5 Strategies to Keep Your Customers

Training is a core part of your pest control business. You train your employees to provide excellent, professional service and you train yourself to operate your pest control business as efficiently and effectively possible. But are you training your customers? It’s an unexpected way to improve your customer relationships while adding to a healthy bottom line.

A massive 71% of people say positive experiences with a company make them more loyal. And loyalty is what you’re after. A 5% increase in customer retention can increase your profits by more than 25%.

Whether you know it or not, you’re already engaging in customer training — the way you interact with customers sets their expectations and drives their future interactions. By consciously deciding to shape your interactions with customers, you’ll train them to be more responsive, more prepared, easier to collect payment from, and more loyal than ever.

So, how do we make this happen? The answer is in a five-step approach: 

1. Collect information

Talk with your technicians in the field and customer service representatives in your office to discover the most common issues and problems your customers experience. Find out what struggles your employees are having when they interact with customers. This will set the framework for developing a strategy to train your ideal customer and prevent common problems from surfacing.

2. Set expectations

Customers often want special treatment because we’ve allowed them to have those expectations. It’s important they know from the outset what they can expect from your pest control business and the reasons why you are recommending particular services. For example, if a customer insists on a 6 p.m. weeknight service time, it’s important that you explain that outside-only services are typically just as effective and come with the additional benefit of not needing to use products inside the home as often because of the effective outdoor barrier you’ve created.

3. Streamline processes

Look for outside-the-box or technologically advanced solutions you can implement to make the lives of your customers easier. Proactively solving problems such as obstacles to payment will transform your operations, saving you time and additional costs.

4. Create a culture of training

Ensure that all of your employees know your customers’ top issues and train them to reinforce your solutions with every customer interaction. Emphasize the importance of educating customers about their individualized situation and what they can to achieve optimal results. Thank customers when they operate within your framework and reinforce the actions you’d like them to do more of.

5. Make feedback easy

Create uncomplicated ways for your customers to contact you and tell you what is and isn’t working for them. Your contact information should be front and center on your website and employees should be asking for feedback during every encounter.

When you invest time in training your customers, you empower them to get the most out of your services while improving their overall satisfaction with your pest control company. They’ll have a stronger sense of who you are, what you can do for them, and when they should call for help, all of which help create more loyal customers than you’ve ever had.