Short conversational video (April 12, 2023) in which Mike Andes and others discuss tactics to retain lawn-mowing customers during the offseason. Key practical advice: avoid notifying customers months ahead (doing so increases cancellations), give only short notice (a day or two before service), and treat first-visit refunds as a marketing/retention cost when customers miss or object to unexpected visits.
And you know what, why are you starting lawn mowing so early?
You've gone away from reactivating clients for any sort of seasonal service and just assuming that they're going to do it. And then the notice prior is simply, we're going to be there. Like the further back you go, the worse it gets, right? The further you get away from when the service is actually going to be, the worse your cancellation rate is. So mad. If someone's so mad about it after that first service, you've got no worries, Mr. Jones, we'll go ahead and refund you for that service. If you ever need us in the future, let us know. I'd take that as a marketing cost and then just know that you, you're going to be able to retain way more customers if you just roll right into it.
These contractors are notifying their customers three to four months before they were going to show up for their first service. I think a lot of contractors, we think about our industry so much, we over communicate with customers and they just get annoyed. It's like, hey, give me a day or two heads up when you're showing up to my property. That's all I need. And if we show up to a property and the customer didn't receive that notification from a couple days before, we'll just refund them the money for that first visit.
