Our back office support team is spearheaded by one of our two co-founders. Environmental Coalition Incorporated is truly a ‘mom and pop’ organization. When clientele request pest control services or need a Notice of Pest Control Treatment or require information relating to such matters as contract specifications, certificates of insurance, accounting practices – the buck is not passed, it stops with a corporate co-founder who is readily available to talk with our clientele each and every day. Very few transactions slip through the cracks because the leader of our back office team is very much involved rather than employed today and gone tomorrow.
Most pest controllers employed by our competitors operate as if they were independent contractors. Before the beginning of each month a pest controller will be responsible for creating the forthcoming month’s route from a list of accounts that he will receive from an administrator employed by the pest control company. The pest controller must chart the route for each workday predicated upon where the accounts are located and how long the pest controller thinks it might take to meet the needs of the account. He dreads unplanned service requests or the introduction of a new account because such services must be squeezed into the schedule. When unplanned services are squeezed into a day’s work, the previously routed accounts are not given the time that is needed for exemplary services to be performed. The compensation paid to most pest controllers is tied directly to production. Meeting an unscheduled service request or readdressing a service request is counterproductive (especially when off-route) and negatively impacts the earnings of most pest controllers.
Now you might ask what the aforesaid scenario has to do with back office support. Everything and then some! First and foremost all routing is accomplished by our back office support team and said routes are most often scheduled no further in advance than 48 hours (72 hours for LEED-EB buildings). The accounts scheduled to be met will have varying needs and time restraints; nonetheless, all are met without ‘squeezing’ the schedule and thereby rendering sub-standard services. Our IPM practitioners meet every morning with a co-founder of our corporation and the previous day’s work is discussed and follow-up visits are scheduled when deemed necessary. The pending work is discussed which will often include an historical overview of the account’s pest control activity and the solutions previously rendered or recommended. All of our IPM practitioners contribute to the ‘debriefing –briefing’ process and all benefit in the exchange . . . including the property managers and the personnel in the tenancies that will be visited during the course of the day!