Make lemonade

You know the importance of how a property looks, but your client doesn’t always have the same appreciation. So, landscaping is often the first line item cut from budgets when they’re looking to nip and tuck the bottom line.

This month, Lawn & Landscape spoke with three companies about how they deal with customer cutbacks and client complaints. Here, they share why compromise and “making good” can create stronger relationships – and when to cut a client loose.
 

Get face time

Posted on an office wall at Rivertop Contracting is a quote that drives the firm’s approach on every property: “Customers + Expectations + 110% Every Time.”

“When everything you do sifts through that funnel, there is not really a big decision on what to do when things go wrong,” says Rob Atema, owner of the Swannonoa, N.C.-based landscape maintenance and construction firm.

This golden rule at Rivertop guides the way the company responds when things don’t go as expected in the field. If Rivertop’s crews make a mistake on a property, they own it. Then they fix the problem so the result exceeds customers’ expectations.

A perfect example of this is when a maintenance crew drove a skid-steer over a commercial property after a couple of rainy weeks and left mud tracks on the turf. “The next day, we had a crew out there sodding that piece of property,” Atema says. “That was on us. It had everything to do with our lack of management in that scenario, and when that happens, we’ll walk on water to get the problem taken care of.”

Rivertop could have “made good” by just reseeding the damaged turf areas. “But we didn’t just rake it out and throw seed on it, we tore it out and sodded it back, and the customers ended up coming out ahead and had a better looking property when we were all done,” Atema says. “He was happy as a clam and told his friends about us.”

Turning a complaint into a compliment requires dedication to the company mantra: Customers + Expectations + 110% Every Time.

The same is true when a client decides to cut back service. That is when achieving a 110 percent standard can get tough. Take a commercial design/build customer who needs to lop off cost to satisfy a shrinking budget. This is common because budget is always an issue with commercial design/build projects that go out to bid, Atema says.

First, Atema pushes for face-to-face meetings when bidding design/build jobs that require reductions to the budget. “We’ll work to find out what’s important to them. Is it brand recognition? Is it curb appeal? We try to figure out what is the most important thing to them and then we tailor our suggestions to meet their needs.”

For example, a hotel entry is important for retaining the property’s brand. So, Rivertop will look at ways to lighten their footprint on less visible areas of the property. This approach applies to the design/build and maintenance sides of the business.

But when clients want to cut back quality to the point that it could spoil Rivertop’s own brand, then Atema has a tough decision to make: Satisfy the service cutbacks for some time as a bridge until the client can amend the budget to meet the property’s base needs – or walk away.

Atema shares that one client hired a firm to complete a design/build project when the bid was half the price of what Rivertop provided.

Meanwhile, Rivertop does the maintenance on this property every week. Its trucks and crews and brand are at the forefront of the shoddy landscape. Atema had an honest talk with the owner and property improvements were made.

“Clients are worth their weight in gold and we don’t want to lose clients, but on the other hand, I can’t be on the property with that kind of lack of quality because it will adversely affect our company,” he says.

Rivertop has stopped servicing clients that want to cut services or compromise design to the extent that Atema doesn’t want his company name associated with the property. “It’s not an easy decision to make,” he says. But he has never regretted doing so.

“You want to do business with people who share your values, so you have to figure out who your ideal client is and align yourself with people with that mindset,” he says.

“If they are going to cut a service to save a little money, maybe you can do that for a while, but if they want the cheapest guy in town, that’s not a good fit for us.”

Open communication

Listening goes a long way toward patching up a brittle relationship when a client files complaints. Sitting down in front of the client face to face can help you get to the root of the problem. “Let them talk. Listen and apologize,” says Bill Davids, president of Clarence Davids & Company in Matteson, Ill.

Davids describes a situation when a hydraulic hose broke on a skid-steer. The crew on the property didn’t realize this and drove the piece of equipment across a parking lot that had just been seal-coated, leaving a leak-spot trail behind. “They kept driving and there were several oil spots along the way until the skid-steer stopped,” Davids says.

