Applause Co-Founder: Do This To Get More Reviews and Build Culture! - Chris Anderson - Pest Control Legends

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey there, and welcome back to Pest Control Legends.
I'm your host Danny Lebrandt, and today I'm with Chris
Anderson. Chris is the cofounder and VP of
Sales at Applause, the game changing platform that that's
helping pest control companies turn their technicians into five
star review machines. With a background in HR and
operations, Chris brings a unique perspective on how to

(00:21):
drive team performance, reduce turnover, and build a culture of
recognition. Under his leadership, Applause
has partnered with major tech players in the industry and
helped thousands of pest controltechs get rewarded for
delivering world class service. So if you care about 5 star
reviews and building a business your techs are proud to work
for, then this episode is for you.
Now, without further ado, Chris,welcome to the show.

(00:43):
Thanks Stanley. Happy to be here.
Thanks for the invite. Absolutely, of course.
So talk to me about the origin. Really, actually, just talk to
me about the early stage of yourcareer and how you eventually
got into applause. Yeah, absolutely.
So early in my career, I startedan HR consultancy where we
outsourced HR professionals to smaller businesses that didn't

(01:04):
have in house experienced HR. So had a lot of exposure into
the realm of employee engagement, employee retention,
how do we get our team to act asif they were an owner of the
business? So it always been something
that's a little bit second nature to me, on top of all the
compliance and legalities that also come with HR that are also,
you know, the tricky corners to navigate.

(01:25):
And while doing that, I actuallyconnected with my partner now
Taylor Olson, when he was running a, a call center.
He, he exited from that call center, had a great experience,
but he was running with running into the same issues, right?
Of hey, how do I get my call center reps to care about every
call that they take, right? And, and treat it as if it was

(01:47):
the, the owner themselves that was taking the call.
And he had a lot of systems in place to motivate and ultimately
incentivize the workforce to provide great service on every
interaction. But it was tedious, it was
cumbersome. It was very manual, right?
He's tracking all the different data points and then getting
those data points attached to some kind of a bonus, getting

(02:08):
that bonus into a payroll system.
And it's not an immediate delivery of, you know, the, the
spiff in that moment. So it doesn't necessarily have
the impact because it gets kind of rolled into payroll.
So him and I were always kind ofworking on this idea of like,
how do we create more incentivesfor these individuals in a way
that's, you know, immediate, transparent and it actually does

(02:29):
what it's intended to do, which is influence behaviors.
So with that said, he exited from the call center environment
and this call center environmentactually supported the pest
control industry. And he saw the same issue that
was happening with the technicians, right?
They're under appreciated. There's not a whole lot of
technology out there to kind of support their efforts.
And ultimately, they weren't necessarily motivated enough to

(02:51):
provide, you know, the quality service for them.
It was just, you know, I'm just going to check the box, I'm
going to get it done. This is what's expected of me.
I get my hourly rate, I, I, I complete my my route and I go
home. So what we started with was
actually this nuanced idea that,hey, let's introduce a
methodology that's really workedto elevate the quality of
service in the hospitality scene, which is tipping.

(03:13):
All right. So this, this new concept of
introducing tipping into the home service world allowed for
us to motivate the technicians in a way that they haven't been
motivated before, right? Because now every service to
them became more of an opportunity if and when they
provided a high enough quality service to justify some kind of
gratuity from the customer that they just served.

(03:35):
So we built out a system and a digital wallet, if you will,
that allowed for instant transfer and instant
deliverability of these funds. So while the technicians were
out in their day, they started to get these pings and these
notifications. Hey, I just got 10 bucks from
John from that last service I did.
So not only was it, you know, motivating to see that money
come in, but it was also these little reminders, right?

(03:57):
This little drip campaign that happened to the technicians
throughout their day that reminded them a every service
that I do isn't just something Ineed to check the box for.
It actually is an opportunity for me.
So we started to create these little business owners right
within, within their own serviceroutes.
So every time they went out to ahouse, it was, oh, I got to shut
the, make sure to shut the gate.I've got to make sure to clean

(04:19):
up the dog toys. I got to make sure to shake the
customer's hand and all the things that you want the
technicians to do. They started doing that with
just this little introduction totipping.
So tipping then evolved into this concept, OK, this is 1
metric that we're using and delivering a spiff on.
There's got to be other things out there that are important to
pest control companies and otherhome service companies alike

(04:40):
that are going to create that same kind of influence.
So we started to do a bunch of customer surveys, customer
interviews, and lo and behold, Google reviews, right?
It's the lifeblood of any home service business is a great tool
to measure not only the quality of the work being done by the
technician, but also just the customer sentiment, which can
also then be leveraged in SEO and outreach and just their

(05:03):
public channels. So we started then to see that
tipping was a little bit polarizing, right?
Some companies loved it and it was a way to supplement the
wages of their workforce, but others, they wanted this.
They wanted to be able to tip the technician directly from
their own pocket as a company, right?
They didn't want to have to ask a customer for a tip.
So they decided, hey, I want a bonus, the technician if they

(05:25):
get a good enough service score from the customer.
And that ended up being the review bonus that we created
this, you know, created a lot ofintrigue and excitement around
the technicians work again, where they again see every
services this opportunity, but it's contingent upon them
providing a very high quality service.
So that's kind of the story of how it evolved into what it is

