Do’s and Don’ts of Customer Relations

Loyal customers are key to growing your pest control business. To earn loyalty, build trust. To build trust, meet or exceed expectations in every interaction your company has. Successful companies plan their customers’ experience as carefully as they do their service protocols. QualityPro helps growing companies stay focused on consumer relations through its consumer relations standards and sample company policies. Here are a few of the lessons that QualityPro accredited companies have taught us over the years.

Do have customer communication policies
Take some time and list all the touch-points between your company and a consumer. Think through your customers’ experience at each interaction. What do they expect when they visit your website? Schedule service? Pay a bill? Design an experience that meets customers’ expectations and ensures consistent messaging across departments and methods of communication. Finally, put that experience in writing in your communication policies to make sure your customers’ experience remains consistent as people and technology change.

Don’t delegate everything
Your communication policies and service protocols should include scenarios in which an employee must bring in a manager or owner. There will be times when keeping a customer loyal will require personal communication from someone who has the authorization to make the situation right.

Do have a detailed service agreement
Your service agreement is the documentation of your expectations of your customer and your customer’s expectations of you. The service agreement gives you the opportunity to make sure both parties understand the commitment they are making to one another before starting service.

That said, you can’t rely on your customers to read every word of your service agreement. Think about the customer’s perceived contract—what they think they should be getting—and try to meet those expectations.

For more information, reference QualityPro Standard 3:2 Termite Warranty/Service Agreement* and the Model Termite Warranty available to companies that are pursuing and maintaining accreditation.

By Allison Allen, Executive Director, QualityPro

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