Inside your client’s mind

When’s the last time you asked customers the simple question: How are we doing? And, more importantly, what did you do with the feedback you gathered? Putting survey data into action can improve retention and inspire positive operational changes.

This month, Lawn & Landscape spoke with three firms that take distinctly different approaches to surveying their customers. Here’s what they had to say about their info-gathering techniques.

The lukewarm customer

A simple call to ask, “How are we doing?” impressed customers of Arbor-Nomics Turf in Norcross, Ga. Several years ago, the company enlisted in a telemarketing firm, Spectrum Services, which called a group of the lawn care company’s customers each month. For $500 a month, the telemarketers called as many clients as possible.

Arbor-Nomics tried the surveying technique for three years. Nearly 90 percent of the clients who picked up the phone gave the company an overall “very good” or “excellent” rating. But more valuable were the few who said, “I’m glad you called, I was thinking about cancelling.”

“We have to know who these people are, and we were able to call them back and see what the deal was, why they were unhappy,” says Dick Bare, president.

Customer surveys “save” clients who could be lukewarm about the services but not proactive enough to pick up the phone or email a complaint. That certainly was not the majority of responses from Arbor-Nomics Turf’s surveys – Bare can count two clients who said they were thinking of leaving. But by finding out what’s wrong and making it right, the company preserves its reputation and improves retention.

And in the lawn care business, Bare says, retention and referrals are what building a business is all about. Overall, clients who received the survey phone calls were just glad Arbor-Nomics cared enough to ask about the service. They didn’t mind receiving the phone calls, either, Bare says. But Arbor-Nomics realized that its customer database contained some duplicate entries; some clients received duplicate phone calls and were sore about that.

“Overall, people were impressed that we were calling, and some said, ‘I have had five different lawn care companies, but no one has ever called to see how happy I am,’” Bare says. “The effort got a good response.”

The survey was brief, including a handful of questions such as: 1) Would you recommend our company to family, friends and neighbors? 2) Will you use our company again in the future? 3) How happy are you with the technician who performs the service? 4) What was your experience like calling the office?

A bonus question about whether clients thought Arbor-Nomics Turf should get into other services – mowing, for example – helped confirm the company’s mission to continue with its lawn care focus. “Overwhelmingly, 85 to 90 percent of people said, ‘No.’ They felt we should stick to our niche,” Bare says.

Beyond the telephone survey, Arbor-Nomics likes to find out how it’s doing all the time by posting a place for comments on the back of customer invoices. Whenever there’s a comment, the information is forwarded to the appropriate technician. “If someone makes the comment, ‘I never see the technician,’ then we will make sure the technician knocks on the door and gets to know the customer,” Bare says.

In another case, a customer reported he couldn’t find the company’s phone number on the invoice. The contact was there – but in fine print. “So we made the phone number larger on the invoice,” Bare says, relating that feedback on even the little things is treated seriously and often acted upon. Of course, Bare has to determine whether the company’s 18,000-customer universe will benefit from changes. “We look at the economics, too,” he adds.

One thing Arbor-Nomics has learned from the invoice comment box is that the sales and marketing language advertising visits every four to eight weeks must be changed. “Because of our growth, we had a problem where we would get behind in the round-three application,” Bare says. “Round three is a killer – it’s in May/June, and that’s when people are also calling for fungicide treatments and other things.”

Arbor-Nomics geared up with more trucks and people this year. But getting to every account within eight weeks time during high season is still a challenge – and it’s not entirely necessary, Bare says.

“I had a customer who called me and said, ‘It has been 11 weeks since you have been here,’ and I said, ‘Well, how does your lawn look?’” Bare says. “He said, ‘The lawn looks great,’ and I told him he was due for service in about a week, and that would be 12 weeks since the last visit. He said, ‘I want it done tomorrow,’ and I said, ‘OK.’

“So, we will take that out of the sale pieces because customers tend to lose sight of the lawn and what it looks like and they focus in on the weeks between visits,” Bare says.

Without customer feedback flowing in from invoice comments and phone surveys, Arbor-Nomics might not have recognized that some customers were hung up on the “when” of the service rather than the end results. “That comment section has been very important,” Bare says.

Applying the information gathered from surveys to business practices is the key – otherwise you’ve got data and feedback, and perhaps angry customers who want to know why they took the time to express their opinions if no one’s doing anything about it.

Caring about the little-big things earns repeat business.

And Bare knows his technicians do care about clients and go the extra mile from the feedback he receives. When two Arbor-Nomics technicians noticed a woman’s car broken down on the side of the road, they pushed the car to safety at a nearby parking lot. The Arbor-Nomics customer watched the act of kindness and called the company. “She said she was impressed that our guys would stop and help,” Bare says.“It’s all about caring for people.”

Net promoter surveys

What Lawn America really wants to know from customers is, on a scale of 0 to 10, “How likely are you to refer or recommend us to your friends, family and colleagues?”

This is the ultimate survey question: an inquiry that aligns with Lawn America’s mission statement to please clients to the point that they’ll tell other people. Brad Johnson, president of the Tulsa, Okla.-based firm, began structuring company surveys around this single question after learning about the Net Promoter Score (NPS), a concept introduced in “The Ultimate Question” by Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey.

NPS is based on the fundamental principle that every company’s customer base can be divided among promoters, who rate the company a 9 to 10, passives who give a 7 to 8 rating, and detractors who offer up a paltry 0 to 6. Lawn America applies NPS to its survey process, but it’s more than a way to gauge how happy customers are with your service, Johnson says. “It’s also a management tool. It allows us to get feedback and act on that feedback.”

