HOW WE DO IT Listening to the Customer at RBR Snow Removal

Listening and responding to customer feedback or the “voice of the customer” has always been an important tool for any company interesting in retaining customers and acquiring new ones.

But with increased competition in the snow removal and landscape industries, interpreting and understanding this voice is now often the difference between a successful business and one that has its fleet of trucks parked at the office because they have nowhere to go.

At RBR Snow Removal, communication with our customers is the cornerstone of our continued success. To ensure customers are pleased with our services, we regularly ask them about their experiences with us. 

One method in which we hear from our customers is via a customer survey we send out at season’s end. We started sending out post-season customer surveys about five years ago after I received a similar customer care initiative from the automobile industry. I was so impressed by the car company’s effort to collect my feelings on my experience with them that it inspired us to implement this same marketing tool into our own operations.

RBR’s post-season survey provides our customers with the opportunity to tell us how we are doing, what they like and dislike about our services and what they would like to see from us in the future. These surveys are at the heart of our customer communications.

The survey, which takes about 10 minutes to complete and fax back to us, includes questions about response time, courtesy of our phone staff, quality of the services we provide, whether expectations were met, comparisons to other contractors they may have used in the past and qualities such as reliability, cost, customer service, equipment, and services they look for in a snow management company. Customers are asked to rate our performance from excellent to poor based on their answers.

Sent at the end of every winter with our final invoice (and, as a result, costing us next to nothing to distribute) to our 300 commercial customers, our survey comes back to us with a return rate of approximately 20 percent. Though 95 percent of the surveys come back with positive comments, we do receive negative responses, which we use to help improve our operations.

In one instance, for example, a client noted in the post-season survey that he wasn’t totally thrilled with our previous performance. With this survey information in hand, we were able to meet with the client, address the issues he expressed and eventually put his mind at ease. If we hadn’t solicited customer feedback, this client would never have told us about his negative experience and we would never have had the opportunity to retain him as a customer.

Our customer satisfaction strategy doesn’t end with our receiving completed surveys. The RBR management team reviews every response and then we have an open discussion about the feedback and what it means to our operations. If we collectively agree with any of the service improvement suggestions or requests, we implement them.

The survey also serves as the perfect sales tool. We use the positive feedback from our current clients and share it with potential clients. This provides them with strong testimonials, hopefully proving to them we are the right contracting company to partner with for their snow removal needs.

The author is sales and marketing manager of RBR Snow Snow Removal, Islandia, N.Y., and can be reached at 631/234-8288 or pat@rbrsnow.com.