if you do a proper application for the ants to be gone. Now, I've had cases where all I've done is do some advion ant gel bait on an ant trail, and the ants were gone the next day, and the client didn't see ants for the rest of the summer. Hey, sometimes you get results like that. But I will never promise a client they'll be gone by tomorrow for ants, right? That's not proper client education. You let the client know the proper way. Always give yourself a safety net, right? It's it's like that saying, you know, promise close to nothing, but when you deliver, you deliver everything, right? That's probably not how the saying goes, but somewhere in that line. That's what I do, essentially, in a very honest way, not in a you know, um dishonest manner or anything like that. But when clients are dealing with ants, I always tell them, you got to give it about at least 10 days. I will send you a text or I will reach back out, or you reach back out to me, right? Whichever comes first. After 10 days, if you're still seeing ants, I'll be out here free of charge to get you taken care of. I had a client, she's on monthly service, it's a residential. She it's funny that she always tells me, and how many clients say this, but they say this house was built on an ant mound or uh an ant hive, right? It's always funny, you know, the the things that clients will say, and no matter what company I'm at, like clients, when I was working as a route technician, then the manager, they say the same exact thing. Oh, well, I think the cockroaches are coming for the neighbor, right? Or, you know, my home is built on an anthill. It's the same joke. I I love clients, right? But I will always tell my client, whether what it doesn't matter what pest issue you're dealing with, follow your label and follow your experience. Now, if you're a route technician, talk to your manager and you say, What's the time frame? This is the service I did. I applied granular bait, gel bait, and I did a non-repellent spray for ants on the outside. There was multiple trails. The ants are this type of ant, right? Identify your pest, obviously. It's gonna help you understand how big of colonies they have. Some colonies have multiple queens, like Argentine ants. We deal with them a lot out here in California. Or even like pavement ants we deal with in California, where you'll see them in the sidewalk of the client. You're gonna do you know the crack and crevice treatments, and there you tell the client, hey, this is gonna be about 10 days for these ants. The service I did today is gonna help out. You'll notice a reduction. You might still see a scout here or a trail there, but after 10 days, they'll be gone. And that's where you educate your client. Because how many times have you done an ant treatment? And two or three days later, you're gonna call for the client. I'm still seeing the ants. Or I'm seeing a scout. I'm seeing one ant on in my kitchen or on my counter. Well, did you tell them, hey, you need to wait at least 10 days? Sometimes the client will call. They will call before 10 days, and I always tell them, hey, um, it the product does take time to work, unfortunately. I always side with them, right? I always tell them the client, hey, I'm so sorry, but the the product, the cool thing about being in California is I always get to tell clients, hey, you know, we're in California, so we don't have access to the really good stuff, but we have access to stuff that works, but the products, right? The really good pesticides or things like that. I always tell clients that because it kind of helps build that little that little barrier of trust, slash, um, hey, this isn't my fault. This is uh this isn't neither of our faults, this is the product's fault, right? Now I'm not saying you know, shift the blame or anything like that, but it's just little things like that help build that client trust, that client satisfaction, and it helps you with the client's expectations of of what you'll deliver. So that's why I tell clients for ants 10 days for the cockroaches, right? Like let's say Turkestan cockroaches are huge out here right now in the Sacramento area, they are invading, they have been so for you know the past five, six years, they're everywhere. I always tell clients the same thing. I can promise that you'll see them dying or dead, but I cannot promise you'll never see them again. I'll never promise that because there's so many clients that they'll show me a picture or they'll say, Hey, I'm seeing a cockroach, and then I'll ask them, Okay, well, um, where'd you see it? Oh, I seen it in my kitchen. Okay. And then okay, I seen the picture, it's on its back, so it's dying. So essentially, my service and product is doing the proper details of what it's supposed to be doing, it's solving the pest issue for you. Now, the issue is it is dying inside. I get that. That is an issue for some clients. I usually couple some services with glue boards, say in the garage or places like that, especially in uh kitchen, you know, restaurant settings. Obviously, you're always using the insect monitors. In fact, I don't think it is law, but all health inspectors want using insect monitors, which is weird because in pest control, apparently the