Johnson is talking about the “action” part of NPS, where Lawn America takes survey data and uses that information to pay employees’ bonuses and to address operational concerns. For example, the company has learned that customer education via e-newsletters and other communications is absolutely critical to improving client satisfaction (and, as a result, the NPS score).

Lawn America works harder to help clients understand what the company’s services can (and cannot) control. “We send customers an email reminder telling them what services we performed, and we’ll also include a ditty in there as far as customer education on mowing, watering, weed expectations and disease issues that may be a problem at the time,” Johnson says.

“We have always known that customer education is important, but through Net Promoter feedback, it has shown us more about how we have to be on top of education by using technology to do that – email, e-newsletters, tools like that,” Johnson says.

As for how Lawn America facilitates its NPS-based survey, the strategy is multi-faceted. First, every invoice customers receive asks the Net Promoter question on the back, where it is visible next to the return mailing address. That means every month clients can rate the company on a scale of 0 to 10 concerning whether they’d recommend the service. A few lines below this question, there is space to write comments.

Then, mid-season, after spring applications, Lawn America sends business reply card surveys to its 13,000 accounts. The brief survey includes the NPS question and Lawn America pays $1 for every returned survey. The response rate is 1 to 2 percent, giving the company a nice sampling of about 1,000 surveys. Johnson is pleased with this level of feedback.

Finally, in the fall, a year-end survey is included in each invoice packet. Every year, customers get at least two opportunities to fill out the reply card and they can respond to the NPS question on their invoice replies every month if they want.

The feedback rolls in all season long, which gives Lawn America a clear indication of when customers need additional education. For example, Johnson says NPS tends to be higher later in the summer than in early spring, when the company is fighting weeds.

It’s how Lawn America uses this data that separates the company from competitors, Johnson says. For one, the NPS determines pay incentives. The company sets a goal based on “promoters” and “detractors.” A score exceeding 50 percent is considered really good,” Johnson says. “The highest we’ll ever see, I think, is 80 to 83,” he says, adding that it’s impossible to reach 100.

Lawn America is shooting for 74 this year, and route managers that reach that goal are paid out bonuses throughout the year. Paying out bonuses several times, rather than in one lump sum, keeps employees motivated and gives those who missed the target early in the season a second and third shot at improving their NPS score. “The more responsibility employees have in the organization, then the higher the potential for the upside (incentive pay) gain,” Johnson says.

NPS can indicate when an employee isn’t delivering service up to Lawn America’s standards. “A few years ago, someone was bringing in a Net Promoter Score of 50 percent, and everyone else was in the sixties and seventies – that tells you something is wrong,” Johnson says.

This indicates that an employee is not spending enough time building customer relationships, Johnson points out. And, because NPS is monitored on an ongoing basis, the employee can change that score by improving performance.

A scoreboard allows employees to see every day where they stand with their route’s NPS. And, the firm posts reply cards with 9 and 10 scores on a bulletin board.

NPS has taken several years to implement – Lawn America began the process about five years ago – but once the concept is ingrained in the company culture, it becomes so much more than a survey question. It’s a way of doing business to gain more “promoters” and rescue “detractors.”

“Our culture is to do a great job for the customer, develop relationships with our clients, get their feedback and reward our people not just on Net Promoter Score, but on other indicators of service quality, like response time and customer net gain,” Johnson says.

Survey says

Words matter. That’s what Barrett’s Lawn Care discovered about crafting a survey that gets results. The company gets about an 80 percent return rate on its annual survey to 150 customers, asking them to rate the company in six categories using a 1-to-5 scale.

An old survey question was soliciting simple yay or nay responses and not bringing in helpful feedback. It was: “Are there areas we can improve on?” Customers simply replied yes or no without elaborating. By reworking that question with a “please explain,” and some comment lines, the company gathers important feedback that can drive operational changes for the Bristol, Va. company.

For one, the company always invoiced customers for “mowing” in general, and clients said they wanted more detail on their bills, specifically when services were performed. “Now, we include the dates the property was serviced,” says Megan Barrett, office manager. “For the most part, yards are mowed on the same days every week, but rain can throw off the schedule and customers want that detail on their monthly invoices.”

Another suggestion gathered via surveys was to give customers a way to easily return payment by including return envelopes with mailed invoices. (They are not postage-paid envelopes.)

When Barrett’s Lawn Care receives feedback, or a rating, that prompts concern, owner Josh Barrett personally calls on the customer to find out what the company could do better. “He is the face they relate to, so he is the one who does that calling if there is a problem,” Megan Barrett says.

She collects and organizes all of the survey feedback into a spreadsheet so she can average out how the company performs in the six categories, which include quality, customer service and employee performance. The spreadsheet allows the company to identify trends, Barrett says.

Surveys are generally distributed once annually in July or August, and Barrett allows about a month for surveys to trickle in before compiling results. “There is not a deadline, but most people return the surveys along with their monthly payments – sometimes we have stragglers,” Barrett says, adding that there is really no formal follow-up to encourage customers to turn forms back in. Still, the company collects feedback from most people.

The survey process has been a success at Barrett’s Lawn Care, giving the company a forum for asking customers: How are we doing? “Sometimes, there are customers who you think are perfectly happy and there are things they want changed, and as a result of the survey we can ask them if they are happy instead of just assuming that they might be,” Barrett says.