Are you tired of your crews sitting behind windshields instead of working on more commercial properties?
Do your lawn techs take care of an HOA in Town A and then need to drive to Town B to service a strip mall? And then, backtrack to Town A again to work on an office park’s property?
You know that this is costing you money in fuel and truck maintenance. Plus, you’re not providing the service that your commercial customers need.
Are You Losing Money and Have Unhappy Clients?
If your crews are backtracking and spending more time in their trucks than on mowing properties, you're losing money. Tack on high gas prices, and you’re even losing more money with all of this driving.
Plus, your commercial customers feel abandoned by their account managers. Supervisors don’t have a chance to check on properties and can’t take last-minute service calls because of having to manage properties that are on the opposite sides of town.
Read more: Create Added Value for Your Commercial Customers as a Certified Irrigation Contractor
You can solve this problem when you increase your routes’ density. You’ll be rewarded with lower fuel costs and more efficient work crews.
You’ll also be able to take on those service calls that happen at a moment’s notice. And you’ll hopefully have more commercial properties in a targeted area—rather than going back and forth from one city to the next and back again.
Your account managers can visit properties to make sure that customers are happy. Your account managers will be able to talk with property managers to see what needs to improve and what is going well for their properties.
Your supervisors can better manage mowing crews that are in the same area. And supers can make sure that all the work is getting done.
One way to improve your lawn maintenance company’s routes comes by investing in software designed for route density.
6 Benefits of Route Density
One business consultant said that less time in the truck plus more time servicing properties equals more revenue and profit for a commercial landscaping company.
You can map routes on your own using Google Earth, but you can save time and quickly reap the benefits of route density when you invest in software to help you design those routes.
Here are six benefits of route density:
- It reduces windshield time (your crews traveling in trucks) and saves gas simultaneously.
- Your commercial lawn maintenance company can deliver services faster to your customers.
- Your supervisors can be more responsive to service calls because there’s usually a crew or a lawn maintenance tech nearby.
Learn more: How to Gain More Profitable Commercial Mowing Contracts
- Your supervisors can maximize their time by overseeing many accounts in the same geographic location.
- Account managers can visit more properties regularly to monitor quality when their commercial accounts are in the same area.
- You can target your ideal customers by grouping them by customer type, profitability, and route density.
While it’s tempting to overhaul your current system, it’s better to switch to improved route density gradually. Again, landscape management software will help you do this seamlessly.
You can start building route density while researching your landscape management software options by putting new clients on similar routes.
You also need to prioritize excellent customer service communication. Most property managers will be willing to work with you if you keep them in the loop about your route changes.
For example, your customers may need to hear three times about the changes you’re making to your routes to stay more efficient. You can communicate these changes in newsletters, invoices, postcards, blasts, and blogs.
When you remain quiet or secretive about your route changes, you’ll find that your customers may not trust you and look to your competitor for better communication and customer service.
Learn more: How to Improve Customer Service for Your Commercial Landscaping Business
5 Landscape Management Software Products That Can Help You with Route Density
There are many field service management software companies on the market. You may know a few of them. However, you want to look for landscape management software even if you’re a lawn maintenance company.
Landscape management software focuses on lawn care and landscaping. Many seem directed to residential lawn and landscaping services, but you can tailor these programs to fit your commercial lawn service.
Likewise, some landscape management software companies target their customer retention management (CRM) programs to commercial lawn and landscaping companies.
Here are five landscape software management programs that have been in business for a while and have good reputations:
- Aspire Crew Control by Service Titan: This software program helps you schedule your lawn maintenance jobs and even handles any changes due to weather or other delays. This software will also help you with route density.
- Jobber: This business software management tool helps keep your crews organized, including each day’s job details. You’ll be able to schedule jobs more efficiently and optimize routes, so there’s less time in the truck and more time out in the field.
- SingleOps: This software tool helps you with mobile estimating and digital proposals, scheduling, time tracking and crew management, integrated invoicing and payments, and real-time business insights.
- LawnPro: This business management software is designed for lawn care companies. It allows for flexible scheduling for service routes, customizable invoices and estimates, simple online payment processing, and many more tools to explore.
- Service Autopilot: Another solid business management software tool for the green industry. You can become more efficient with their power tools: schedule jobs, use innovative maps, instantly invoice, sync your QuickBooks account and utilize GPS tracking.
You can save time and money by investing in landscape management software to increase route density and make more profits.
How MowMore.com Helps You Save a Bundle on Your Mowing and Edging Equipment
At MowMore.com, we’re in the business of saving you money. And in this time of increasing fuel prices, a labor shortage, and inflation, we want to provide replacement lawn equipment parts at a reasonable price so you can keep mowing more properties.
Our lawn maintenance products include:
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We’re your one-stop online shop for all your commercial lawn care equipment needs. If you have any questions about your landscape equipment and replacement parts, call our customer service today at 1-800-866-9667 or fill out our contact form.
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Source:
Capterra.com, Landscape Software.
LandscapeProfessionals.org, Building Route Density.