Lose fewer customers, lower your costs, and swim further

Swimming long distances is far easier when you know how to tread water efficiently. The better a swimmer is at treading water, the longer the possible swimming distance.

In this context, treading water means maintaining your customer base, route density, and truck capacity, keeping your numbers in every route. Yet, every hauler faces this pure fact: In order to grow, or even stay the same, you have to first make up for the customers you lose before you can grow a route. Worse, it can be very inefficient and expensive just to breakeven! Is there a better way? Glad you asked.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure

How many customers do you need to add every year, in each route, to just tread water? That depends on 2 basic numbers: how many customers you have in a route, and how many you lose on an annual basis.

How many customers you have in each route should be an easy question to answer. If it’s not, you have some fundamental route management improvements to make (which we’d be very happy to help you with!). Now, here’s a trickier question: How many potential customers do you have in each route? And, as a bonus question: How many potential customers could you have if you expanded a route (assuming expansion is possible)? These questions are harder for haulers to answer (see below -”Route-Based CRM vs Generic”).

How many customers do you lose per route, monthly, annually? This should be easy too. But to many haulers, it isn’t. And, when analyzing how many customers move out due to (legitimate) moving out, verses leaving you for another hauler (for many reasons), the answer may be a even more elusive. A healthy business should be able to answer “how many customers are we losing to other haulers due to price?” or “customer service issues?” or “Missed pick up?” or “Move out (verified)?” or “Move out (unverified)?”

Data driven decisions, Business Intelligence: Be Smart. Or lose to smarter businesses.

By coding your customer losses, you can make the proper adjustments in your business from data, not just instinct. This type of intelligent measuring requires a CRM (Contact Relationship Management) system with your existing customers and potential customers, each with statuses tagged.

Quote: Business is easy when you have the right data IBM VS APPLE, AMAZON VS BRICK AND MORTAR

TrashBolt is a Route-Based CRM system that puts data in the hands of managers. Data allows for adjustments and staff accountability. Be smart. Use this data to maximize your customer base and route opportunities. If you don’t, your competitor will.

Move-Out Math

No matter how good you are, every hauler faces customer churn due to move outs. Depending on which studies you read, the average length a homeowner stays in their home combined with rental averages has a combined (weighted average) length of occupancy at about 7 years. With the proper systems in place, you should be able to answer “what is your average annual churn, per route” easily and correctly. This is a hugely important issue that every hauler must take seriously.

Let’s say you’re a hauler with 70,000 customers. The 1 out of 7 average homeowner/rental occupancy means that 10,000 customers will move out annually. That hauler needs 10,000 new customers just to tread water. This doesn’t include customer losses from other causes (see below).

Given the importance of Move-Outs as a customer loss cause, you should be able to easily answer: “How many customers are moving out of each of my routes annually? Monthly?” and and “What’s my cost to re-capture the move out customers (re-capture means keeping the service address; gaining a service contract with the new homeowner/renter)?” and “What’s my Re-Capture percentage -how many of the Move-Ins re-sign with my company vs the competition?” If you cannot answer these questions easily, you’re not measuring properly.

A CRM system that codes move outs as legitimate (or unverified) allows you to focus on re-capturing the new homeowner/renter with a targeted strategy. The new homeowner/renter is one of your cheapest new customer sources. The TrashBolt RouteKeeper™ system combines the CRM capabilities, tagging the move-outs and launching a targeted marketing campaign, with the Mobile friendly QR/Text technology outlined in the “Be Mobile! Or Die” article.

To Recap, RouteKeeper™ allows the hauler to place a QR or Text String on the physical cart. This can be done when the cart is purchased, or after the Move-Out is tagged in the CRM. A bright colored sticker can be applied to the cart with a simple (customizable) message to the new homeowner:

“Congratulations on your new home! We know you’re busy moving in, so please, be our guest. Use this cart for 30 days on us. If you want to continue service, please do! Just hover your phone over the QR code, or text this 8 digit string to 1-800-XXX-XXXX, click the link, fill out the info, and you’re done! We look forward to serving you!”

This is “quality” in today’s Mobile On Demand world. And, you just got a customer for very little cost. RouteKeeper™ will help you increase your Re-Capture rate while lowering your Re-Capture Cost of Sale. And, you will delight your new customer in the process.

Losing Customers

It happens. Why? Are you tracking every loss? If not, how can you effectively manage what you don’t measure?

Every company faces loss not related to move outs, but for what reason? A loss code in the CRM helps you manage the causes of loss. Poor customer service? Missed pick ups? The other company notifies me when it’s recycling week (TrashBolt!)? Something new in the marketplace (GarbageBolt for Charity!). What are the annual costs of each type of loss? What loss codes can you fix, are worth fixing? Who’s accountable? What can we change to mitigate these non-move out related customer losses?

Route-Based CRM vs Generic

Sure, there are other CRM’s out there. And some haulers use them with reasonable effectiveness. But, are they route-based? Can you answer, at the push of a button, how many customers you lost, and for what reason, in a particular route? Can you determine, quickly, how how customer losses are affecting your density and truck capacity? Is re-routing a pain in the …? By collecting this dynamic data set at the point of sale (and loss), making intelligent routing choices becomes a much easier task. As us how; we’re glad to help!

Advanced Move-Out: Import MLS Listings

What if you could find out who is moving out before it happens? You can! Get in front of the move-outs, both your customers and your competitors, by importing MLS (or other) lists into the CRM and viewing them inside and outside of your existing routes. Create marketing campaigns to grow your route based on closing dates!

Beat your Competition, one house at a time!

On a route by route basis, you might be competing for the same 1000 addresses. You may have 300 of them. There are 700 drive by addresses. One by one, campaign by campaign, you can win new customers/addresses while more easily keeping the ones you already have. TrashBolt was built to do just that!

TrashBolt. For Haulers ready to Win!

Brought to you by The TrashBolt Software Sales System.

Author: K Ryan Hasse. CEO SalesStryke Software, creators of The TrashBolt Software Sales System for Haulers, GarbageBolt, a national online waste services booking site, and GarbageBolt for Charity, the loving way to buy waste services.

K Ryan Hasse has started several companies, including several tech companies from capital raise to sale. He is actively involved in business consulting, helping businesses reach their goals. Most importantly, he’s a happy father to a special needs daughter whom he loves dearly. It’s all for her.