(05:47):
today to where we're measuring anumber of different metrics on
top of reviews, tips, NPS ratings, etcetera.
And yeah, that's, I think what'screated so much excitement is we
he found out what it was that was so important to the pest
control businesses and we tried to build it an automated form.
Interesting. That was a really interesting
way you framed that, that the technicians are almost now like

(06:10):
a, a business owner themselves. And it's not not necessarily
like they have equity, but stillthey have some kind of incentive
to do an amazing job. I, I think that's really
interesting. And also not just with customers
tipping, but also that you can incentivize as the owner.
Can you talk more about that of maybe what that looks like?
Do you think most pest control companies should incentivize for

(06:30):
reviews or should they just get tips?
That's an interesting question. Now, I, I think that all
businesses should incentivize, but there is a key element to
that incentivization, which is it needs to be aligned with a
business objective, right? If we're just incentivizing to
incentivize, we're not really driving the behaviors that we
know we're going to make an impact for our business.

(06:53):
So we need to make sure that if we are bonusing that it's
something that we're bonusing onthat's going to make an impact
in a positive way for what we'retrying to accomplish with our
internal goals and internal operations.
So reviews aligns very nicely with that, right.
Reviews is something that's a good indicator that the customer
is happy. We can leverage those reviews
into new business through SEO and other optimizations, while

(07:16):
at the same time we're tracking the performance of our
technician. So there's this win, win, win
environment happening where if we incentivize on reviews, then
all these other things kind of fall into place.
So absolutely, I, I think businesses should be, you know,
basing their pay and their, you know, their compensation based
upon performance. Obviously you're always going to
have, you know, that base salarythat accommodates what the, what

(07:40):
the needs are of the technician.But now you're going to reward
those that go above and beyond, which is driving this culture in
this, you know, this environmentof performance.
So yeah, I, I think it's a greattool.
Obviously a lot of companies arecurrently using this.
The hard part about just the incentivized programs is similar

(08:01):
to what my partner Taylor ran into, right?
It's very manual, right? And before Applause existed, you
know what, a lot of what the companies were doing was a
similar program. They called it, you know, the
tip, your tech solution where they would bonus out on any
review that came in, but they'd have an administrative staff
that's going to review the Google reviews that are coming
in. They're looking for the names of

(08:21):
the technicians mentioned in thecomments.
They're trying to cross reference all that information
with what's found in the CRM based upon, you know, who the
customer was that left it and then they're putting it into a
spreadsheet, getting it into payroll.
So it's just a very cumbersome process.
So although it has, you know, a significant impact on the work
that your people do, oftentimes it probably isn't just worth the

(08:42):
time of maybe a, you know, an owner or just even a branch
manager to get, dedicate that amount of time when they could
be focused on other more important initiatives like
growing the business. So I, I do think it's important,
I do understand though, the perspective of a pest control
owner or a branch manager, regional manager, what have you,
of why they maybe avoid doing the, the spiffs and the

(09:04):
incentives. And they maybe pick one that's
probably most impactful because it takes a lot of time, right?
That's, that's a lot out of somebody's day to go through and
manually track all this information, get it up into a
whiteboard and, you know, try tobonus them bonus the technicians
out in a fairly reasonable timeline.
So that that would be my answer is yes, But I understand why

(09:25):
some don't is just because it's very manually intensive.
Yeah, no, I, I see a lot of companies struggle with that.
They, they're like, OK, I guess mentioned the, the technician's
name in the review and then we have to manually sort through
all the reviews. Especially if you're getting a
lot of reviews like pest control, you're doing you're,
you're, you have a lot of customers.
It's, it's not a lower customer base, maybe something like HVAC

(09:47):
or even roofing. So you have a lot of customers
to deal with. Some companies have thousands of
reviews. So it's really hard to sort
through those. OK, so you definitely, maybe not
definitely. But in most cases it does make
sense to incentivize, especiallyif you can use something like
applause. How is there like a sweet spot
for how much you should incentivize?
Should it be 10 bucks? 20 bucks?
I've seen some companies even do50 bucks.

(10:09):
Yeah, it depends on kind of the emphasis and the need, right, of
where your Google review systemsare currently at.
You know, if you're at a low rating with a low review count,
might be worth it to, you know, increase the amount that you're
willing to compensate the technicians for.
For every review that does come in, on average, any we see
anywhere from about 10 to $20 per review that that comes

(10:32):
through. And that'll vary based upon, you
know, how important reviews are to each one of the different
organizations. That's the beauty about our
system though, is it's a set it and forget it type of
environment, right? So our AI is actually doing all
the work that this administrative agent was doing
before we built an AI agent now to go through and make sure all
the matching is happening, that we're instantly delivering these

(10:54):
bonuses to the technicians. So that it kind of negates that
administrative burden that the companies are feeling.
You know, while at the same timecreating this better
transparency into the work that the, the technician is doing.
Because they want to know too. Like I, I want to know how I'm
doing. I want to understand my impact
on the business 'cause they ultimately they're pretty

(11:16):
removed from the business, right?
They're in their trucks most of the day.
They're siloed from the rest of the org.
So to create a culture around then that's tough.
Like, I feel for, you know, being part of the HR world.
I feel for these pest control companies, these home service
companies, just because it's, it's difficult to make sure that
your tech feels like they're involved.
It feels like they're contributing because they're,

(11:37):
you know, up in the meeting at the beginning of the day, but
then they're out in the trucks for seven or eight hours, you
know, providing all their services.
So, you know, very difficult situation to be a part of.
But yeah, I think we've we've helped out a little bit on that
front and creating a great culture of performance among
amongst technicians. For sure.
Yeah. I was at a mastermind a few

(11:59):
months ago, this Swarm mastermind, you might be
familiar. And I was talking with one of
your your. Yeah, Yeah.
But one of your team members, Andy and I was kind of under the
false impression that you guys were just a really good review
platform. You're it's kind of the same as
Gather Up or Bird Eye. But what he made me aware of
what we spent like a whole dinner talking.