glue board is going to be going away soon. Or at least that's what I'm hearing from certain distributors. I think uh a sales rep of mine, and you know, hopefully I can get the sales rep on here. I had a great conversation with the sales rep in my local area, and the guy just was talking and talking, and he just loved pest control. He's nerding out, and I'm like, wow, this is cool. I like nerding out about pest control. But, anyways, so back to what I was saying, and I completely forgot because I went off on a tangent, but okay, and now I remember. Hey, sorry, it it doing a solo podcast is very difficult. I'm more into doing a podcast with uh a co-host or a guest because I I love conversation, I love you know bouncing back and forth from people, but uh solo's fine too. Um, this is all about building a catalog for this podcast, the pest files, and uh I hope you enjoy listening. You learn something. Hopefully, it's a little entertaining, but back to it. And I do remember what I was talking about, but clients like seeing a dead cockroach inside their home, right? So I always educate the client. I I literally a couple days ago had a client from a restaurant send me a picture saying, Hey, um, I'm seeing cockroaches inside my restaurant. So I say, Well, send me a picture, and I see the picture and I identify through the picture as a Turkestan cockroach. And so I tell the client saying, Okay, good news is that it is not a German cockroach, it is a Turkestan cockroach. Um, it is dead, so the product's working. Now, the biggest thing is we just need to understand how it's getting inside, right? So cockroaches can enter a dwelling multiple ways, and here's another key part about educating clients how many commercial clients or restaurant clients do you have that have a drain, maybe it's a mop sink or just a random drain in a room that they never pour water down. Once those pipes dry up, guess what? American cockroaches, just all types of sewer cockroaches are going to be crawling up and infesting their property. I've had it for a client as well inside her home, believe it or not. Inside of her home, she had a two-bed, four-bath home, and I could not figure out for the life of me. She would tell me, I'm seeing cockroaches. Now keep in mind, I have glue boards in her kitchen, in her garage. I've been doing thorough treatments in the interior, the exterior, and she'll she's so sweet, and she'll just, you know, send me text special saying, Hey, you know, I just let you know I seen a couple cockroaches. They were dying by seeing them, or there's a cockroach in a trap in the bathroom. And then I realized that her guest bathroom, she's an elderly client. Um, but the reason why I'm saying that is because that guest bathroom bathroom was rarely used, the shower was only used probably once a month, and because of that, the cockroaches were coming out because I put glue boards inside that bathroom, and I realized seeing where they were traveling, the direction that's another cool thing about glue boards, seeing the direction the cockroaches are coming from showed me that these cockroaches were coming from the drain because it was dry, and so I told her, Oh, all you have to do is every other day just run some water. Um, it probably doesn't have to be every other day, but I always say it just to be safe. Run some hot water down it, maybe you know, some drain cleaner, and it should fix the issue. And sure enough, she's not having those random cockroaches anymore. Her home was sealed. I would always check the thresholds around the windows, the doorways, the slide door, everything like that. And we figured out that, oh wow, they are coming from your bathroom, more so the bathtub drain. So it's all about education. And a lot of times you're doing it, you're educating your client naturally for the most part. Now, the key thing, and here is the key thing: you are the licensed professional. Now, if you're an office personnel, perhaps you're not licensed, but you most likely have the experience and education of a licensed person. Remember that, okay? A lot of times when we are in pest control, we forget how much the client knows. How much do they truly know, right? Compared to how much you know. You are the professional, you are there to solve a pest issue for the client. Sometimes just prevent, sometimes solve an act of infestation. Use that to your advantage. Use your licensing to your advantage, right? There's times where I have to tell clients, well, my professional opinion, right? Uh, going back to that client that had the German cockroach infestation in the restaurant, and all he could afford was every 60 days services. And I told him time and time again, it is my professional opinion, and I'm telling you right now, you will not solve your cockroach infestation, only getting a service every 60 days. It is not going to work. I'm not going to guarantee that, right? I mean, obviously, if he's doing something in between and he's cleaning everything and vacuuming them up, and I'm, you know, treating maybe it's possible, but my personal business, my time, I am not going to guarantee that. But and you know what's crazy is he actually had a company come out. He got a quote. And what did the inspector