Mar 27, 2013, 15:17 PM by User Not Found

Find out how Clark Pest Control's Reno, NV office uses A.C.E. to keep customers happy.

The people who work at Clark Pest Control have long been encouraged to provide “A.C.E.,” or an Amazing Customer Experience, to every person this company serves. That’s been a guiding principle at our company since the beginning. But by putting new methods of gathering, filtering and routing information into action, our goal of keeping our customers consistently happy becomes easier to attain.

Over this past year, the Net Promoter System, or NPS, has been rolled out to all of Clark Pest Control’s 21 branch offices. NPS works by organizing information and feedback from customers into a roadmap that provides a much sharper picture of how effectively the people who work at Clark Pest Control are meeting our customers’ wants and needs. Then, that information can be targeted to the right person, or people, within the company, so they can ensure that each customer’s experience will be more satisfying –amazing, even.

The specific way each of Clark Pest Control’s 21 local service centers puts the A.C.E. concept into action may vary from branch to branch, depending on the creative ingenuity of our employees. At the "Reno, Nevada Clark Pest Control office, Branch Manager Steve Adams asked his team members to each come up with one year-end idea they thought could improve business, and then follow through on whatever they decided. Office Manager Wendy Wright, who has been working at the Reno office for almost three years, figured that focusing on people who already are Clark Pest Control customers made the best sense, so she started methodically following up with every customer who has called her office for additional service, after that requested service had been performed. “My thought was, let’s retain the customers that we already have. Let’s make sure that they’re happy. How can we do that?”

The answer she came up with was to become proactive. Wright begins her process by running a report to find customers who have called her office for an additional service, or to report a pest problem. Whether the target pests were ants, mice, spiders or something else, she then will give the customers a couple of weeks for whatever treatment was performed to take effect. Then, she will get on the phone. “I ask them, ‘How was everything? Did we address your concerns?’” Wright explains. “I’ve found a few, not many, where they’ll say, ‘Not quite sure; is it possible to get someone back out here?’”

According to Wright, some customers just don’t want to bother her office, or call back if they have any kind of problem. So she takes the initiative and makes a quality-assurance call to them instead. “This branch QA calling program has really helped us to identify those customers and address their concerns,” she says, “whether we have to go back out there a couple of times or not. And maybe it’s just an issue of educating them – informing them how our products work, or what it is that we do.”

Sometimes Wright can’t get through to a customer on the phone, so she will send a letter with her business card attached. The point is to get out in front of any customer concerns by addressing them, well before those concerns can turn into something much larger and more troublesome. “I’m finding customers very thankful and very receptive for the follow-up,” she says.

Wright’s experience has taught her that it’s always smart to keep word-of-mouth advertising in mind. “If customers are unhappy, they’re going to talk to people about their experiences,” she says. “But if we can keep those customers happy, they’re going to talk about that, also, so they’re becoming promoters for us.”

The people at Clark Pest Control can do a lot of wonderful things, like keeping your living space delightfully pest free, but our company generally does not employ mind readers. Like just about everyone else, if we want to find an answer to something, we have to ask the right questions first. Using the NPS system helps us do that. So by finding new ways to ask you how we can serve you better and keep you happy, Clark Pest Control can continue to deliver an Amazing Customer Experience to you, every time.