(12:19):
What he made me aware of is thatkind of like what you're already
hinting at is that it's not justabout the reviews, like it's not
just about let's get as many reviews so we can boost our SEO
and get more customers. But it really actually the core
component is building your company culture of incentivizing
your technicians of creating like a what people call like a
five star culture. Can you, can you talk more on

(12:39):
that of like why that's so important and why that's the
focus? Yeah.
So reviews are an output, right.That is the result that a lot of
companies are striving to achieve NPS ratings.
That's an output, right. But to drill down and really
understand what is, you know, compelling customers to leave

(13:01):
reviews and compelling customersto leave high, high rating
services is it all comes down tothat initial interaction with
the technician, right? It doesn't depend on the owner,
it doesn't depend on the branch manager.
They're not having those one-on-one interactions or
they're not going to the homes of the customers directly.
The the biggest influencer in our companies that that is going

(13:23):
to be the technician because they're the ones that are having
the interactions and the and theopportunities to connect with
those customers. So that's what we kind of
determined is OK, there's there's reviews, that's an
important metric. You know, some are doing really
well, some aren't, some have incentive plans, some don't.
So what are the key differences and those that get a lot of

(13:43):
reviews and those that don't. And it all comes down to that
core issues is my technician incentivized enough to provide a
high quality service so that we qualify for more five star
reviews, right. Because if we're just asking for
reviews and not necessarily incentivizing on it, then
ultimately we're just kind of shooting in the dark hoping that

(14:03):
we hit on, you know, a, a customer that had a solid
experience. But if we're incentivizing the
behaviors that we know are goingto result in a good customer
experience, we just better our chances and converting on that
Google review. So, you know, again, reviews are
one aspect of the business that are really important that are
dependent upon whether or not a technician is providing a great

(14:25):
service. So that's why we focus more so
on the behaviors of the technician and incentivizing,
you know, their their day-to-dayso that we get the outputs that
we desire on the review side of things, if that makes sense.
Is there anything the technicians can do?
Like anything you guys advise regarding making sure that you

(14:46):
are worthy of that five star review?
Like I've I've heard some peoplelike Tommy Melo say, you know,
bring dog treats or you know, play with the dog or bring a
little goodie bag. Like do you, do you guys have
anything in that realm of like, how can we make sure that we are
worthy of getting five stars? Absolutely.
It, it comes back to the basics,you know, when it comes to the,
your training that you provide your technicians on some of the

(15:08):
things you want them to do on every environment.
One of the things that we hear the most about from a negative
sentiment is somebody's left thegate open, remembering to shut
the gate, you know, easy enough.But ultimately, if you leave the
gate open, you pretty much compromise your your ability to
convert on any kind of positive rating or even a A5 star review.

(15:29):
I would say that interacting as often as you can with the
customer in a way that allows a handshake, right, create a
person behind the service that'sbeing provided because that's
also going to have an influence.Part of our messaging is that we
try to inform the customer, hey,if you leave us a five star
review, we're going to bonus your technician 5-10 dollars,

(15:50):
right? So there's almost this play
towards the empathy that the person, the customer would have
for the technician and trying tocreate that relationship and
leverage that the relationship into something meaningful for
the business. The other thing too is just
making sure that they take greatnotes within their CRM or at
least they get the opportunity after the service is completed

(16:11):
to walk the customer through everything you did, right.
A, a lot of customers don't really have a whole lot of
insight into everything that happens when a pest control
technician comes on site and these guys are working hard and
they're doing a lot of good stuff for the home and
protecting their environment. But ultimately the customers
kind of, you know, removed from that, right?
They, they usually come when either the customer is at home.

(16:33):
So as, as often as you can, it'll try to either relay
through direct communication what's being done to the home.
Hey, you know, I, I found a few of these webs up in the eaves.
So there was some nests over here in one of the umbrellas or
something to that effect. So that they know everything
you're doing or in input that into the CRM.
So when a post service notification goes out to the

(16:54):
customer, they see exactly what you did in full scope.
So they understand the value behind the service that's being
provided. The other thing too is, like you
mentioned, I think Tommy mentioned, you know, bring dog
treats if you know they've got dogs, you know, gather up the
dog toys and put them in one area before you spray.
So they know, you take, you know, serious consideration into
the safety of their animals and their pets because that's always

(17:16):
a issue. And then just do the, the job
that you've been trained to do, right?
Make sure that you don't have toprovide any kind of reservices
in the future. Make sure you're thorough and
all your inspections of of the exterior of the home.
So those were a few of the things that we find usually
create a better opportunity to convert into some kind of five
star review. Awesome.