of the other pest control company tell this guy? He told him exactly what I told him. And he quoted him for a month of weekly services and then monthly. And that's the way that that new company he got the quote from said they'll get rid of it. So, who do I get a call from? I get a call from my friend here, the restaurant owner, and he says, You were right, but I want to go through you. Your price is better, and I like you better, and I've been working with you for almost you know eight months now. So I said, Okay, cool. I mean him actually got into it. It was pretty funny. Um, and I I like walked out and he was like chasing me down, yanking on my arm, almost tackled me. It was pretty funny, but um, that wasn't too professional. But like I said, you you develop a certain clientele when you are the affordable option, I guess you could say. And that's the perk of the hey, sometimes your client will tackle you. Uh anyways, remember, you are the professional, right? Use that to your advantage, act like it, right? You you need to understand that a lot of times when I was the manager training route technicians, so many times they didn't have faith in what they were doing, they didn't have any faith in their success, they didn't have any faith in their client education, anything. They I've had technicians tell me, is this all just a scam? Is this a work? Is pest control a work? Now, if you're only doing residential clients, I could kind of get that because sometimes what happens is like it'll be raining and your company will say, Well, go put granules out, you know, the eccentric granules, and we need production. That's more of a business side of things. Okay, I'm not gonna dwell into that just yet. I will be doing a whole series though on starting your own business, and who better to do it than someone who started from zero? No loans, nothing, no clients. I was literally spraying my mom and dad, I was spraying my dad for twenty dollars a month, and my mom for $40 a month, or no, she wasn't even monthly, she was every 60 days, and I started with a client that I did work with a long time ago, and he always told me, if you ever start your own company, you tell me I'll be your first client, and he was like $50 every 90 days. So you put you do the quick math there, and that's what $120 production, not even monthly. So hey, I I can't wait to share my story. Uh, I was definitely um it was a tough grind, and it's just I'm so happy to be where I'm at today. The growth my business has had and the size of it right now and the future of it, I'm just so grateful and happy that my hard work's paying off. No, sorry. Back to the episode. Well, that's the whole point of the podcast, right? I'm sure if if you're a returning listener, if you've listened to the other Pest Academy episodes, um, you'll realize that I'm not the most professional person. Now, I'm not this isn't a corporate feeling podcast. This podcast should feel family-owned because that's what my business is, and that's what I'm all about. This the smaller, more community-driven, client relationship building driven type of company slash podcast. You know, that's that's who I am. Anyways, back to what I was saying. But when you're training your technicians, now this is for managers or business owners, you have to remind people you are the professional, right? That's that's what you are. You are a licensed professional. You're licensed to apply these products in a safe manner at this client's home. And depending on what license you have, but you identify these pests, you're supposed to identify them, you're supposed to know how to eradicate them, how to form a proper IPM program to rid your client of these pests. Use that to your advantage, right? Use words like this is my professional opinion, or this is, you know, oh well, when I was studying for my license, you know, just throw little things out there like that, right? Set the ground rules for your client. You are the professional, you are the pest control company, right? So how do you build a system, a training system for educating of clients? Because it's key. It needs to be from the top down, down, up, whatever, however you want to put it, whether it be the owner all the way to a salesman. Everyone needs to understand the importance of educating your client. And it's not like telling the client, hey, can you please take a seat and grab a pen and paper? I'm going to give you a lecture. No, it can be quick. I educate clients every time I talk to them, there's always some type of education going on. Whether whether there was a concern that one of my clients had, wow, this was a couple days ago, too, actually, or was this yesterday? But I have a client, um, he has a market, like a grocery store, uh mom and pop shop. You know, I always love supporting those businesses as well. But he kept asking me, hey, how do I get rid of like these fruit flies? Blah blah blah blah, right? And he was fishing for a remedy that I can do. And so I told, I kept telling him the same thing. Now, the fruit flies, what you need to do is you you have to put first of all put all your fruit and vegetables, vegetables from the night or sorry, from the day, put them into the freezer section, right, or a