Chris Anderson of Applause on Why Great Reviews Start With Your Technicians

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey there and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host, Dan Leibrandt, and today I'm with Chris Anderson. Chris is the co-founder and VP of sales at Applause, the game-changing platform that's helping pest control companies turn their technicians into five-star review machines. With a background in HR and operations, Chris brings a unique perspective on how to drive team performance, reduce turnover, and build a culture of recognition. Under his leadership, Applause has partnered with major tech players in the industry and helped thousands of pest control techs get rewarded for delivering world-class service. So if you care about five-star reviews, and building a business your techs are proud to work for, then this episode is for you. Now without further ado, Chris, welcome to the show.

00:43 Chris Anderson

Thanks, Dan, happy to be here. Thanks for the invite.

00:46 Dan Leibrandt

Absolutely, of course. So talk to me about the origin, really actually just talk to me about the early stage of your career and how you eventually got into Applause.

00:55 Chris Anderson

Yeah, absolutely. So early in my career, I started an HR consultancy where we outsourced HR professionals to smaller businesses that didn't have in-house experience to HR. So had a lot of exposure into the realm of employee engagement, employee retention. How do we get our team to act as if they were an owner of business so it's been something that's a little bit second nature to me on top of all the compliance and legalities that also come with HR that are also you know the tricky corners to navigate and while doing that I actually connected with my partner now Taylor Olson when he was running a call center. He exited from that call center, had a great experience, but he was running into the same issues of, hey, how do I get my call center reps to care about every call that they take and treat it as if it was the owner themselves that was taking the call? And he had a lot of systems in place to motivate and ultimately incentivize the workforce to provide great service on every interaction, but it was tedious, it was cumbersome, it was very manual. All the different data points and then getting those data points attached to some kind of a bonus, getting that bonus into a payroll system. And it's not an immediate delivery of the spiff in that moment. So doesn't necessarily have the impact because it gets kind of rolled into payroll. So him and I were always kind of working on this idea of like, how do we create more incentives for these individuals in a way that's immediate, transparent, and that actually does what it's intended to do, which is influence behaviors. So with that said, he exited from the call center environment and this call center environment actually supported the pest control industry and he saw the same issue that was happening with the technicians right there underappreciated there's not a whole lot of technology out there to kind of support their efforts and Ultimately, they weren't necessarily motivated enough to provide, know the quality service for them It was just you know, I'm just gonna check the box. I'm gonna get it done. This is what's expected of me I get my hourly rate. I Complete my route and I go home so what we with was actually this nuanced idea that hey let's introduce a methodology that's really worked to elevate the quality of service in the hospitality scene which is tipping. So this new concept of introducing tipping into the home service world allowed for us to motivate the technicians in a way that they haven't been motivated before. Because now every service to them became more of an opportunity if and when they provided a high enough quality service to justify some kind of gratuity from from the customer that they just served. So we built out a system and a digital wallet, if you will, that allowed for instant transfer and instant deliverability of these funds. So while the technicians were out in their day, they started to get these pings and these notifications. Hey, I just got 10 bucks from John from that last service I did. So not only was it motivating to see that money come in, but it was also these little reminders, right? This little drip campaign that happened to the technicians throughout their day that reminded them, hey, service that I do isn't just something I need to check the box for it actually is an opportunity for me So we started to create these little business owners right within within their own service routes So every time they went out to a house it was I got to shut the should make sure to shut the gate I've got to make sure to clean up the dog toys I got to make sure to shake the customer's hand you know all the things that you want the technicians to do they started doing that with just this little introduction to tipping so Tipping then evolved into this concept. Okay, this is one metric that we're using and delivering a spiff on, there's got to be other things out there that are important to pest control companies and other home service companies alike that are going to create that same kind of influence. So we started to do a bunch of customer surveys, customer interviews, and lo and behold, Google reviews, right? It's the lifeblood of any home service business is a great tool to measure not only the quality of the work being done by the technician, but also just the customer sentiment, which can also then be leveraged in SEO and outreach and just public channels. So we started then to see that tipping was a little bit polarizing, right? Some companies loved it and it was a way to supplement the wages of their workforce, but others they wanted this, they wanted to be able to tip the technician directly from their own pocket as a company, right? They didn't want to have to ask a customer for a tip, so they decided, hey I want a bonus the technician if they get a good enough service score from the customer.