(17:37):
Yeah. The, the phrase that's ringing
in my mind right now is show that you care.
Like just all these little things, you know, you you can
come in and do the pest control service, but anyone can come in
and do the pest control service.But it it's those little extra
things of like we said, bring the dog treats or shut the gates
or, you know, organize somethingin the house or get a handshake,
like all these tiny things that they seem like they wouldn't

(18:00):
really be important, but they are important, right?
Like you need to establish that relationship and that
relationship is how you get thatthat review, right?
And ultimately it's not just about the review, but the
reviews, the outcome, like you said.
And then at least what tell me about how applause works of how

(18:21):
do you guys then generate those reviews?
So we had a great service, we did all these great things, we
established the relationship. Are you sending out a text, an
e-mail, phone call? How do you go about actually
generating that review? So again, back to the core of
what we want to create is we want to create less
administrative burden for, you know, any of these companies.
They've got enough on their plate.

(18:41):
They've got a ton of stuff to doand they don't have to worry
about it. They don't need to worry about a
lot of these a little, you know,minute administrative things
that need to happen in order forus to get that kind of input in
input from the customer. So what we do is we integrate
with the CRM and that gives us alot of information that we need
in order to create triggers and these triggers will then send

(19:03):
out a text message to that customer.
Now text message just being it'sthe best and most not not
utilized, but it's the highest conversion opportunity that we
have when it comes to asking a customer for something.
So with that text message that'sgoing out, there's a number of
different things happening in the background as well.
So our tool and our algorithm isgoing to identify the service

(19:26):
codes on which you want us to send out these messages, right?
So we're not just sending out messages to everybody that has
an interaction with us, but there's going to be specific
service codes that we identify that we send out on on on behalf
of the company. And then from there, the
customer is going to get a hyperlink that's going to take
them to a web-based platform. And that web-based system
doesn't need a login. It doesn't need any credentials.

(19:49):
It just starts the flow of us asking the customer for certain
things. And the beauty about our system
is it isn't just reviews, right?There's a number of different
outputs and outcomes that can happen after a customer
interaction. So what we've done and what
we've built is a prioritization model that allows for certain
sequencing. So for example, if we are

(20:12):
prioritizing reviews, that's really all we're going to ask
for upfront and out the gate because if we ask for too many
things from our customers, we'regoing to create for fatigue.
Right. They're going to maybe do one
thing for us, maybe 2, but 3 is just asking for too many things.
So on this interaction. We're going to.
Prioritize. The thing is most important and
usually that is Google reviews. But what our system does is it

(20:35):
starts to learn. We built that an AI model that
allows it to get smarter with every interaction with the
customer. So once we've converted on a
Google review, then we can move into other more or other
important things that we want toask if the customer, like maybe
an NPS rate right, 0 out of 10. That five star Google review is
important and it helps our SEO, but ultimately it's one and done

(20:56):
right. We don't get a, you know, a good
insight into the pulse of the customer and how they're feeling
about the service throughout theyear if they've already given us
that one review. So MPs rating is a great tool
for us to kind of keep tabs on our customers, make sure they
have a channel to, you know, communicate to us any negative
sentiment that they have about the service being provided so we

(21:17):
can rectify it. So that's one other option.
Some of the other options that we've incorporated as well are
other review channels, right, Google review, probably the £800
gorilla, but there's Better Business Bureau, there's next
door, there's Facebook. And what our system will do is
it'll cycle through each one of these review channels for you so
that you're always optimizing your ability to convert

(21:39):
something from the customer and not necessarily saturating and
ask where you've already got value from it.
So you can start to get a Facebook review, you can start
to get a next door review, etcetera.
The other interesting thing thatwe can do as well as we can
track with our our tools internally the customers
behavior and recognize the optimal time to ask for an

(21:59):
upsell, right. So you just had, you just gave
us a 10 on your NPS rating whereour model and our AI tool is
going to recognize that as, hey,this is a great opportunity for
us to showcase or educate our customers on alternate services
that maybe they haven't purchased in the past.
So our AI tool is actually goingto go into the CRN, It's going

(22:21):
to identify all the service codes that have been provided to
this individual, identify the ones that haven't been provided.
And it's going to promote some kind of a campaign that you, you
can create internally. But it's prompted by this
dynamic nature of recognizing those best opportunities and the
right opportunity that has the most in the most probability to

(22:43):
actually convert. So you know, we have a mosquito
treatment, get $10 off your first needle treatment.
We have a termite inspection, a free termite inspection.
You can prompt them after they've given you that 1010 MPs
rating. But again, it's all about the
timing of the, you know, of the moment.
The customer is best primed to receive some kind of upsell

(23:04):
opportunity. The other method that we use as
well as referrals. So if you know, an upsell
campaign isn't something that you're necessarily pushing right
now, you know, it's like always a great opportunity to leverage
an awesome experience from a customer and turn it into some
kind of introduction into one oftheir friends, one of their
family. So they can either submit a form
directly that has all the the, the referral details, or they

(23:28):
can use one of our hyperlinks that allows them to just post
directly to their social profiles.
So maybe they don't want to necessarily give somebody's name
directly, but they're happy to promote your services to their
friends and family on their Facebook account.
So again, there's a lot of dynamic nature that goes into
when we prompt for things, what we prioritize based upon what
the business need is, as well aslooking for those right

