How A Lawn Care and Pest Control Company Grew Their Business Using RealGreen’s Automated Marketing Assistant® and Customer Assistant® Websites

Case Study: Tuff Turf Molebusters

80%

Reduction in Printed Estimates

80%

Increase in Credit Card Payments

About Tuff Turf Molebusters

Industry: Lawn Care & Landscaping

Not long after launching Tuff Turf, owner Jim Zylstra started using
RealGreen software to help manage his new lawn care
and pest control business. More than 26 years later, the company
has grown to include 30 employees serving 4,500 customers
across the state of Michigan. And Tuff Turf still relies on Real
Green. Why? It’s simple. Because RealGreen makes it
easy to run and grow the business.

According to Zylstra, it was never a question of which software he
would use. Signing on with RealGreen was a given; he had used
it previously at a different company and was already familiar with
the platform. Today, he considers himself a “power user” who
understands the software better than just about anyone. While
they have used most of RealGreen’s solutions over the years.
the ones they see the most value from our Automated Marketing
Assistant (AMA) and Customer Assistant Website (CAW).

The Challenge

A steadily growing company creates its own unique challenges. With more estimates, more sales and more customers, paperwork and organizational burdens increase – creating extra office work and general inefficiencies. With so many hours spent organizing paperwork and trying to keep on top of customer communications, documenting, storing and tracking customer information becomes its own burden (and its own barrier to providing excellent customer service). And paper checks arriving by mail increase payment processing time, creating the need for a customer auto-pay option.

Many hours spent organizing paperwork
Increasing Customer Communications Became a Burden
Paper Checks Increased Payment Processing Time

The Solution

Automated Marketing Assistant (AMA) works with Service Assistant to send marketing messages to customers and potential customers. Each message is auto-generated and sent based on triggers gathered from daily data input by production, office and sales teams. AMA offers more than 50 “set it and forget it” messages, including email marketing, customer prepay, service and new order customization, custom customer alerts, rejected email letters and automated follow-ups. It works in tandem with a Customer Assistant Website (CAW), where customers can easily access their account information: Monthly billing, service history, next service scheduled, the ability to request additional services and more. Like AMA, CAW syncs daily with Service Assistant, ensuring that all customer data is up to date.

Service Assistant® Centralized All Customer Information
Routing Assistant Automated Route Planning
Measurement Assistant® Automated Estimate Creation

The Results

“We have such good systems in place with AMA and CAW, I almost don’t have to think about it any more,” said Zylstra. Tuff Turf uses AMA for neighbor marketing, estimate follow-up, pre-notifications and emailing invoices. With AMA, Tuff Turf can send out a team, have the team perform a service and invoice the client, all without any paperwork. If the client is registered through CAW, the system automatically charges their credit card. “We don’t hang paperwork any more,” explained Zylstra, noting that during COVID-19, the company completely eliminated in-person paper invoicing and was able to do so without a hiccup.

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““I would recommend RealGreen for any business
that has multiple clients and multiple customers where you need to organize and track information”

Jim Zylstra
Tuff Turf Molebusters

The Value

According to Zylstra, “CAW is very helpful – the automatic promotions, the syncs, the automatic bill payment. Plus it’s great for people to be able to go on the website themselves, pay for their own services and sign up for services.” CAW significantly reduces call volume into the company, which saves personnel hours and makes running the business more efficient. And it is a boon for cash flow. Zylstra estimates that up to 80% of Tuff Turf’s current customers pay via credit card, and half of those are prepay customers. He notes that it’s a very big difference from the days where stacks of checks would come every day in the mail, and then they would have to take the time to process each one. Now, only two or three checks come in the mail every day. “The whole thing is so much faster and more efficient and there’s less room for human error, too.”

Tuff Turf Molebusters success using RealGreen software for pest control. lawn care and landscaping.

“I would recommend RealGreen for any business that has multiple clients and multiple customers where you need to organize and track information,” says Zylstra. “Every call is logged, every concern, every contact – we can see that and keep track of it. So when a customer gets in touch with us, we know their name. Their spouse’s name. Their dog’s name. And everything about their property: Fences, underground sprinklers, invisible dog fences, whether they are on a septic tank or city water. All of that information and more is flag coded or has a note in the system. All of this means that we can create a much more personal connection with each customer. And that’s better for customer service, customer interactions and customer relationships.”

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