Embodying excellence

When a brutal storm in Wichita damaged one of their client’s trees beyond repair, one employee at Ryan Lawn & Tree did something special.

“I remember everything about it like it was yesterday,” says Sam Wentling, Ryan’s employee who serviced the tree several times before needing to take it out entirely. Wentling says most clients can’t even tell him what type of trees they have in their own backyard — but those who can have an obvious attachment. “As an arborist, you can pick up on that really quick,” he says. “They might really care for their property, or they just kind of live at the house.”

Wentling mentioned to the client that the tree didn’t look too good, but she insisted it stay up, so he sent her an invoice and moved on. A few months later, he returned to the property — she called him back out to do some limb removal.

It was then that the client revealed her late husband had planted the tree, so it held a lot of sentimental value to her. “This was sort of their oasis they had created together,” Wentling says, “and he was no longer with her. When people tell you those sorts of details, it makes you care so much more about the tree and care so much about the environment.”

And a year after that, he got one more phone call — this time a storm had finally done the tree in for good.

When Wentling arrived to the all-too-familiar property, the client was outside, just looking at the tree. It was then he had a heart-to-heart conversation with her and assured her at the beginning of the job that “this isn’t the last time you’ll see this tree.”

Wentling saved the wood and got to work on what he calls a “garage hobby,” creating a nice piece to commemorate the tree. It took about a year, but on one slower day, he took one of the newer employees at Ryan and said “let me show you something.” Wentling approached the client’s property with the piece hidden behind his back, and when he arrived, he reminded her of his promise.

“She bubbled up and burst into tears, then I bubbled up and burst into tears,” he laughs. “She was floored. It gets me emotional every time talking about it again.

“Honestly,” he continues, “it just felt like the right thing to do. I wasn’t thinking about EMA or anything other than just trying to do something nice for a lady who lost so much. I just happened to be fortunate enough to work for a company that recognized that.”

The EMA, of course, is Ryan Lawn & Tree’s Extra Mile Award, one of the several ways the company recognizes its employees for going above and beyond. The company has now spent the last few years recognizing employees like Wentling, who have earned the company’s Extra Mile Award through anything from writing customers cards to saving someone from a burning building.

Finding those to recognize was the first step to creating the award. When the company’s marketing team started monitoring online reviews, they noticed that clients would mention their employees by name. So, the Ryan Lawn & Tree team started emphasizing Google Reviews — not just to help with finding new EMA winners but to bolster the company’s presence online.

The reviews are in

When the team’s Director of Marketing, Jeremiah Samborski, started at Ryan, he says the company wasn’t really monitoring its reviews on Google Reviews or sites like Yelp. Nowadays, thanks to concerted efforts to obtain and respond to these reviews, Ryan has earned over 1,000 5-star Google Reviews.

But even back when Samborski began looking through these reviews in 2017, he noticed there were lots of positive reviews. “Something I noticed time and time again,” he says, “customers would mention Ryan Lawn & Tree employees by their first and last names.”

Maybe those employees clipped an extra branch or stayed a little later on a project — whatever the case, Samborski says they repeatedly saw reviewers write that employees “went the extra mile.”

Samborski believes it’s important to respond to all reviews, and the Ryan Lawn & Tree marketing team began responding within a day or two of each review. They use tools that notify them when these reviews are posted, such as Google My Business. If it’s a five-star review that the team is accustomed to receiving, they thank the customer for taking their time to leave a review. If they say they had a poor experience or left anything lower than three stars, “we need to know that as well,” Samborski says.

“You don’t want to respond with emotion or the feeling of you’re being attacked,” he adds. “We really have to take a neutral stance and be professional in our communications. Usually, it’s something that can be worked out.”

The marketing team will also use their CRM to tag whoever is being mentioned, especially if it’s a positive review. They’ll even loop in their supervisors when the comments compliment an employee by name. And by using tools like Listen360, the company can ask clients who leave net promoter scorers of 9 or 10 (out of 10) to copy their comments and leave them on Google, too.

Telling their stories

So, with all those positive reviews rolling in, the marketing team added the Extra Mile Award.

Ryan started planning the award in late 2020 and announced it to the team at the start of 2021, a great time to boost morale amidst the pandemic. The idea initially stemmed from reading a book called “Raving Fans” by Sheldon Bowles and Ken Blanchard, which emphasized the importance of highlighting positive reviews.

The recognition process is pretty elaborate: It’s an awards presentation held in front of an entire branch, and it’s often a surprise to the whole branch or even company. Someone from the leadership team presents the employee earning the Extra Mile Award with a trophy.

Ryan Lawn & Tree established a peer-to-peer nomination form so associates are the ones nominating each other. This is especially important because some of the good acts done for clients might only be seen by each other if the clients don’t proactively reach out.

But what constitutes employees just doing their jobs versus going above and beyond to serve the clients? That’s one distinction Samborski had to help make with the company executives.

“I think the key is you have to identify the behavior that you’re wanting to establish or you’re wanting to develop,” Samborski says. “For us, the end goal was to establish a top-notch customer experience.”

Samborski says Ryan not only measured this customer experience success by Google Reviews, but also by customer retention rate, which hovers around 85%. He considers the Extra Mile Award one additional incentive to make sure clients are happy with each transaction.

“You might get people in the organization to act (once),” he says, “but you want it to become part of their work and employment patterns and processes.”

For his part, Wentling says that he was reminded of Ryan Lawn & Tree’s mission statement as he worked on his client’s property — it starts with “to serve God by helping our clients create beautiful and sustainable environments.” He admits the recognition is nice, but Wentling says this sort of selfless behavior is reflected in everything Ryan employees do.

“It definitely makes you feel good to be recognized for something that you think people don’t even really notice,” he says. “But a lot of times, (the EMA) goes out to people doing sort of daily things. Mine was just one nice thing. There are people doing above-and-beyonds every day.”

“You need to allocate resources, and it’s not just throwing money at a good cause,” Samborski says. “You can dedicate a person or a team to really come alongside and get the most from that partnership. Building that long-term relationship is essential.”

The author is associate editor with Lawn & Landscape.