Happy Customers, Happy Employees
How Colonial Lawn & Garden Thrives With RealGreen
The Company:
Founded in 1985, Colonial Lawn & Garden provides lawn care, tree and shrub care, sprinkler maintenance, pest control, lawn maintenance, and additional services, including aeration, irrigation design, installation and repair, landscape enhancements, and more. They are based in central Washington and have been a RealGreen customer since 2001.
Around a decade ago, Colonial adjusted its business model. “In the past, we would do anything for anyone,” says Chief Operating Officer Nathan Colby. “So if someone called and said, ‘I have a snake in my closet, can you take care of it?’, we would. What we found, though, is that with only so many employees, we have to limit the number of services. If you’re going to say yes to everyone, you’re going to end up saying no to a lot of people.” The company dealt with many time-consuming, one-off jobs that did not result in repeat business — and often resulted in unpaid bills. “I would say 20% of people took up 80% of our work at the time.”
Based on that, Colonial changed their perspective. They’ll still provide just about any service for their clients as long as they are signed up for one of Colonial’s core service programs. “It’s a partnership that we build,” continues Colby. “Not only does this help us satisfy our clients so that we can invest in them without either of us feeling short-changed, but we protect our time, our staff, and our inventory of services in a way that helps us grow at a pace that makes sense.”
The Problem: Double-entry inefficiencies
Over the past ten years, Colonial has used Mobile Live for its lawn care technicians. Initially, not all technicians transitioned to this system—their mowing, trimming, and irrigation technicians continued using paper until this year. While the lawn care technicians were using Mobile Live, they still carried paper backups in case the network went down. Their process involved the technicians completing all production tasks on their mobile devices and storing the data without posting it immediately. The following day, their office staff would review the entries, make necessary updates—such as correcting times or materials—and then post the production data.
“It was almost a double data entry, and it was working great,” says Colby. But it created a lot of work for the office staff, who were already busy enough handling the phones. “We’re calling hundreds of customers every day, notifying them of their services, and then we’re posting hundreds of hours of production. We’re also fielding hundreds of calls a day from clients asking for additional services.”
The Solution: Using all the tools in the tool belt
Colby decided to attend WorkWave’s Beyond Service User Conference to learn more about using RealGreen’s suite of solutions to their best advantage: “Our mission was: How do we leverage what we have to make it easier and better for us as a company?” Armed with the knowledge picked up from learning sessions and networking at User Conference, the team at Colonial had a number of things they wanted to implement in the next few months. “Each one has been an asset to us,” continues Colby. “We’ve been really excited about the direction we’re going.”
Colonial has leveraged several new products and services in 2024. They’ve started using Automated Marketing Assistant (AMA), working with Coalmarch, and implementing Applause. And they’ve put into place an extensive staff training program to promote sales on Mobile Live and posting production in the field.
“What we found was that as long as you have trainable employees, people willing to learn and understand the vision of where we’re going as a company, you can serve clients at a higher level. We had training sessions with each individual department so we could answer their specific questions. The benefits have been huge: The team took it to heart and embraced it, which has been exciting.”
The Results: “Our company doesn’t look anything like it did last year.”
Colby says the company has experienced seismic ripple effects in the months since.
Intensive mobile training has improved the staff and customer experience, leading to a 100% staff retention rate in 2024 for a company that ended 2023 with a 76% retention rate. “Now, the technicians know everything the office staff knows. That’s a big transition, but they have direct access and the ability to affect our customer service directly, and there’s no gatekeeper,” says Colby. “It’s also huge for our clients. We have never had such great feedback from our clients; they’re so excited about this change because they can see how great the results have been.”
Another reason clients have been even happier this year: Colonial’s use of AMA for improved customer communication. “One big thing we have learned is that communication is key.” Through AMA, Colonial sends pre- and post-service emails as well as billing notification emails. “Let [the client] know you’re going to be doing something, then let them know you got it done. Everything is seamless,” continues Colby. “It makes it easy for the client — I don’t have to interrupt their life with a phone call. It makes it less stressful for the office staff. Yes, there’s less human interaction, but there’s actually more communication than there was before.”
Colby says the company can tell that client satisfaction is at an all-time high because of their increase in excellent Google reviews — an uptick he attributes to Colonial’s use of RealGreen’s partner, Applause. “We have found that our Google reviews have skyrocketed. If you need Google reviews, you have to be on Applause. That’s all there is to it.”
Increased efficiencies led to more space for company growth, so Colonial also worked with RealGreen’s marketing partner, Coalmarch, to create a Customer Profile. “They looked at our database, defined who our client is, and then we purchased leads based on that ideal client,” according to Colby. “Our sales team has been knocking on the doors of those potential clients, something we didn’t even have time to think about before — never before have we done a marketing project in July when we are just swamped.”
Ultimately, big changes for this 40-year-old company led to massive increases in efficiency and production and a corresponding reduction in skipped services: Colonial has seen year-over-year production go up by 20%, while skipped program/service count is down by more than 20%. Thanks to RealGreen, Colby says, “Our company doesn’t look anything like it did last year.”