(23:50):
opportunities to prompt the right thing that will result in
kind of the best conversion of the thing that we are asking in
the call to action that we're providing to the customer.
So that's a little bit of how itworks on the front end, right,
of how the customer interacts with our system.
They can have a number of different asks, but they're all
prioritized, they're all consolidated.
So they're not getting peppered and bombarded with a number of

(24:12):
different asks at one time. Hey, it's, we have, you know, if
we're doing monthly or quarterlyservice, we have a few times and
a few interactions to convert ondifferent things.
So we'll, you know, we'll pace our asks to make sure we're
doing it at the right time. Now, from the technicians
perspective, we have a downloadable app similar to that
of like a Venmo or a cash app that allows the instant delivery

(24:33):
of bonuses tied to performance metrics that we're using to
determine whether or not they'redeserving of the spiff.
So in real time, the technician is out in the field and they can
see, hey, I just got a $10 bonuson the Google review from John,
the service that I just did, right?
So this creates like this littleshot of dopamine for them while
they're out in the field, right?They get a little excited.

(24:54):
They realize, hey, my work is appreciated.
But also it's this reminder thatevery service is an opportunity.
And that starts to condition thebehavior of the technician when
you have this transparency into the work that they're doing as
well as immediate spiffs associated with a good
performance. That's what's going to start to
shape their mindset when it goesto when it comes to every

(25:16):
service, right? It's hey, John isn't necessarily
just a customer that I need to service.
It's hey, it's an opportunity for me as a technician to make a
little extra money. It could be making money on
Google review bonuses. They can bonus automatically on
MPs rates, right? So if we were to get the Google
review from the customer, it doesn't necessarily mean we
can't make any money on them anymore.

(25:37):
It's, hey, if I get an MPs rating, maybe I can get a, a
dollar bonus. That's, you know, A10 MPs rating
equates to a dollar bonus for me.
A tip, right? You can have tipping activated.
This is a voluntary system that is, you know, very customizable.
So we don't have to be asking your customers for tips if you
don't want to. But it is a great tool to

(25:58):
incentivize the behavior of the technicians just because that
money is no longer coming out ofthe company's pocket to
supplement, to supplement the wages of the worker.
It's coming voluntarily from thecustomer, which sometimes has a
greater impact over the technicians.
You know, job satisfaction is knowing that the customers
really appreciate about their work.
So again, the the technician experience is designed to be

(26:19):
automated. It's designed to be, you know,
transparent so they can see in real time, you know where I'm at
on my reviews. And we've even gone a step
further in identifying other metrics that are important to
companies. And we've recently released a
tool that's we're calling scorecards.
And scorecards essentially is the the measure of the

(26:40):
technicians performance outside of the qualitative meaning like
NPS ratings tips and Google reviews.
Those are usually more of a qualitative measure of the
performance. And we've started to measure
other things like reservice rate, right?
Often times the technician doesn't even know what their
reservice rate is, but we've created a transparent tool that
allows them to see their percentage in real time.

(27:02):
Driver safety score, attendance,production value.
Even within the last little bit,we've started to release time on
site, route completion. And what we've done is allowed
for the companies now to bonus on any one of these metrics when
a certain threshold is achieved.So from the technician's

(27:23):
perspective, I can go into my app and see exactly where I'm at
for the month on my driver safety score.
Let's say I'm at an 89 and I need to get to a 90 and I've got
a week left. You better believe that I'm
going to buckle on my seat belt.I'm going to be easy on the
brakes because I want that $50 bonus associated with that
driver safety score if I get above a 90.
And we see significant impact almost immediately when creating

(27:44):
this kind of transparency and this kind of incentive to the
team. We had one group that started to
track the driver safety score and traditionally they were at
like a 75 and 80 couldn't ever get them to the threshold of 95
where they wanted them to be at.They had about 15 technicians
and once they rolled applause out, 14 out of 15 techs got

(28:04):
above that 95. Just because they created the
transparency. They didn't even have a bonus
attached to it, but because theyknew where they were at in the
month and we created a leaderboard to show them where
they stacked rank against the rest of their peers.
That competition alone fueled the behavior, the desired
behavior, which was that they wanted to drive safer.
They've since activated a bonus and that has got all 15 drivers

(28:27):
driving above like a 96 now. So it's just crazy the impact
that you know, the spiffs and the incentives can have when
you've created a method of transparency and instant
delivery for those bonuses turn a lot of mouthful like
customers. No, no, that was, that was
awesome. I love that.
Yeah, I'm, I'm fairly familiar with Applause and I've even

(28:48):
recommended to a lot of people. But even some of those things I,
I wasn't aware of, of asking reviews on different platforms,
me as an SEO guy, that is huge. And this is also something
that's becoming more prevalent. I'm not sure if you're aware,
but with something like large language models of Chach, BT and
Perplexity, Google's obviously going to prefer Google reviews.
But Chats, BT and these other platforms are kind of unbiased.

(29:10):
They're, they're pulling from everywhere.
So to get reviews and all these different platforms and really
what I'm collecting, there's just number one, do an amazing,
do an amazing job, you know, at the service and then #2 make the
most of those customers that youdo an amazing job for.
So absolutely love that. And like I was saying, really I,
and actually, like I mentioned before the call is I've heard so

(29:33):
many good things about your company.
Even when I was, when I was at Passworld about a year ago, I, I
told you the story that we were in a room, a woman was in front
of the room talking about all the top technology tools that
they're using. Someone asked about a review
platform and she didn't really have an answer.
But then everyone in the crowd is saying, oh, we use applause.
We all love applause. It goes to show you guys are

(29:55):
actually doing a genuinely good job and what you were just
talking about for the past 5-10 minutes, it shows you guys are
just way beyond all these other review platforms.
It's not just about reviews, butit's about all these other
aspects. It's about different platforms.
It's about building our culture.It's about, you know, all of
these different things. Absolutely amazing.

