Successful Landscaping Business Trait: Focusing on Customer Service

Focusing on customer service

As with any other business that deals directly with the end consumer, your landscape business is all about one thing; providing a service.   Obviously this shouldn’t come as a surprise, yet you would likely be surprised at the number of companies, landscape companies included, that put too much focus on the physical tasks that they perform and not enough emphasis on the customer service aspect of the services that they offer.

To most customers, it doesn’t really matter if you offer top quality landscaping services backed by the lowest prices in your area; whether you’re offering landscape installation, lawn mowing or working year-round by offering snow plowing services, if you aren’t attentive to the needs of your customers, you might very well have to continually work to replace your customer base year-round instead of working with your existing customers and building your landscape company with positive word of mouth referrals.

In fact, if your commitment to proper customer service is lacking severely, you might find it difficult to acquire new customers simply because word of mouth advertising works, and it tends to work double-time when a customer has a bad experience with your company.

How a landscape company can improve customer relations

There are a few things that a landscape company can do to improve their relationship with their customers.

1) Proper communication is a must.  Seen as the downfall of many businesses that provide services directly to consumers, the failure to communicate properly can have disastrous results; especially in the landscape business.  Some home or property owners are extremely picky about how their lawn and landscape is maintained; if your landscape company fails to verify what is to be done to your customers’ lawn, the outcome might not only infuriate your customer, it might end up giving your landscape company a bad reputation through negative word of mouth advertising.

2) Try to make personal contact.  In general, people are more apt to trust, and continue to use the services of for that matter, a landscape company that makes personal contact with them.  Of course, different clients may have different personalities, but adding the “human element” to the landscaping services that you provide can literally mean the difference between a one-time customer and a regular client.  Probably you wouldn’t want to invite yourself over for dinner, but dropping off the invoice in person or making it a point to catch your customer at home from time to time could make a significant impact on their decision to use your landscape services again.

3) Get feedback from your customers after the fact.  Once you’ve groomed or installed new landscaping for your customers, find out what they have to think about it.  This way, if there are any problems with the services that you provided, you can correct them before they turn into a “bad experience” by your customer.

4) Send out “thank you” notes.  From time to time, you should take the initiative to send out thank you letters to your regular customers; after all, if it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t be in business.  As a way of saying thanks, you could give them a coupon for discounted landscaping services, which would actually endear these customers to your landscape company even more and help to ensure a long-lasting business relationship.

As a sidenote, when you send out thank you letters to your regular customers, this is a good time to ask for referrals; maybe not every time, but certainly happy customers are more than willing to “do you a favor”, and if you provide an incentive for your customers to refer their friends, you will likely be astounded by the results.