cooler to help lessen and slow things down. Then ham unfortunately, you have to kind of go hand in hand with it, but you have to weed out the rotting fruit, the rotting vegetables, right? Disinfect where they the shelving where they're at, because in this case he's using shelving and a table. Disinfect those areas, wipe them down, then get rid of the rotting fruit, then put them back out and rinse and repeat. Keep doing so. Because obviously, I cannot, you know, spray product all over your fruit. Um, I don't want to do that. I'm sure there's a product out there I can do to use that, but I still that's not going to solve the issue. So then he was telling me, Well, I already did all that, and so I say, Well, okay, if you did all that and it's still an issue, then well, there's rotting fruit right here. And I found it, and it was right there. And he says, Well, you know, they're good, they look like that, but they're still good. And and so he's holding on to inventory a little too long, and he wasn't necessarily happy that I didn't have like this cure-all product to help him out, and I was just being honest and I educated him. I said, Well, now we're entering the realm of if you're doing everything I'm telling you to do, the drains, right? So I always check his drains, he uses his mop sink every day, things like that, right? And there's no rotting fruit or dead fruit in the shelving or the cabinets or the tables, and you're cycling out and you're putting everything into the cold storage to help protect and create that barrier for you, then it's from your distributor, and your distributor is sending you some rotting fruit that's in fact, and yeah, he he agreed at the end of that. Where I was literally talking to him for about 20 minutes about this, and I'm just like, oh gosh, I got to go to my next stop. But um it's funny because him and I will we'll talk, and you know, one minute we're talking about the fruit fly infestation, the next minute we're talking about him traveling and and all his family uh ordeals and things like that. So don't you just love where what a client will talk to you about that? Um, you know, I think we talked more about his uh family and him traveling on vacation than we did actually about the fruit fly. So but develop that system, right? Where from the top down, your clients they understand what to expect. And your people, from the office to the route to your management, they understand how to shape the expectation of your client through education. Follow certain parameters, follow a loose script. That's what I used to train people on. There's things where we were having issues with certain talkative clients, and I always would tell my route technicians, I would always tell them, Well, de-escalate the conversation, don't continue it, right? Instead of obviously at a certain point, you have to say, I I have to keep working, I have to go and work. I'm sorry, I cannot talk to you any longer, but uh, I I have other clients and time frames that have to hit apologies, right? But build the proper verbiage. Obviously, certain education comes with experience, right? There's gonna be times where you're gonna get a question from a client, and there's times where I don't even know what the answer is. I'm like, huh. Uh let me look into that. Don't be afraid to say that. I I run into it less and less. I'm about eight to nine years experienced now. Obviously, I'm not gonna get much more, but I've pretty much seen it all. Um, I've yeah, I've seen a lot. So, but let's take a quick break here, and then um I'm gonna go ahead and break down the full structure and a essentially training program of what to follow for your company. All right, and I am back. I just needed some water and yeah, let's get back into it. So, a step-by-step guide. I don't want to take up too much more time. Well, obviously, podcasting is podcasting, right? You probably people enjoy longer podcasts, so let's not get into all that. But building a system, a training system from the ground up for your business in terms of client education. So, rule number one: understand the expectation and reality of every situation. Start from things like ants, cockroaches, residential homes, restaurants, commercial buildings, rodent control, rodent abatement, every single avenue of your business, bird control, termites, whatever it be, you understand that this is the results we get if we follow this process. Using that, that is how you educate your client. Like what we're talking about earlier about the ants. I tell client 10 days. Sometimes they're gone in a day, sometimes they're gone in two, but I always tell clients 10 days. Darn thing is fleas, right? They always recommend after you do your treatment, the client should vacuum for 10 to 14 days after, every single day, to help with the egg cycle, the pute, the pupa and the egg cycle and things like that, right? Sometimes the fleas are gone, believe it or not, pretty quickly. Like I had a client say, Yeah, I only vacuumed one day, I didn't listen to you at all, and there hasn't been any fleas, and this is six months later, so I'm like, wow, okay, maybe we maybe we solved it. Hey, you know, cool. Thanks for letting me know, being honest. But no matter what