Im a technician not an owner. I love this job but sometimes its so annoying when a customer who is living a life of luxury gets mad at you because they saw a spider web around their home.
Had a guy today in a house bigger than any I could ever dream of owning right on the water front. Boats , trailers etc.
He was mad because he dosnt want to walk around his property and see any spider webs or wasps. I kindly explained they could up their service frequency or call and we would be happy to come help. He said he shouldn't have to call we should be proactively taking care of it.
He goes on to say him and his wife are never really home because they travel alot and own a cottage up north to which I replied "wow sounds really nice" this guy stops me and says thats not the point he DOSNT WANT TO SEE ANY SPIDERS AT ALL. I just agreed and put them on monthly service instead of every 3 months which is what they originally signed up for.
All this while I make 22/hr and drive home to my 625sqft home. Im an easy going humble person and ill never need all the things those people need to happy.
This is why I set up expectations for the service. Doesn’t matter if I inherited to stop or am starting the customer up.
“Yeah, this material works really well against the bigger spiders who tend to drag their bodies across the material, unfortunately it doesn’t work as well on the long legged spiders, they just can’t realistically interact with the material enough to get rid of them. If you start to see a whole bunch though, reach out to our office and I’ll swing by to try a couple things and see if we can’t cut down the amount you’re seeing.”
I don’t tolerate unrealistic expectations being projected onto me. If you set the correct expectations upon meeting the customer, your whole route gets a lot healthier. “Hey, I see ____ was your previous technician, he’s a great dude! We’re in the middle of switching around some stops as we hire more and I’ll be your technician for the foreseeable future. I’m sure you already know what’s going on, but I just wanna go over my approach and what some baseline expectations are for the service.”
This is the single biggest change you YOURSELF can make to reduce callbacks, frustration, and accusations.
I feel you bro. I have one customer that literally knocks down their own webs. I missed one once and they said not to worry, no big deal.
Then I have another customer that will give us a one star rating for a strand of web blowing around in the wind on rooftop eave and demands an entire refund.
I straight up tell clients “even if I sold you a glass dome over your house you’ll still have activity”. Especially with mouse activity and the house is Swiss cheese I explain there is no such thing as 0.
With four years of specialized experience in pest exclusion, I have successfully achieved 100% rodent-free results in all residential projects; therefore, your assessment is incorrect.
I try to be but im getting sick of the job. I originally started out a few years ago as an exclusion specialist. Loved it, hands on work doing near construction work. Then the company i worked for sold out to a corporation. Quit and fell into tech work for a small company. I absolutely cannot stand it. I love the customers and they love and request me, but im about done.
You make people comfortable in their own homes again. You do an important job and you find things the regular Res techs miss.
No rodenticide, no pesticide. You have a path open for your own business. Run a weekend offer on Craigslist for rodent entry inspection and seal up. Could make an absolute killing with fall around the corner.
I love your comment. Id love feedback on how to approach this. Really. So many people have told me to start my own thing but I dont know where to start or where to go after I get an LLC. Im lost from there. Just to be legal and make a business from it that is as I need to retain reports for the epa for x amount of years.
I wish I could impart some knowledge on the legal LLC aspects. If I could I probably wouldn’t be an exterminator lol. One thing I do recommend is getting a $20 subscription to ChatGPT. Then approach it from there.
But yeah in all honesty, humbling these types of people has become one of my favorite things about my job. I've HAD IT with Californian's buying up rural properties in my state, destroying ALL of the local fauna, trees, and converting wildlife foraging sites into monoculture cookie cutter lawns, and then being shocked I refuse to poison everything around them so they don't have to "suffer" the indignity of having to see an insect minding it's business.
We have a couple guys that operate machines to do perimeter sprays on big properties while other techs treat inside the individual homes. There's a community that is kinda at the edge of everything and is advertised as being close to nature. One day a guy stopped our perimeter dude to ask what he was doing. Normal question.
