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3 Tips for Redefining Your Customer Experience

by | Aug 17, 2018 | Marketing | 0 comments

3 Tips For Redefining Your Customer Experience

Everyone wants to provide exceptional customer service, yet unfortunately there are few companies that truly wow their customers. The service and personal touch that you provide to your customers will always be evolving, but here are 3 tips to begin redefining your customer experience.

 

1. Understand Your Customer – This should go without saying, but it is so critical to know who your customers are and what they care about. Who is your ideal customer and how can your services make them smile? Understand how they communicate and what really matters to them. Remember, it’s not the tree that pays the bill, it’s the owner of the tree that writes the check to you. If you are not connecting with your customers, you are making it easy for them to find another company to help them with their trees.

 

2. Touch-point Teamwork – Hold a brainstorming session with each department within your company to focus on every customer touch-point within your organization. From your website appearance and functionality, to incoming phone calls and emails, to field staff doing the work, to the invoices and thank you’s that go out after the job is completed, ask yourselves three simple questions for every touch-point:

 

What do our customers love about it?
What do our customers dislike about it?
What can we do to make that interaction better or more shareable?

 

3. Training and Integration – After you have defined the ideal customer and what they want from you, everyone in your company must know how important each touch-point is to have the best possible customer experience. This is best accomplished by the department leaders walking their teams through each touch-point and how the customer should be treated. It helps if similar words or phrases are used to solidify the organization and promote the client first culture.

 

By consciously focusing on your customer’s experience at every touch-point, you will begin to transform your company. Have fun with it, get creative and don’t be afraid to try something new to stand out. Wow your customers so they can’t help but tell others about the great experience they had with your company.

Written by: Eric Petersen

5 Hiring Hot Spots

by | Aug 17, 2018 | Employee Management | 0 comments

5 Hiring Hot Spots

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

 

We all want to have the very best employees, yet the most common question that I get asked is, “where are these people?” So, in my never-ending quest to help the tree care industry advance, I want to share my top 5 hiring hot spots as well as two websites that provide a ton of information for you to use when recruiting your next new hire.

 

Military Veteran Groups – There are numerous non-profit groups that have been established to help Veterans re-enter the workforce. Vets typically have exemplary work ethics and a desire to accomplish the goals for your team. Ask around your local community to find the most active group in your area or look into one of these organizations;

Hire Heros USA
Recruit Military
Department of Labor

Local High Schools – While you won’t find a seasoned arborist still attending high school, engaging with the youth within your community will give you the best chance at hiring the next rising star within the industry. Your local high school probably has a career center or department that helps introduce industries and careers to the students. Reach out to those schools and develop a relationship so they know who you are and what type of career you can offer.

College Career Fairs – In my home state of Wisconsin, we are very fortunate to have multiple tech colleges and universities that offer programs in Urban Forestry and Arboriculture. These are gold mines for top notch employees, who upon graduating typically have a number of job offers right away. If you do not have a local college that has a specific degree within the tree care industry that is just fine, college graduates from other fields have been struggling with finding a profession they enjoy for decades. Being present gives you a chance to sell your company and the industry to them.

State Workforce Development Job Fairs – Every state has a Workforce Development Department who host job fairs for local employers. This can be a great place to pick up an unexpected employee. Plus as an added bonus, some states have programs available that will help pay for the training of an employee hired through one of these job fairs.

Create a Sector Partnership – This last hiring hot spot takes more time and coordination along with help from others to accomplish, but when implemented successfully, it can have a tremendous impact on your local tree care market. We are currently working on setting one of these up in the Milwaukee area where a number of local tree care companies are partnering with a local non-profit and technical colleges to structure a short term training and recruiting program to help provide more qualified, ready to work arborists in the area. If you are interested in getting one of these started in your area, ask TCIA for some guidance.

 

Before you begin to utilize any of my 5 hiring hot spots, you must be prepared to talk about your company and the industry when you meet a potential employee. If you haven’t checked out the TCIA’s Outside careers website yet, do so right away! This site is loaded with great content and videos explaining what your industry is all about and why someone should enter it.

Another fantastic resource is from ISA. Their Career Paths in Arboriculture shows all of the different possible career paths that an individual can take within this industry. Click on any of boxes to get an easy to read flyer on that position – perfect for handing out to prospective employees!

Legendary football coach, Don Shula, may have said it best: “The one thing that I know is that you win with good people.” So what are you waiting for? Create a plan to find these good people and go get them on your team!

3 Ways to Jump Start Your Marketing

by | Aug 17, 2018 | Marketing | 0 comments

3 Ways to Jump Start Your Marketing

With spring finally at our doorstep, I want to ask you; is your marketing ready for spring? The best tree services are already deep into their marketing planning for the upcoming growing season. If you haven’t given much thought to how you are going to make the phone ring this year, here are 3 ways to jump start your marketing.

 

Create Your Plan – No marketing happens without a plan and most plans are not perfect. So don’t get caught up in trying to make a masterpiece marketing plan, just get started by brainstorming with your team.

First focus on what service you want to provide the most of this year. What service is the most profitable for you? What service contains the least amount of headaches or hassles? Which service fulfills your mission as an organization and fits your company’s strengths the best?

 

Next, identify your ideal customer that fits your targeted service. Who are they? What do they value? Where do they live? What is the best way to communicate with them?

 

Lastly, craft an Early-bird deal for customers who sign up for your service in advance. You probably already do this with different discounts like winter pricing, senior citizen discounts and repeat customer credits, but by truly offering a lower rate for a short bit of time you will increase interest from new customers.

