Inside Friendly Pest Solutions’ Playbook for Efficient, Professional Service

For Friendly Pest Solutions to truly be customer-friendly, to be able to deliver "white-glove treatment," the fledgling company would first need a playbook.

For about a year and a half, JD Jaramillo spent time building that playbook, taking what he had learned from two experiences in pest control and applying it to a new venture with his wife, Lorraine, and his brother, Moe Jaramillo.

"I was backstage working on the standard operating procedures and just setting the groundwork," JD Jaramillo says. 

Those procedures are just part of the blueprint for the company in Brandon, FL, on the east side of Tampa. But having a plan for how customers would be served and how the business would be run proved vital from Friendly Pest Solutions’ inception as an LLC in 2016, to truly launching in 2018, and to ultimately JD Jaramillo becoming involved full-time beginning in 2021. 

"You want to make sure you have a policy for anything that can arise throughout the course of building a business," the Friendly Pest Solutions owner says. "If you don't have those things set, when that problem arises, then you're kind of stuck and you don't know how to handle it. 

“As you bring in new team members, they know what the ground rules are. Everybody aligns themselves as you want the company to align itself, because if you don't, then everybody's playing by different rules."

Friendly Pest Solutions has grown from about $73,000 in revenue in 2018, with Moe Jaramillo providing service in the field, to a projection of $2.4 million—nearly 33 times greater—in 2025, fueled by a team of 20 employees. JD Jaramillo says the company will aim for revenue of $3 million in 2026.

The blueprint for starting a pest control company is working. But it was just the start. 

Quality service for customers

Besides operating procedures, Friendly Pest Solutions would need to set a standard for its customer service. Jaramillo doesn’t want a technician to be perceived as simply "the bug man."

"We're trying to break off from that," Jaramillo says. "We are a very professional company that is an essential industry. I didn’t come to realize this more vividly than during the COVID pandemic.  We're more than just the bug man with a B&G (sprayer) in our hands."

They drive clean trucks. They wear clean uniforms and shoe coverings. They park on the curb to avoid blocking the driveway. 

"Treating every home like it's yours or your mom's," he says. "Those types of things are so important to me. If you go in looking dirty, what do you think the customer's going to think your service is going to look like? Those are the types of things we talk about."

When it's a customer calling in or a technician delivering the service, Friendly Pest Solutions puts a premium on its sales proposal that guides technicians from arrival and customer interview through inspection, problem definition, tailored solution, benefits, discussion of company credentials, and a confident close.

"We do about eight to 10 questions that are really going to help us solve that problem a lot quicker than just, 'Yeah, you've got bugs in the kitchen' and, 'Yes, we can get somebody out there,'" he says. "That's what 95% of the pest control companies do out there."

Friendly technicians attempt to get to know the customer and consider what DIY remedies they might have tried. And while Friendly aims for efficient routing, those technicians are also encouraged to give customers the attention they deserve.

"We spend quality time with the customer, where they don't feel like they're being rushed or we're just there to take money and go to the next one," he says. "We give them that personal touch every time we go out there."

The service speaks to Jaramillo’s love from his previous pest control jobs of solving problems and bringing peace of mind to customers. While determining procedures and establishing that service were vital, Friendly Pest Solutions would need to take one more key step to best serve customers. 

‘A great fit from the beginning’

JD Jaramillo wanted to be able to gauge performance, identify gaps and issues, and see opportunities—insights that are vital for any company reviewing performance at year’s end or determining strategy for a new year but also in achieving operational excellence day-in and day-out. And those insights certainly would be essential as Friendly Pest Solutions prepared to launch.

A CRM would need to offer routing, to minimize drive time and costs and enable better customer service, and analysis into not only how technicians performed on those routes but how the business was performing as it would grow. Setting up customers for service, delivering service in the field, and collecting payment would need to be a breeze. 

And it just didn't need to be complicated.

"I did a lot of research," Jaramillo says. "In previous jobs I had in the pest control industry, I used other software platforms. They weren't very user-friendly."

He discovered FieldRoutes.

"It was a great fit from the beginning, just a very user-friendly software, something that we could learn fairly quickly," Jaramillo says. "Everything was a great fit from the beginning."

One of Jaramillo’s favorite FieldRoutes tools is the Route Summary Report, tracking a technician's daily efficiency, measuring key performance indicators such as total collected revenue, appointment production percentage, driving vs. onsite time efficiency, time fluctuation against scheduled duration, and compliance flags for service notes and product usage.

"That report has really helped us get to where we're at today," he says.

The robust reporting in FieldRoutes is delivering that insight and so much more as Jaramillo and his team continue to generate growth each year. 

"FieldRoutes has helped us in revenue,” Jaramillo says. “It's all there. On the dashboard, we see those numbers on a daily basis. We see where we're at in active customers, we see our cancellation rate. Having all those numbers in front of you each and every day makes you have your hands on the wheel at all times, and it's so important.”

FieldRoutes automation is also making life easier for Jaramillo and his team. 

"It makes our day-to-day work so much simpler, from gathering customer information when they first call, the routing, just so many good features within that platform," Jaramillo says. 

Using automated invoicing plus the ability to place a customer's card on file for automated payments have generated efficiencies in the Friendly Pest Solutions office. 

“Being able to put customers on AutoPay so easily is a game-changer,” Jaramillo says. "We're at 52% of our customer base on AutoPay because of the platform. 

“The more people who are on that, the less we have to chase money,” he adds. 

Is FieldRoutes the right choice for you? 

Your business is deserving of experiencing what Friendly Pest Solutions has experienced since 2018. 

"The beautiful thing about this whole story is that from the get-go, we went with FieldRoutes and that was a blessing in disguise," Jaramillo says. "I worked with a lot of different platforms, and this was such a user-friendly platform that it was just a no-brainer for us.

"We're in love with the platform. It has everything that we need, and it grows with us."

And the good news is you’re just one click away from a free demo to learn more about how your business can have all of the insight it needs to generate more operational efficiency, provide even better service for customers, and grow with you, too. 

“If you are not using FieldRoutes," Jaramillo says, "you're missing the boat."

FRIENDLY PEST SOLUTIONS

Location: 3; Brandon, FL.
Year opened: 2016.
Owner: JD Jaramillo.
Staff: 20 employees (six are technicians).
Learn more: FriendlyPestSolutions.com

>> Check out their eight step process to a sale and service.