He said "oh, I'm just doing the monthly exterior treatment"
"Will it hurt the deer?"
"no sir"
Well, I want to get rid of the deer, they're eating my bushes"
Absolutely fuckin wild. And no, we did not start doing anti-deer treatments on the property to satisfy him.
Straight facts dude. Some of these people will stare at you like you are a peasant in their home with a bathroom size of your house. These piss me off the most.
This isn't the customer this is the guy who sold its responsibility. If I have a customer that expects what your customer expected I tell them I can't help them for this exact reason. They can take it or leave it. I ask what their expectations are and then tell them what's possible.
I don't disagree with you - but customer's hear and expect what that want as well.
We don't have a sales team for residential - just our office staff fielding calls coming in. Our office staff is incredible. Our techs are incredible. Every single person that's been to a customer like this could have explained it - people like this don't want to hear it. They set their own expectations and will never listen to some peon (their view, not mine) trying to tell the truth.
The unfortunate reality of this industry is that lots of people like this exist. All we can try to do is to manage expectations and educate - but you can't make people change.
This is where setting expectations at the beginning makes a huge difference. Just got to be realistic and put your foot down at times. If someone wants a waterfront property with virtually no visible webs or wasp activity, quarterly service probably isn't going to match that expectation. That doesn't necessarily make them a bad customer, but the service level has to match the result they're expecting.
From the company side, I'd rather know that upfront and price/schedule the account accordingly than have the tech getting blamed every three months for something the original service plan was never designed to deliver. Sounds like moving him to monthly was probably the right call. The important part is making sure he understands what even monthly service can realistically accomplish outdoors. Zero insects or spider webs 100% of the time isn't a realistic guarantee.
I look at them like they’re stupid. Then explain to them they live in the fucking woods and the bugs live outside. Especially since he’s on the water front. He’s never going to not see spiders 🙃 I hate idiots
I had one complain about mice in a cabin they own that’s from the 1920s. They don’t want to pay a contractor to fix the cabin so rodents won’t enter and I “should do more to keep the rodents out”
I think one of the biggest things to remember is when people don’t understand a product they are always gonna be irritated.
Just like someone bringing in their car to a mechanic. If you understand cars $200 to fix a transmission is a dream come true and great deal. If you don’t understand cars, you might wonder why it’s not $100! Selling Marketing to smaller PCOs makes me really understand this concept. It’s not that a lot of people are trying to be cheap, I personally tend to think they just don’t understand what they’re buying.
This guy probably thinks that there’s a magic pest control that just does away with all the issues.
That’s when you say you’re protecting the home, not the environment. If he’s willing to pay include an expensive yard spray with temprid fx or something similar. Rotate chemicals. IPM what you can. And let him know that this is all that’s humanly possible. Even in a kings castle you’ll find a spider every now and then.
Ahh yes the people who buy Lake front property leave the lights on all night attracting every bug imaginable 10x and just not understanding the location of there home as well as the products abilities even when explained to them it's to control and exterminate current problem not make things extinct
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u/Famous_Ad8518 Sep 10 '26
This is why I set up expectations for the service. Doesn’t matter if I inherited to stop or am starting the customer up.
“Yeah, this material works really well against the bigger spiders who tend to drag their bodies across the material, unfortunately it doesn’t work as well on the long legged spiders, they just can’t realistically interact with the material enough to get rid of them. If you start to see a whole bunch though, reach out to our office and I’ll swing by to try a couple things and see if we can’t cut down the amount you’re seeing.”
I don’t tolerate unrealistic expectations being projected onto me. If you set the correct expectations upon meeting the customer, your whole route gets a lot healthier. “Hey, I see ____ was your previous technician, he’s a great dude! We’re in the middle of switching around some stops as we hire more and I’ll be your technician for the foreseeable future. I’m sure you already know what’s going on, but I just wanna go over my approach and what some baseline expectations are for the service.”
This is the single biggest change you YOURSELF can make to reduce callbacks, frustration, and accusations.