(30:15):
And something I did want to mention is that we actually do
have a referral link if if people are interested in using
Applause. So you can check that out in the
description or the comments because I am a huge advocate for
you guys company. I've actually never taken on the
sponsor before, before this, butif people are interested then
they can check out applause in the comments.
Something else I want to cover is how does this directly affect

(30:39):
technicians? Like how do technicians feel
about getting the tabs, about getting incentivized?
Like what does this do for turnover and overall culture?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, as you can imagine, when
you give technicians more money,they'll become happier.
So to answer that in a very short way, they're super excited
the the feedback that we have gotten from the technicians is

(31:01):
that they love the transparency and to the quality of the work
that they're doing coming from the customers.
That is probably one of the bigger impacts is, you know, as
you know, before we had a systemin place to transparently
deliver the feedback. It was they go through their day
and they might get like a, you know, a shout out every now and
again and like the company meeting.

(31:21):
But any positive feedback that'sprovided through an MPs rating
or a Google review, they get that.
And it just feels good, right toto hear from a customer that you
just yeah, did a service for that, that your your work is
appreciated. That all the, you know, the the
hard days of, you know, gruelingsun and, you know, just being
hot out there in the in the middle of the day that it is, it

(31:43):
is recognized. So that part of it was really
cool to see that kind of an impact.
Anecdotal. And then this is all kind of
anecdotal information, but we have a lot of technicians that
are kind of saving up their funds and their digital wallets
for special events and special things.
So you know, we had one guy thatwas saving up for the big screen
TV, right? This ancillary thing that he
couldn't have probably afforded beforehand, but with applause he

(32:05):
now can. Another guy was saving up for
his Christmas fund, right? He's just like this essentially
just pays for Christmas. It doesn't come out of my base
wage anymore. I can accommodate all the things
that my kids and my wife need just through the bonuses and the
tips that I received through applause.
So we, we hear those stories allthe time.
And that's really kind of what fuels us over here is yes, we're

(32:25):
doing great work for the company.
And you know, we're fueling morereviews and PS ratings, getting
better production out of the, the workforce.
But ultimately hearing the stories of the technicians of
what they're using the, the funds for these additional funds
for, while at the same time hearing from the companies that,
hey, we're happy to pay these bonuses to the technicians
because like I mentioned before the beginning of the call, it's

(32:46):
aligned with a business objective, right?
It's bonus scene on time on site.
We're bonus scene on route completion, bonus scene on
driver safety score on Google reviews.
So it's not just paying money topay money.
It's hey, we're seeing significant impact and
improvement and even ROI in a lot of these things just by
having these small spiffs that are immediately delivered to the

(33:07):
technicians. Now on the more quantitative
side of things, we see significant improvement in
customer retention as well as employee satisfaction and
retention. We work with a company called
Certus that many of you may be familiar with or one of the
larger organizations within the pest control environment.

(33:27):
And they started using Applause for about a year and they
reported back a significant increase on Google reviews.
But was what was more interesting is that they saw a
significant improvement on customer retention as well as
employee retention. And I don't want to boss the
number, so I'm going to get the numbers pulled up here so I can
share them with you. But they were really

(33:48):
significant. Find the case study here.
So yeah, Certus results from July of 23 to May of 24.
Their employee attrition droppedby 10 points, which doesn't seem
like a lot. But for a company like Certus
where they've got 3400 technicians, it's estimated that

(34:10):
each technician that you lose probably cost the company
anywhere from 15 to $20,000, right?
So you start to add up the numbers there, you lose 5
technicians over the year, you're looking at $75,000 in
cost. So we can reduce that even by
1-2. That's having a significant
impact, your bottom line and certicide 10 point drop from 30

(34:31):
to I think 39 percent, 29%. So significant, significant
decrease in their employee trend.
Just because the people that were working in these jobs, they
felt more valued, they felt appreciated, they were receiving
bonuses and incentives that elevated their ability to make
more money. So there was really no reason
why they would want to leave at that point.

(34:51):
Now on the customer retention side, we saw a 5 point
improvement from about 76 to 81%annualized, so about a 7%
improvement over all of the amount of customers that were
maintained. Now again, five points doesn't
seem like a lot, but this desertis five points is worth
more than $4 million in annualized recurring revenue

(35:15):
that was saved. And you being an SEO guy in the
marketing space, it also was an avoidance of a probable probably
like $1.7 million in cost acquisition.
So just significant, significantsavings just by instituting this
simple tool that's just, you know, automating the delivery of
spiffs, creating more transparency into the work of
the technicians while just driving the behaviors that they

(35:38):
want out of the technicians in away that they're happy to do.
So that that's some of the quantitative information
regarding some of the results there on employee retention, on
customer retention. What are the other great
indicators within the software environment here is just that
the what we track internally is how often are our users using

(35:59):
the tool? And for technicians
specifically, they're checking the app three to four times a
day. Now that is usually unheard of
in any kind of technician realm where you're trying to get them
to use any kind of software thatyou're, you're, you know,
rolling out for the company. But come to find out, if you put
money in an app, they usually check it.