The property manager was irked. This error followed some snowplow damage from the previous winter.

The company talked to the property manager in person and addressed each problem, assigning the concern to the appropriate in-house manager to oversee. “In the meantime, we were completing a large landscaping project on that property that turned out beautiful, so between the positives (of fixing the mistakes) and that end result, we have the client on our side again,” Davids says.

Keeping clients satisfied when working with tight budgets, multiple stakeholders and variables like weather and human error creates inevitable challenges. Open communication is almost always the answer.

And, a property walk with a client is often what’s needed to identify issues that could be festering, Davids says. It’s always better to nip little concerns in the bud, before they mount to a blow-up. The latter is uncommon at Clarence Davids, but after 65 years in business, the company has dealt with plenty of “oops” situations over the years. And keeping boards of people happy in multi-family home scenarios is never easy, Davids says.

“The account manager builds rapport with the managers and boards,” he says, relating that a diligent account representative stays on top of board personnel changes and constantly builds those new relationships.

“I tell our account reps to always think long term,” Davids says of making good when clients report errors. “So, today is going to be bad. Maybe we’ll lose $5,000 or $10,000, or whatever. But we retain the account and we have an opportunity to regain (that loss) the following year, and the year after that. In the long term, it pays off.”

Dig deeper

Why?” This is the most important question to ask when a client hints at cutting back services. “Try to get beyond the candy-coated outside of the jawbreaker, so to speak,” says Eric Spalsbury, vice president, maintenance business development for Heads Up Landscaping in Albuquerque, N.M. “When we can find motivators behind the request, we can better develop a solution.”

Spalsbury and his team want to know if the reason for cutbacks is budget-driven – and why. Is the client experiencing short-term “heartburn” with the property? Has there been a changeover in management, and therefore a shift in expectations?

Depending on the “why,” Heads Up works to provide a solution that can satisfy the client’s needs while keeping the customer on the roster. But also important is the assessment Heads Up makes regarding the client. “We evaluate the relationship: How are we doing financially with the customer?” Spalsbury says.

If the job is part of a portfolio of properties, the customer is loyal (and perhaps well-connected), Heads Up takes this into consideration. “You want to evaluate the total value and performance of the book of work, along with the potential network influence involved,” he says.

If the job is break-even or a poor performer, is it part of a bigger picture where greater profitability is achievable? And, if the client has connections to other desirable accounts, the service cutback negotiation should be handled with care.

“If you don’t handle the negotiation well, who do you think they’ll tell?” Spalsbury says. “It may come up multiple times with other people in your network that you do business with, or hoped to do business with.”

Another consideration that would encourage Heads Up to go “all out” for a client is the total revenue from the job, including irrigation, landscape renovations and maintenance. “It may be that maintenance is a ‘front’ for doing enhancement work,” Spalsbury says. Heads Up may be willing to cut back the cost of maintenance if the company knows it can secure other more profitable business from the client.

On the other hand, if the customer has unreasonable expectations, is difficult to work with, takes up an unbalanced amount of management time and is a “stand-alone” property, Heads Up may consider whether bending over backward to meet a client’s budget demands is worth it.

Some solutions, based on the client’s pain, include reducing short-term expenses by shrinking the number of visits to the property, Spalsbury says, adding, “That’s not something we love to do because it is tough for us to manage different expectations in the field, and this can have a negative reflection on our image.” But, Heads Up will do this for a good customer. Ultimately, these discussions are a good opportunity to build loyalty, Spalsbury says. For example, Heads Up associates talk about how regular visits keep the property’s image consistent. And, they emphasizes that their crews are extra eyes on the property. Then, Spalsbury might ask the client: “Where else are you going to get this kind of service?”

The goal is to settle on a solution that addresses the client’s needs and keeps your company’s integrity intact. “If handled well, a situation like this should not strain a relationship – it should make it grow stronger,” Spalsbury says.