situation you are dealing with, have the proper education training in in hand. Pantry pests is a huge one because, for the most part, I don't think companies are charging. If you are, hats off to you, that's a lot of work, but are charging to deep clean someone's kitchen and to rearrange their pantry and to put all of their seasonings and flowers and and and grains in airtight containers and to toss out all the old plastic and to disinfect the areas, right? Those are things you're gonna have to tell your client. Have prep sheets, right? Or have information sheets that helps you with your client as well. That's that's another resource I would use is a prep sheet, right? What to expect? Put that on there. This is what you should expect. Your before service, your during service, one month after service, six months after service, things like that, right? Use it to your advantage, especially if you're a bigger company. Things like prep sheets or information sheets will come hand in hand. I myself, smaller family-owned business, it's all more intimate, it's all conversation, whether it be on in person, on the phone, or through text message. Now, once you have the proper training in place, then that's when you can implement when to do the client education. And there's times where clients just they commission you to solve an issue, they don't question you at all. You show up and you get rid of the issue, and they're happy and they they never mention anything, they don't even question you, right? Not all clients are like that though. There's gonna be times where you do have to educate the client if they have non well, I guess that's the wrong word for it, but if they're their expectation is too grand for the reality of the situation, like rodents is a huge one. Some clients think you're gonna get the rodent issue done in a week. Sorry, I'll never guarantee in a week. I'll minimum, give me a month. Obviously, there's times where I get rid of the rodents quicker in a week or two, but I will never guarantee that ever. Minimum month. Usually I aim for the 30 day to 60 day. Um, well, obviously, rodents on the outside is a different story. When I'm talking about this is about like having rodents in the attic, the garage, the sub-area, things like that. But I always say, give me 30 days to 60 days, right? The reason why is this because of the rodents, their travel time, where they forage. Educate, educate, right? So use prep sheets or information flyers or little, you know, an email, right? Go paperless, send an email that usually after a welcome letter, right? After your initial service, you can send a little welcome letter or a welcome email, right? Use it all to your advantage. Let clients know what to expect. Maybe develop a blog, right? Have someone write a blog and have a have all your clients on the emailer where quarterly or seasonally they'll send something. You know, April or March is coming around in Sacramento. Guess what? You're gonna be seeing ants and wasps already. Doesn't matter if it's still cold, they're here. I've been dealing with ants like crazy this month, and it's April, and I know May, June, July. Oh man, it's gonna be it's gonna be another one for the the the record books, right? So once you understand when to educate your client, the training is simple. Just use the proper verbiage, don't have, and I'm not gonna use any foul language here, but don't have an entire training program where you're turning people into snobby, you know, a holes, right? Because you can come across as that you could be demeaning or you can be off-putting if you educate too harsh, right? Oh, well, you know what? You're an idiot, miss. The reason why is because you don't know anything about cockroaches, that thing's gonna be in here and you're dummy. Obviously, no one's gonna do that, but seriously, don't train people, don't even give them that outlet, right? When you're training, so you just have to understand the proper verbiage, and to me, it's very easy. It's just you know, conversational skills, those are don't get me wrong, some people don't got them. I've I've trained some technicians in my time where I'm just like, wow, you need to be more social. Well, commercial route for you, buddy. But it's just simple conversation. Be nice about it, don't be too abrupt, don't be too aggressive with the education. Just let the client know these are the products I'm using, this is the type of service we're doing, this is what to expect, and the results are here. And the beauty of all client education is you back everything with a callback. I will be doing another episode on callbacks. I believe they're huge, they're the biggest thing in our industry to do that are going to help you get clients and keep clients for a long time. So, from office personnel to route technician to manager, business owner, remember it is important to educate your client, it is going to get you into that four to five star review range, is also going to get you more referrals. Because if a client has no faith in you, they will not refer people. And what is a better sale than a client referral? Nothing easier, right? So thank you so much for listening. That is client education. I hope you all have a great day. Goodbye.