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Why Customer Data Can Make Or Break Your Lawn Care Empire

How often do you see your customers face to face? Most customers won’t even see you once you are hired because you will perform your service while they are at work or out of the house and you mail them an invoice, so how do you build personal relationships when you don’t ever see your customers??

If it wasn’t already, your primary goal should always be customer satisfaction. Lawn care businesses are dime a dozen and all it takes is one phone call to your competitor, and you have lost a customer.

How do you ensure you do everything in your power to keep your most important customers?

When you think about a Lawn Care Business you probably assume that your equipment is your most important asset. It is tangible and costs you an arm and a leg to purchase and maintain. Right?

Well, I take a different stance and say that your most important asset is customer data.

So what does customer data look like for a Lawn Care Business and how should you use it? Here is the Lawn Care Empire definition of Customer Data:

"Customer Data is the culmination of the personal relationship that you have developed with your customer."

Examples of customer data include the following:

1. Customer Contact Info: Name, Address, Email, Phone #, and most importantly their preferred method of communication
2. Services Requested: Examples are grass height, any off limit areas on property, and how often they want yard mowed.
3. Personal Information: Where they work, the sports teams they support, if they have kids, anything else that you may have in common with the customer that can grow your relationship.

How to obtain customer data (in an ethical manner - let’s not turn into Google!)

When you find your first customers (if you are still struggling to find your first customer start here) right off the bat you will be given the most important customer data.

Always ask what their preferred method of communication is and be sure to save it.

When you show up for your first service, it is crucial to take a clipboard or iPad with you and record any special requests a customer may have. Nothing disappoints a customer more if you forget a special request. Take the 5 minutes to save this data, and make it a habit to review every customer file before performing their service.

This extra five minutes of your time will save you from losing customers down the road.

The Social Media Factor

As you learned in my Facebook Page Creation Tutorial (COMING SOON), having a social network presence is now more crucial than ever to setting yourself apart from the competition.

Especially if you are just starting out, if you can get your customers to follow your page and it is presented as a “family business” it will be a great way to share photos of you and your family doing normal things (ie kids birthday parties, a night out at the ballpark ect…) and you never know when a customer might be at the same place as you and mention it in passing.

Once this happens you are giving the great opportunity to ask more about their family. Customers love talking about themselves and their family so give them that opportunity as often as possible.

EXAMPLE: Say you find out one of your customers has a kid in your son's baseball league, write it down for future reference and bring it up the next time you meet.

To your customers, the less you appear to be a business and the more you appear to be a "friendly neighbor" the better.

Take the Extra Step

Something that I don’t really see many lawn mowing business do is actually go to your customers house to pick up payment.

While it is super simple to have an automated invoice mailed to your customers house (see different options available for invoice - COMING SOON) and they can send a payment by check it is a really personalized touch if you can take the time and stop by their house from time to time to pick up your payment at a time convenient for them.

It gives you an opportunity to see how things are going, if they are unhappy with anything or if see if they need any ADDITIONAL services performed.

If you need some help how to present some additional services to your customers check out my comprehensive guide here.

Final Suggestion

Let’s not forget that you can also use customer data to weed out the bad customers. While it always hurts to lose a customer, if they are missing payments, causing you extra time, or being too nit-picky then it is time to move on.

Record these events and use them in your decision making. You run your own business. Fire any customer who is getting in the way of your goal of running an efficient money-making Lawn Care Empire!

Do you need help recording Customer Data?

Use this free Checklist! Access Database??