How to scale customer service and workforce enablement for your landscaping business

In the lawn care and landscaping industry, business owners constantly look for opportunities to expand into new services and regions. However, sustained long-term growth—when landscaping companies thrive beyond existing geographies and customer bases—puts a huge burden on HR departments and labor management teams.

Ensure your landscaping services have structure for growth.

The truth is, early on in a landscaping business’s journey, it’s easy to neglect the need for a scalable workplace structure. The solutions look as easy:

1. Make more hires

2. Increase services

But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Landscape business owners who neglect the nuance of proper scaling place their HR team, crew leadership, and entire staffing in an uncomfortable position.  

Define team needs before implementing a new marketing plan.

As an HR specialist or crew lead, the last position you want your teams in is being unable to meet expectations from customers or leadership. That’s why it’s important to advocate for your department’s needs before leadership gets ahead of themselves.

Two areas need to be addressed before a landscaping company scales or expands.

→Your ability to enhance customer service and remain responsive to growing customer needs.

→ Your ability to optimize your staff both out in the field and back at the office. 

Here’s what you need to know.

How landscape professionals can elevate customer service

Expanding into new territories means expanding into an entirely new world of skepticism. The regions you service currently:

• Know your business

• Know how you conduct services

• Have an existing relationship with your company

These factors all contribute to providing a privileged level of trust. Expanding takes all that away and sets your landscape and lawn care business back to the days of door-to-door sales pitching.

Going beyond typical marketing strategies

Your landscaping business can’t transition into uncharted territory simply relying on customer reviews and referrals to sway new customers away from your competition.

What you need are:

• Proven processes

• Increased visibility

• The ability to actively engage and meet the needs of new clients

A business truly ready to expand is responsive to customer needs throughout every level of operations. Your customer experience needs to be fluid enough to handle the increased nuances and complexities of expanding your business.

Cloud-based business management can help land new customers

Potential customers need a full understanding of your services and processes. The last thing you want is to lose a job because a client couldn’t access pressing information and instead found a competitor with the answers they were seeking.

Consider these business management tools to streamline this process: 

• Proposal templates: One that is easily repeatable and usable for various jobs so you can invoice customers with consistency and accuracy each time.

• A thorough FAQ section: You don’t want to overwhelm customers with information, but an easy-to-navigate FAQ can empower purchasing decisions from skeptical clients. 

• Client-facing access: Support and access for existing customers go beyond a simple contact number or email. You can’t have team members on the phone all day dealing with dozens of customer issues. The best way to provide customers the attention they deserve is with an online access point where they can view completed jobs and upcoming work, invoices, and claims and issues.

These tools better equip your team to tackle issues while out in the field, bringing us to the other side of scaling your business.

Enable next-level growth in your landscape business workforce

Your company needs to pay as much attention to your workforce as its customer base.

Expanding to new regions means a required investment in crew retention and growth. Increasing your team size may include the following:

• New hires

• Acquisitions

• Subcontractor

The bottom line is that your company’s ability to hire new employees is a make-or-break factor in expansion. As an HR or team lead, it’s time to step up and prepare your company for the incoming challenges. 

Empower good work from salespeople to crews in the field

Successful growth starts with your ability to support new workers. You don’t want to bring on a new team or make hires without proper support to encourage all your workers, from crew to office roles, to do their best work.

→ Use a system that allows cross-departmental communication and collaboration.

→ Set a company-wide workplace culture benchmark as a foundation for what your company should look like as it grows.

→ Prepare expanded management processes that new business and a larger workforce require.

Give your landscape business the tools it needs to scale seamlessly

If you’re still scheduling by whiteboards or notifying employees of assignments by phone or email, your business won’t operate at the speed necessary to facilitate a larger staff.

Bringing on a larger workforce without a scalable infrastructure will waste your investment and your staff’s time.

Increased hires or acquisitions should feel seamless, so everyone can hit the ground running versus getting held up in the onboarding. 

Use cloud-based business management software.

Consider taking your management online, where every employee can access the following:

• Details of current and upcoming jobs

• Weekly and monthly schedules

While management can have a bird’s eye view of it all to better:

• Optimize routing

• Schedule efficiently

• Respond to sudden curveballs with urgency

Here’s what you need to establish before scaling your workforce:

• Optimized team management: From scheduling to routing, you need a management system that works on the fly and is accessible to each team member, so they know where they’re needed and when.

• Enhanced HR services: Your ability to recruit and retain talent requires trained HR specialists. Employee churn can be a significant momentum killer for growth.

• Established culture: Everyone needs to feel supported and embraced, from office roles to workers on the job site. An inclusive environment may be the incentive talented employees need to choose your company over competitors.

These are the requirements for creating a cohesive team environment. If any part of your organization is still siloed or working independently of the rest of your company, then you’re not ready for more hires. 

Prepare your landscape company to scale

You don’t want to wait until you’re on the verge of expanding your workforce or landscaping services to decide to scale your business.

Being proactive with initiatives ensures you’re not missing opportunities when it’s time to scale because you’re not ready.

→ If your company hits growth benchmarks fast, advocate for your department's needs, especially if it affects how other teams do their jobs.

Let company culture take you to the next level of growth

As a leader of people, set a foundation for your growing crew. Establish your company values early, both internally and externally.

Culture sets the tone and standard for customer interactions and empowering employees.

From the structure of your values, streamline your services so they’re adaptable to new customers or regions and ensure easy onboarding for new employees.

If you haven’t yet, invest in your HR services. This isn’t the kind of investment that has to come in the form of increased headcount—providing existing staff with the right tools makes a difference.

Use our checklist to see if you’re ready for growth in your landscaping business.

Still not sure if you’re ready to scale your business? Download our checklist for scaling landscaping companies to identify where you’re at and what you’re missing.

Get the insight you need to hit the ground running. 

Growth in landscaping is a rollercoaster. Scaling for an expansion is only one piece of an ever-growing puzzle. 

If your company wants to accelerate on the path to increased revenue, consider downloading our Guide to Growth Hacking in the Landscaping Industry. It provides comprehensive guidance to scale your business at every organizational level and every growth stage. 

Use the form to tell us about your landscaping company, and get the guide in seconds so you can begin optimizing your growth strategies today.