PestBossPro Blog — Commercial Accounts

Two-Way Texting With Property Managers About Pest Control Visits

Property managers live on their phones. They are walking a property, meeting a vendor, showing a unit and answering a tenant all at once. They do not want to call your office and sit on hold. They want to send a text and get a text back. If your pest company is easy to reach by text, you are easy to keep.

Where Texting Fits

Unit requests were the subject of Treating Apartment Units by Request Without Losing Track of the Building. Most of those requests start as a text, and most of the back-and-forth about them happens by text too.

The problem with texting from a personal cell phone is that the conversation lives on one person's phone. When the tech who handles that account is sick, on vacation or gone, the history goes with them. PestBossPro keeps two-way texting with customers in the office, saved with the client, so anyone in the office can see what was said.

What Managers Text About

Most texts from property managers fall into a few groups:

• Requests. “Roaches in 214, can you get there this week?”
• Timing. “Can you come Thursday instead? We have an inspection Wednesday.”
• Access. “Gate code changed to 4471.” “Maintenance will meet you at building C.”
• Follow-up. “Tenant in 214 says still seeing them.”
• Billing. “Can you resend last month's statement to the owner?”

Each of those needs to end up somewhere other than the text thread. A request becomes a job. A new gate code goes in the access notes on the address. A follow-up becomes a callback visit. Texting is the conversation. The job, the notes and the statement are where the answer lives.

A good office routine is to read the day's texts from managers at the same time each afternoon and make sure every one has landed somewhere. A request with no job, or a gate code that never reached the address, is how a text turns into a missed visit and an unhappy manager.

Automatic Alerts

Some texts should go out on their own. PestBossPro sends automatic reminders and alerts, and each contact can choose which ones they get:

• Night before. A reminder the evening before service, so the manager can tell tenants or arrange keys.
• When they're next. A heads-up when the tech is on the way to that property.
• Tech arrived. A text when the tech gets there, so maintenance can meet them.

Alerts are set per contact. On a big property, the manager might want only the night-before reminder, while the maintenance supervisor wants the arrived text. That way the right person gets the right alert without everyone getting everything.

Texting About Findings

Texting is also how you tell a manager what you found. A short text from the office after a visit, like “Tech found heavy activity in 214 and 215, recommends follow-up in two weeks. Photos saved with the job,” does more for the relationship than a long report nobody reads.

Before-and-after photos taken in the tech app stay with the job, so the office can refer to them when talking to the manager. If a unit has sanitation problems that keep roaches coming back, a photo and a short note let the manager deal with the tenant. More on using photos this way is in Before-and-After Photos as Proof of Service on Commercial Pest Control Accounts.

The Customer App for Managers

Some managers prefer to handle things themselves. The customer app lets them:

• Request service between scheduled visits
• See invoices and pay online
• Update the card on file
• See where the tech is on the route on their service day

That last one helps on big days. The manager can see something like “You're stop 6 of 14, the tech is 3 stops away” and have maintenance ready without texting the office to ask.

Text Allowance and Good Habits

Plans include a monthly text allowance of 500, 1,000 or 2,000 segments sent and received on Start, Pro and Crew. A busy apartment portfolio sends and receives a fair number of texts, so keep messages short and clear. Texting is available in the US and Canada.

A few habits keep texting useful:

• Answer quickly. A manager who gets a reply in ten minutes stops shopping for another pest company.
• Move the details into the system. New codes go on the address. Requests go on a job.
• Confirm in writing. “Got it, units 214 and 215 scheduled for Thursday” prevents arguments later.
• Keep it professional. The texts are saved with the client and anyone in your office can read them.

Texting works the same way with restaurant managers and office managers. For the rest of the commercial picture, visit the PestBossPro commercial pest control software page.