(36:20):
So they're going in there to really cash out the amounts
they're receiving in real time. So they could be getting 3 or 4
bonuses throughout the day. And each time they're going in
there to cash it out immediatelyto their bank account so they
get access to it. The beauty about that is we've
got their attention, right, which is probably the hardest
thing to do with any, any kind of technician in the home
service business. So this is really why we decided

(36:44):
to branch out in this realm of scorecards is because companies
have always tried to gain the attention of their technicians
while they're out in the field with this kind of information,
but ultimately just kind of fallen short where it's in the
CRM, but the technician never sees it, never really interacts
with it. But because we've got their
attention, we built up these scorecards.
So now they're in the scorecardsone to two times a day so they

(37:05):
can see their performance in real time and all the different
metrics that the company is measuring.
So again, you know, the anecdotal information is there,
the quantitative information is there on the ROI and on the
review side of things, it's really, really interesting what
we see as far as the impact on reviews.
We did a case study with White Knight Pest Control.

(37:26):
They were one of our earlier adopters and they were using a
system beforehand where they hada text delivered with a link
associated with them going to the Google review platform in
order to leave a review. So not a whole lot of
differentiation there in the methodology in which we asked
for the review. But that on just to give you
some, you know numbers on 27,000services within the month of

(37:48):
June, they got about 191 reviews.
So on open rate, about 2% conversion, which by any
standard on the review side of things pretty decent.
So it's not, you know, outlandish to say that that's
that's a bad conversion rate. But when they switched over to
applause, some interesting things started to happen, right.
The technician became more awareof the service they were

(38:10):
providing because they were receiving the feedback from the
customers in real time. They got the spiffs and bonuses
in real time. So they're getting these shots
of dopamine throughout the day that fuel this desire to provide
a high quality service to qualify for more reviews.
They saw better notes in their CRN, which we're going to the
customers directly, which is something the company always

(38:31):
wants to see. But what was happening is the
customers started to understand the thoroughness that each of
the technicians took with their interactions with their homes.
So they're more likely to leave their reviews.
And on 30,000 services the next month, they did over 1300
reviews. So similar amount of service
count, but from 191 with a similar methodology sending text

(38:54):
messages. But when you incentivize the
workforce 1300 almost like A7X conversion.
Just when you start to incentivize and align some of
these incentives with the outputs that you're wanting,
which is reviews, which can be translate it to any metric that
you're measuring, right? You, you create transparency
into the measurement. You create some kind of an

(39:15):
incentive based upon a performance metric that needs to
meet, that needs to be met and your technicians are going to do
it. So that that a little bit of the
data to support what we're doingis make a significant impact on
the outputs as well as just kindof the internal operations of
what we're striving towards on customer retention and employee
retention. Yeah, awesome.
No, I'm glad you asked or I'm, I'm glad you provided some case

(39:39):
studies and success stories. I was actually going to get into
that. So that's awesome.
Yeah, no, I've actually done some work with Certus.
They're crushing it on reviews. So I'm, I'm sure that that had
something to do with you guys. And that increase in reviews, I
mean, that is just insane. Going from like 190 to 1300.
That is just like unheard of. And the way I frame it again,
I'm not, I'm not so much on likethe technician or customer

(39:59):
service side. I'm I'm on the SEO and digital
marketing side. But from what I've seen and just
I think this is just a fact thatreviews help everything.
Reviews help ranking, they help conversions, they help
retention, they help everything,they make everything easier.
So even though it is kind of like A1 sided metric that there
is a lot of other things that gointo it and we're saying that's

(40:20):
kind of the output getting a tonof Google reviews, like you're
never going to complain about getting more and you should be
willing to to pay for those reviews.
So I thought that was just so great.
And then something else I want to ask you is who does this make
sense for? So I think you guys started out
in pest control. Now you're branching out a
little bit. And I've heard like I think Andy

(40:40):
told me it's a little bit for bigger companies.
Like who does this make sense for?
Yeah. So the, the great product market
fit where you know, our our ideal customer profile is
somebody in the home services business that has, you know, a
recurring amount of services that are happening on a regular
basis. So not to say that we can't do
well in other environments like you know, the one off

(41:03):
installations of roofing or solar and home services.
There's just less at bats for usto convert on anything
meaningful for the company, right.
You have a roofing company that's doing 1-2 jobs a week,
whereas you have A1 service technician that's doing 12 to 16
a day, right? And that's just the one
technician. So the volume is definitely

(41:23):
something that is important to us so that we have most
opportunities to convert on reviews, on PS ratings,
referrals, upsells, whatever it is that you're after.
So that's first and foremost. The second is employees, right?
We are an employee engagement solution, an employee engagement
platform, unless you have employees, you know, might not

(41:44):
make the most sense for you to be like if you're an owner
operator, doesn't make sense foryou to be incentivizing yourself
with, you know, the, the Google reviews that are coming in
because that's just, you know, going to your pocket anyway.
So, you know, the, the thresholdthat we usually say where you
get the most value is about the five technician range.
Ultimately though, we can work with any hunting service
business and, and if it makes sense to them, then we'll have a

(42:08):
conversation about it. But that's usually where you
start to see the most benefit isaround 5 technicians.
As far as the industries and theverticals that we're targeting,
we're working in all of them. You know, pest control is where
we're heavily marketing, you know, we're heavily involved in
the events and, you know, podcasts and other outreach like
this. But ultimately we still get
interest from those outside of pest control.

