Project scheduler

Clarke Ramsey, president of Le Perv Landscape in San Diego, currently has 15 crews using the scheduling software Crew Control. The company offers lawn care, landscape maintenance, landscape construction and irrigation services to an even mix of commercial and residential customers. The company has an annual revenue of $2.5 million.

To get information about their next job, crews receive a text message with a link instead of downloading an app. Clicking the link on their phone or tablet shows them the site’s address, amount of time estimated for the site, a map and pictures of what services to complete.

“It automatically optimizes the routes in a way that’s most efficient,” Ramsey says. “That’s increased productivity 25 to 30 percent.”

The software also has saved the company money on paper and ink and time previously spent on writing things down.

Answering service

Bryan Raehl, general manager at Agronomic Lawn Management in Chesapeake, Va., began using Slingshot in February to handle incoming leads, both on the phone and through online forms. The firm’s lawn care customers are about 90 percent residential and 10 percent commercial, and the company has an annual revenue of $10 million.

“We’ve always been big believers that the first one to give a quote is most likely to get the work,” Raehl says. “So, when we would come in the morning and see 50 missed calls but only 20 left messages, we wondered who were those other 30 calls.”

Now, when someone calls, a call prompt asks them to press “1” if they’re interested in getting a quote, which directs them to Slingshot’s call center. Raehl worked with Slingshot to convey exactly how they wanted the calls to be handled. He had a Zoom call with one of Slingshot’s representatives to go over a list of items like the services his company offers and how it wants the sales script to be handled. He can view the leads and information from the Slingshot dashboard via his desktop and listen to the recorded calls — and the company recently integrated it with its CRM.

The result? Agronomic Lawn Management has been able to capture more leads and even saw a 20 percent growth in revenue within the first two months while retaining the same closing percentage. Raehl says having the service has taken a huge workload off his team’s plate.

“If it wasn’t for Slingshot, we probably would have had to turn off our advertising and marketing and only accept organic leads,” he says.

Tree tracker

After looking for software that met the company’s needs for more than five years, Ben Cooper, general manager of Rainbow Treecare in Minnetonka, Minn., says his company began using Arborgold last fall. Arborgold provided the feature most others lacked — the ability to track services on a tree.

“We can review the history of what we’ve done with that tree or plant and communicate that from the initial conversation with the customer all the way through the sale and with follow-ups for years to come,” Cooper says.

Rainbow Treecare provides tree care services to residential (75 percent), municipal (20 percent) and commercial (5 percent) properties. The company has an annual revenue of $16 million.

Other features that have improved the company’s efficiency include scheduling with mapping, invoicing and the renewal process. Customers can simply click an email link to view the company’s recommendations, plant history, plant map and accept the work.

The company currently has 20 people in its pruning division who use the software and more than 100 users in the plant health care division, with most using tablets to access it.

“It’s made a big difference in streamlining all of the information,” Cooper says.