 

Social Media Blitz – After you have your plan formulated it’s time to support the efforts online.
Write a blog or two offering free information on the subject/service that you want to promote. In there, dispel any rumors about the service in a non-salesy way. You can offer pros and cons to educate your customer.

Post the blog on all of your social media channels and follow it up with links to similar articles on that same topic.

Edit your website to show the Early-bird deal right on the home page with an easy way for the customer to contact your team.

 

Customer Contact – Now that you have your online backing for your Early-bird deal set, it’s time to reach out to the public. Looking at your ideal client profile that you developed decide on how to get the word out.

 

Start by contacting your current customer base with the Early-bird offer. These are the customers that are the easiest sale because they already know you. You can do this a number of ways, from a flyer in the mail, to an email or even phone calls to the top 20% of customers.

 

Reach out to prospective customers that you have had some interaction with in the past, but for whatever reason they did not choose your services. This may be best through email or hand selected phone calls.

Finally, sending out a series of postcards to designated zip codes will help introduce your company and services to new potential customers. Work with a marketing firm to design a three part series that builds off each other to promote your professionalism, service and company’s brand.

 

By focusing on one special deal to start the season that fits your company’s strengths, you will intentionally gain more trust with your current clients and pick up new customers that fit your desired buyer profile and obviously lead you to greater revenue this year.

Written by: Eric Petersen

3 Simple Steps to Creating a Culture of Safety

by | Aug 17, 2018 | Safety | 0 comments

3 Simple Steps to Creating a Culture of Safety

No business owner wants to see their employees get hurt. The feeling is indescribable when one of your team members suffers an injury, no matter how large or small. Why is it then that so many business struggle to implement a culture of safety? I believe the main reason is that safety seems overwhelming. I want to give you 3 simple steps to grab a hold of that elusive culture of safety and begin to improve your business from the inside.

 

Ownership Commitment – The culture of any organization starts from the top. The owner and management must make a commitment to their team that working safely is preferred over working quickly. Understanding how safety pays off within your organization is critical. According to OSHA, an average muscle strain will cost the business almost $68,000 in direct and indirect costs! The small administrative cost and upfront expenses that you may have to spend to get the safety culture started are extremely minor compared to what happens when there is an injury.

 

Employee Engagement – Once this direction is set by the leaders of the company, they must make sure to get the employees aboard. The best way to do this is to establish a safety committee with representatives from all departments. Asking for volunteers is the most efficient way of getting the employees aboard with this. It is the Safety Committee’s job to lead by example when working safely, review or create the written safety policies, enforce the safety rules and act as the liaison between the front line employees and the management.

 

Open Communication – A culture of safety will not develop if the employees do not understand what is expected of them and given a platform to discuss any safety questions they have. The leadership of the organization must specifically state the intentions of the safety culture and allow for open communication regarding all aspects of safety. An employee must feel secure enough in his or her job that they can talk freely about a close call or near miss without fear of repercussion.

Written by: Eric Petersen

Beat the Weather in 3 Easy Steps

by | Aug 17, 2018 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

Beat the Weather in 3 easy Steps

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

As you probably know, I’m a work comp geek and pride myself on helping businesses minimize the financial impact that an injury causes their business. When looking at today’s forecast for my town, which calls for 6-8 inches of snow, I realized that weather presents a similar challenge to businesses that an injured employee does. How do you get productive work done when Mother Nature or an injured employee disrupts your upcoming work day?

We all know that your production will be affected by the weather multiple times a year. It doesn’t matter if that weather event is extreme heat or cold, rain or snow, the weather will do what it is going to do and you have to deal with it. The best way to deal with it is to be prepared before it happens just like you are before an injury happens.

Here are my 3 steps to beating Mother Nature and remaining productive during the most severe weather:

1. Weather Protocol – Discuss weather protocol as soon as possible. A storm can creep up fast and I can guarantee your team will be wondering what they will or will not be doing at work when the storm hits. Consider these questions and ask for your employees’ involvement in creating your protocol:

  • What is your cut off for high/low temperature before it is too dangerous to work outside?
  • What tasks or projects in the shop do you have that you’ve always wanted to do, but don’t ever seem to have time to do?
  • Are there safety or equipment training topics that can be presented?
  • How can we involve every one of our team members in a productive way if they are not in the field?

2. Reserving Jobs – Keep jobs reserved that are lower priority and don’t require climbing or aerial work. Maybe these are small pruning jobs or removals. If it is safe to be outdoors, but not safe to climb, use that to your advantage and get these jobs done when you can. Remember to emphasize proper job site preparation when working in less than ideal conditions and encourage your team that getting the job done safely is much more important than getting it done quickly.

3. Communication – Build a notification system where team members either contact one another or log on to an internal message board before they begin to travel to work. Within my office we use the Slack, a powerful software that allows us to communicate with everyone instantly. It can be downloaded as an app on your phone so all can get the same message at the same time.

Lastly, the preparation work that you just did for a weather event can and should be utilized to be prepared for an injury. The same small projects that you want to accomplish should be integrated into your injury management plan so that you can get the injured worker back on the job as quickly as possible.

We all enjoy and despise weather at times. Make the most of it for your business by being ready so you don’t have to watch valuable production hours or days fly by. If your company needs additional assistance with safety and weather related training, check out ArboRisk’s Thrive Risk Management Safety Package!