What’s Stopping You from Switching Your Pest Control Software?

As your pest control business continues to grow, you may be facing operational challenges because you’re outgrowing your current software system.

Whether it’s out of habit, fear of change, or a feeling of security, many companies today continue to “make-do” with their inefficient pest control software. Maybe your fear of switching is due to a potential disruption in your business. This may be a reasonable notion, but don’t let that hold you back and prevent your business and employees from the benefits of improved software. Here are a few reasons to make the switch:

• Cloud-based Software – If you’re not familiar with Cloud-based software, it means storing and accessing your data over the internet versus a locally-hosted or on-premise software that installs and operates from a company’s in-house server. With Cloud-based software, you can access your customers’ information from any device (smartphone, laptop, or tablet) and any location such as the home or office.  Because of this, it’s easy to stay connected with your technicians when they’re in the field all day. Another benefit? It’s cheaper than keeping paper records. According to this article, “The estimated savings per year for a five-person field team using custom forms sits right around $12,000. Sure, paper, hard drives, and physical storage may not be that expensive. But when you take into consideration the space needed to store on-site data storage, the administrative costs associated with actually creating the physical storage, and the up-front cost of purchasing materials, Cloud-computing starts to sound a lot more appealing.”

• Automated Communications – These days, communicating with your customers is all about sending the right message to the right person at the right time. Automated communications let you customize the timing and your customer's preferred communication channel for when you want to send messages. Your pest control software should have the ability to use filters so you can customize messaging by specific service types, appointment statuses, and property types.

• Implementation – It’s probably taken you years and a lot of time invested in building out your current software system, so the idea of transferring your entire pest control business to a new platform may sound daunting. But the fact is, migrating your data from your old system to a new one is a pretty easy process. In fact, you may even benefit from the cleanup of your data by removing duplicates and archiving old records. Most employees don’t like having their daily routines disrupted. But the PestRoutes’ implementation team makes it easy and is available to help you and your employees on your own schedule at your own pace. Implementation typically takes four to six weeks, with no downtime to your business. During this time, they will also walk you through expectations, set up a dry run to ensure there are no surprises, and make certain you and your team are trained and feel confident running the new system.

• Personalized Customer Portal – Your customers expect you to provide a convenient way for them to interact with you, which increases your customer retention and enables them to pay you quickly. The PestRoutes® platform comes standard with a branded customer portal and provides self-service access to important account information such as billing, invoices, subscriptions, appointments, and service notifications.

In the end, it’s important to recognize our fear of change. Psychology Today states that “On one hand we are hardwired to resist uncertainty – our brain prefers a predictable, negative outcome over an uncertain one. On the other hand, our mind is flexible and adaptive – it can be trained to thrive in change.” With that said, what’s stopping you from switching?