5 Stages of the Customer Journey

The leading PCOs recognize that their success depends on their ability to make full use of tools that address every facet of their business to attract, service and maintain customers. Finding one tool that incorporates solutions that span every step of your customer’s journey, from prospecting to payments, is a surefire way to join the best in pest.

With 40 years of experience in the pest control industry, PestPac by WorkWave has the knowledge and expertise to provide the type of functionality that garners user feedback like this:

“As far as having the one-stop shop where we don’t have to worry about integration from one thing to another, we know that [with PestPac] it’s built-in already; we know that it’s going to be a seamless transition from one page to the next and from one thing to the next.”

-Matt Theriot, Sales & Marketing Manager at LaJaunie’s Pest Control

[See the Tools the Best in Pest Rely On]

To better highlight how an integrated solution provides the tools and resources that PCOs need when finding and winning new customers, we’ve broken the customer journey down into five distinct stages.

Awareness

No matter how badly a potential customer might need your services, they can’t choose your business to provide those services if they don’t know you exist. Employing tools that help you build and maintain your brand’s presence goes a long way toward ensuring you’re among the first pest control companies they find when they search online — or better yet, making them aware of your business beforehand so you’re the first call they make when the time comes.

Seek out tools that help you foster a strong digital presence right off the bat, including digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and, of course, a strong website. PestPac provides tools that can build and maintain your branded, professional-looking website, ensuring your best foot is always forward when prospects find you online. From there, it’s all about results-driven digital marketing that puts your business front and center so you can out-sell the competition when potential customers in your area search for pest control providers.

An integrated solution can enable your business to automate many digital marketing tasks, such as sending nurture emails to prospects to help nudge them along the path. Don’t underestimate the power of traditional marketing, either. Print marketing, including door hangers and mailers in areas in which you already operate or for nearby homes when new owners move in, remains an effective — and cost effective — method for raising brand awareness with potential customers before they ever look elsewhere.

Consideration

Once prospects have your information in front of them, they’re likely to spend some time considering their options before they place a call or submit a service request. This process can often be accelerated through your marketing efforts by providing them with the information they need to conclude that you’re the right fit for their needs — your website and brand presence remain crucial here.

A great place to start is by ensuring your Google My Business profile is set up with complete, accurate, up-to-date information. This is crucial for visitors who are searching for pest services and may place a call or reach out directly from the search results page rather than clicking through to your website. Ensuring your Google My Business profile is accurate is more valuable now than ever, as Google is increasingly prioritizing results that are in the searcher’s area as part of their Google Local Search initiative. 

Ensure that your website and social media accounts make it easy for potential customers to see what makes your pest control business stand out from the rest. In addition to creating content around the things that make you stand out, consider offering some general pest-related information that visitors might find helpful to foster a sense of helpfulness and community. You might create or share articles that cover prevalent pests in your area and how to handle them, simultaneously sharing valuable information and emphasizing the importance of the services you provide.

Beyond highlighting what makes you stand out — Is your business family-owned? Do you emphasize green methods? Are you actively involved in your community? — consider an  integrated solution that makes it easy for your business to capture and share positive reviews from your existing customers. A truly integrated solution can provide tools that cover every stage of your business cycle, which means covering every step of the customer journey from sales to service to payments. This not only equips you with the things you need to capture leads and satisfy customers, but also makes it easier to track your business’s success as time goes on.

Acquisition

When a prospect becomes a lead, time is of the essence. Putting a structured sales process in place is crucial to ensuring leads never slip through the cracks. By choosing an integrated solution that empowers you to track and manage leads appropriately, you can close more sales, faster.

Be sure to equip your pest control operation with an integrated solution that allows you to engage with your customers directly, regardless of how they choose to reach out. PestPac enables you to view and manage customer communications in one place, allows you to reply in the way the customer prefers and even pulls in past communication from a given customer from across platforms so you always have the information you need. Be sure to consider how you handle payments at this stage, too; capturing payment information early encourages repeat business and virtually eliminates unintentional churn down the road.

Of course, you can’t be standing by to pick up the phone or reply to a message immediately 24/7. That doesn’t mean you need to accept those leads slipping away, though. PestPac can provide 24/7 call answering services for your business to handle after-hours or overflow calls, and can also outfit your website with a chatbot capable of answering questions, providing estimates and even scheduling service visits.

Engagement

While attracting leads and securing them as new customers is crucial to business growth, it’s all for nothing if they don’t stick around. Engaging with existing customers is as crucial as bringing in new ones, and that means ensuring your business is easy to do business with. When it comes to interacting with your customers, having your phone number online simply isn’t enough; you need to communicate with customers in the methods they prefer. This can mean phone, email, webchat and SMS texting. To make things even easier, seek out a solution that allows you to review communication from a given customer across different methods without having to switch between platforms.

Communication is as key when dealing with customer relationships as it is when dealing with prospects, and many of the same tools can apply. Automated marketing emails; service reminders, renewals and summaries; fillable, signable digital forms; and multi-channel communication are all invaluable when fostering positive customer relationships, and they can all be found in PestPac’s integrated solution.

A self-service portal is another great way to provide support for your customers while simultaneously reducing the amount of manual work your team has to handle. Many customers prefer the self-serve approach, simply logging in to schedule or reschedule service, to access their service history or to make a payment. Speaking of payments, accepting a wider range of payment methods can make customers more likely to pay promptly. PestPac supports nine different payment methods — including autopay, ePay links and SMS payments — to make payment convenient for your customers and ensure your cash flow isn’t held up.

Loyalty

When you communicate and engage with your customers effectively, they’re likely to stick with your business moving forward. That sort of customer loyalty — and the recurring revenue that comes with it — is worth its weight in gold. Consider sending out thank you letters to your customers and instituting a refer-a-friend program to reward customers when their referrals become customers themselves, as it can be a valuable method to expand your client base organically.

The right integrated solution can provide even more ways for you to turn customer loyalty into more new sales down the road. Incentivizing and capturing positive online reviews is a breeze with the right tool and, as we mentioned in the Consideration stage, those reviews can serve as valuable testimonials when it’s time for new prospects to choose the pest control company that’s right for them.

From the first time a potential customer hears about your business to the day they’re recommending you to their friends and neighbors, PestPac provides the tools and support you need to nurture and engage with them. Designed to integrate with other crucial WorkWave tools to deliver the results you count on, PestPac empowers you to out-sell, out-service and out-perform your competition to be the best in pest. To learn more about how PestPac can set you up for success, visit PestPac.com today!