(42:29):
We have about, you know, a number of lawn care companies in
the green space. We have a number of HVAC and
plumbing companies, even electrical as well.
And all the other ancillary homeservice business like, you know,
window washing hoop scoop. We've actually got a pretty big
amount of pet waste cleanup companies.

(42:52):
That's because they're similar in in the pest scene, right?
They're doing multiple services a day.
They're doing work that most homeowners don't want to do and
they're happy to, you know, provide some either gratuity or
happy to provide some appreciation for the work that's
being done. Pool pool cleaning company.
So any real home residential service business is really where
our our essentials products shine.

(43:16):
Now on the commercial side of things, that's where Scorecards
really shines because Google reviews NPS ratings, they're
important, but they don't necessarily drive a commercial
business like a residential business would be driven by.
On the commercial side, they seemore value in our Scorecard
environment where they're able to track the performance of
their technicians on time, on site, driver safety scores,

(43:39):
route completion, attendance, you know, those quantitative
metrics that indicate whether ornot a technician is doing what
we asked them to do. And there's two product lines
there. So you've got your essentials
package, which is like reviews, upsells, referrals, you know,
incentivizing the technician to improve their quality of
service. And then scorecards, which is
more the quantitative side of things where we can bonus on any

(44:00):
one of those environments. So you can have them both as a
bundle package or you can have them separately depending upon
what the need is of the company.So yeah, that's a little bit
about who would be the best fit.We have some that are outside
the home service vertical. But you know, again, we're
building tools and solutions around technician performance
and those that are in the field like field performance.

(44:24):
So doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense where they're not
getting the full holistic value of what we built here at
Applause, because you build is within the home services realm.
We find that having this hyper verticalized strategy of going
after this market helps us on a number of different fronts,
which is includes our product development, right?
We're not just going out there to picking and choosing features

(44:45):
with our team, just guessing about what the what our
environment needs. We're doing interviews with each
one of these pest control, lawn care companies, poop scoop
companies to understand what aresome of the, the gaps that exist
within your systems that we can streamline, that we can automate
to make things, you know, run a lot more smoothly.
And that just helps us, you know, build a product that
really resonates with the environment, which is why at

(45:08):
Pest world, you probably heard alot of people, you know,
clamoring about applause. Whereas in any other industry
vertical, you probably wouldn't hear anything about us is
because we're hyper verticalizedwithin home services to make
sure that we're building a product that really resonates
with them. So kind of a long winded answer
of who the the great customer profile is, but that's that's
who we think is the the best, That's what the best use case

(45:31):
would be. Definitely love that.
OK, so should be 5 technicians or more and should be a home
service company that may be outside of that, but usually
anything in home services. OK, awesome.
Well, I think this is a great show.
I'll, I'll end off with one final question which I like to
ask my guests, which is what is your final message for pest
control owners or for home service business owners?

(45:53):
What do they need to know? What do you want to tell them?
What What is your final message for them?
Yeah. The final message for them is
your technicians do great work and often times you're too busy
to acknowledge or provide that kind of Atta boy and that pat on
the back for the work that's being done.
But look for those ways to encourage these behaviors of

(46:15):
your technicians and know that they are appreciated.
Whether you use our system or some other internal program,
these guys deserve a lot of recognition, right?
They are the lifeblood of your business.
They're the ones that are interacting with your customers
on a regular basis. So as much and as often as you
can, show appreciation for the hard work that they do.

(46:37):
And ultimately, I think it'll pay dividends regardless of the
method that you do it in. Awesome.
Cool. I think that was a great show.
Thanks so much for coming on, Chris.
Usually I have my my guests plugtheir link or whatever they want
to plug right now, but I will provide the link in the
description. So we'll have that in the
description and the comments. So if you want to work with
Applause and you can go ahead and go there or just Applause,

(46:59):
hq.com. And Chris, where can people find
you on social media, connected to you and anything else you'd
like to pluck? Yeah, so we're on Facebook.
You know, our website's probablygoing to be the best place,
place to be going to applausehq.com.
We're also going to be attendinga number of events.
You know, it's a great time for us to interact with you guys in
a face to face environment. So Pest World, any of the NPMA

(47:20):
events. So we're we're always going to
be at those. So if you ever wonder if we're
there, just try to look for our booth, come and say hi to us and
we'll be happy to have a conversation with you.
Awesome. Well, as I mentioned, I'm a huge
advocate for applause. I've heard nothing but good
things. You're totally crushing it and
just having you on the show today.
I'm like, Dang, you guys really know what you're doing.
This is like, this is totally not next level.

(47:43):
I don't know anyone in the home services space that's doing
this. So I'm wishing the best for you
guys and I think you're really going to take over the whole
home services space, not just pest control.
I appreciate that, Danny. Yeah, The more impact we can
make in technicians lives, it makes us happy.
So that'd be awesome if that could happen.
Definitely. Well, thanks again so much for
coming on, Chris. It's been a pleasure.
Likewise, Danny, thanks for having us.

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Applause Co-Founder: Do This To Get More Reviews and Build Culture! - Chris Anderson

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Applause Co-Founder: Do This To Get More Reviews and Build Culture! - Chris Anderson