When you started on your path to entrepreneurship in the green industry, one of the factors that may have called you to go out on your own was the ability to create an atmosphere, a vibe so to speak, that was unique to your company. Of course, you also wanted to create a successful business, one that would grow and expand, providing you and your family with a stable and sustainable income. How can you reconcile that urge to grow with maintaining a small company vibe? Here’s how:

Transition from personal touch to process systems

One of the things that makes a small lawn care company stand out from the crowd is the ability for your customers to reach out to you, the owner, directly with questions and issues, knowing that you will address their needs and concerns quickly and efficiently. However, as you grow, your ability to do this in a timely manner will decrease. The longer it takes you to respond personally, the more likely your customer will become dissatisfied. How can you reconcile your urge to deliver a personal touch with your need to grow?

Start by transitioning to a more process-delivered system. Instead of relying on yourself (and possibly a few great employees) to respond to all inquiries based on their knowledge and experience, create a common database to manage and share all of the necessary information any employee may need in regards to customer transactions. That way as your staff grows, any member trained in the database can respond quickly, giving customers the personal touch they crave.

Move from recovery to anticipation

Even a small lawn care company should make every effort to anticipate their customer’s needs, rather than waiting to respond. When you are a smaller operation, providing the personal touch to appease any customers that have issues is easier. As you grow, this becomes harder to pull off and you run the risk of losing business—not a path to long-term success.

Instead of rushing to put out fires, anticipating where incidents may arise will help in eliminating any potential problems. Further, your database can help here as well allowing you to better monitor customer satisfaction and provide data for your staff to address retention issues before they even arise.

Embrace technology to manage it all

Both the previous ideas mentioned as ways to keep the small company vibe strong as your lawn care business grows require embracing technology—without it you simply can not stay on top of customer service. Meanwhile, you can’t expect every employee to possess and retain all the information needed to keep your business healthy and growing. Incorporating the appropriate software to provide all necessary data and information helps your employees feel empowered to focus on customer satisfaction and so much more, all of which is vital to the health and longevity of your business.

Want to grow and diversify your green industry business without losing the small company vibe you love? Spring-Green has 40 years of experience that can help guide you in terms of increasing profitability without losing sight of the personal customer service you are known for. Learn more about how Spring-Green can help support and train you to reach new heights. Call 1-800-777-8608 or visit us at www.growmygreenindustrybusiness.com.