Maintaining High Quality IPM Service

November 2024 Edition:

By: John Moore, MSc

In today's competitive market, businesses are often faced with the dilemma of choosing between a quality-based program and a low-cost, minimally compliant alternative. Unfortunately, many customers and companies do not realize the critical importance of prioritizing quality until a significant brand-damaging event has already occurred. Understanding the repercussions and benefits of investing in quality can prevent such detrimental outcomes.

So, how do you build and support a consistent high-quality IPM program?

Easy, it begins by understanding what the customer perceives or will perceive as high quality/value beyond minimal compliance needs.  Believe me, they have many more IPM needs beyond trap checking.  Once you have a thorough understanding of what those needs are, begin to build your quality service standards.  Set the bar high as minimum standards for your service expectations.

Once you have established what your minimal high quality service standards look like, you must over-communicate this vision to your team and train, train, and then add more training.  When you execute this high quality/value service it is critical to continually audit the process internally. You must verify that your team is consistently executing the program you are selling.  Remember, you are offering a premium program, you are not competing on price, make sure you are delivering what you promise.  This goes a long way in building a customer relationship based upon trust and integrity that lasts.

Lastly, none of this will work if you do not have a culture within your team that is focused on being better than the competition in service execution.  You must have the right people in the right place.  This team must have a common drive and vision to deliver the best the industry has to offer.  These people are usually self-motivating, strongly independent, and eager to put in effort to improve.  When you find these people (challenging but not impossible), spend the extra time, resources, and effort to continually develop their knowledge and skills.  This will pay off in a big way as they develop into your leaders in the quality service space.