Liz grew Augusta Lawn Care from 50 to over 500 customers across five cities in five years. She keeps them by training staff to fix problems fast, remembering what each customer wants, and making sure one person's voice stays consistent so clients feel heard.
Five years.
About 50 mowing customers.
About 150.
Over 500 recurring customers.
About five cities in their county.
After five years, you've kind of moved into a different role now and kind of get it to leave it. After five years of doing that, what would you say was like the number one thing you found to satisfy customers or to keep them coming back?
Good morning. I am Liz from Augusta Lawn Care. I'm the operations manager here. I've been here for five years. When I started, it was just Josh, Mike and I, we had 50 mowing customers. The next season we had 150, and now we're almost, almost five years later, and we have over 500 recurring customers. So we've come a long ways and we have built our customer base over several cities. We're about five cities in our county that we service, and we had just 2, 1, 2 employees in the beginning, and now we have, amongst all of us, I think our team meeting is going to be 25 with command and all of us field workers here and the office staff here. So did you have specific questions for me today, Josh?
Yeah. So I was wondering, you started off as just like the office manager and stuff, or like, just dealing with customers. That's all you did. So, like, after five years, you've kind of moved into a different role now and kind of get it to leave it. After five years of doing that, what would you say was like the number one thing you found to satisfy customers or to keep them coming back?
I would say that you need to really work on being highly emotional, have emotional intelligence with people and understand that they're just people and they're all coming from different walks of life. Some people are very busy. They're, you know, 45 to 55. They have. They're raising kids, they're busy. They don't want to deal with their lawn, and they just want you to take care of stuff, get it done, and they don't want to be bothered. And then you have older people who have time and they want you to walk around with them, and you need to really have situational awareness to understand situations. When they call. Sometimes people are on medication or need medication or have dementia, and you're working with all of that. Remember mostly that they're just people. And if you've messed up, if we make mistakes, be fast to rectify those things and empower all of the team to handle things efficiently so that when they call, they're not getting a lot of confusion, they're getting one voice. And if they talk to 10 different people, that they're still getting the same answer. I think the thing to keep them coming back is to have good communication. So as your team grows, they lose that little bit of a home feeling of being attached to the owner. And then for us, they were really attached to Mike. And then when they'd meet me, oh, I'm sure you're really nice, but it's gotta be Mike. And now I've moved out of that role, and, you know, it's gotta be Lee or Brandon called me, and it's gotta be Brandon. And you want them to still feel taken care of and supported and look them in the eye. And here we are to service you today and to just let them know that all the visit notes, no matter whoever comes to their property, have their preferences and what they need. So the customer always feels heard, understood, and their complaints are resolved quickly. And most of all, I would say, is to just remember that they're just people like you and me, get where they're coming from, what they need, and try to go to the point of their need and resolve things for them. Perfect.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Sa.