05:29 Chris Anderson

And that ended up being the review bonus that we created that's created a lot of intrigue and excitement around the technicians work again where they again see every service as this opportunity, but it's contingent upon. Than providing a very high quality service. So that's kind of the story of how it evolved into what it is today. It's where we're measuring a number of different metrics on top of reviews, tips, NPS ratings, et cetera. Yeah, I think what's created so much excitement is we found out what it was that was so important to the pest control businesses and we tried to build it in automated form.

06:05 Dan Leibrandt

Interesting. That was a really interesting way you framed that, the technicians are almost now like a business owner themselves. And it's not necessarily like they have equity, but still they have some kind of incentive to do an amazing job. I think that's really interesting. And also not just with customers tipping, but also that you can incentivize as the owner. Can you talk more about that of maybe what that looks like? Do you think most pest control companies should incentivize for reviews or should they just get tips?

06:33 Chris Anderson

That's an interesting question. Now, I think that all businesses should incentivize, but there is a key element to that incentivization, which is it needs to be aligned with a business objective. Right? If we're just incentivizing to incentivize, we're not really driving the behaviors that we know are going to make an impact for our business. So we need to make sure that if we are bonus, that it's something that we're bonusing on that's going to make an impact in a positive way for what we're trying to accomplish with our internal goals and internal operations. So reviews aligns very nicely with that, right? Reviews is something that's a good indicator that the customer is happy. We can leverage those reviews into new business, the RACIO and other optimizations, while at the same time we're tracking the performance of our technicians. So there's this win-win-win environment happening where we incentivize on reviews, then all these other things kind of fall into place. So absolutely, think businesses should be basing their pay and their compensation based upon performance. Obviously, you're always going to have that base salary that accommodates what the needs are of the technician, but now you're going to reward... That go above and beyond, which is driving this culture and this environment of performance. So yeah, I think it's a great tool. Obviously a lot of companies are currently using this. The hard part about just the incentivized programs is similar to what my partner Taylor ran into, right? It's very manual, right? And before Applause existed, you know, a lot of what the companies were doing was a similar program. They called it, you know, the tip your tech solution where they would bonus out on any review that came in. But they'd have an administrative staff that's going to review the... That are coming in, they're looking for the names of the technicians mentioned in the comments, they're trying to cross-reference all that information with what's found in the CRM based upon who the customer was that left it, and then they're putting it into a spreadsheet, getting it into payroll, so it's just a very cumbersome process. So although it has a significant impact on the work that your people do, oftentimes it probably isn't just worth the time of maybe an owner or...

08:44 Chris Anderson

Or just even a branch manager to dedicate that amount of time when they could be focused on other more important initiatives like growing the business. So, yeah, I do think it's important. I do understand, though, the perspective of a pest control owner or a branch manager, regional manager, what have you, of why they maybe avoid doing the spiffs and the incentives, and they maybe pick one that's probably most impactful, because it takes a lot of time. That's a lot out of somebody's day to go through and manually track all this information, get it up into a whiteboard and try to bonus the technicians out in a fairly reasonable timeline. So that would be my answer is yes, but I understand why some don't is just because it's very manually intensive.

09:29 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, I see a lot of companies struggle with that. They're like, okay, I guess mention the technician's name and the review, and then we have to manually sort through all the reviews. Especially if you're getting a lot of reviews, like Pest Control, you're doing, you have a lot of customers. It's not... A lower customer base, maybe something like HVAC or even roofing. So you have a lot of customers to deal with. Some companies have thousands of reviews. So it's really hard to sort through those. Okay, so you definitely, maybe not definitely, but in most cases, it does make sense to incentivize, especially if you can use something like Applause. Is there like a sweet spot for how much you should incentivize? Should it be 10 bucks, 20 bucks? I've seen some companies even do 50 bucks.

10:09 Chris Anderson

Yeah, it depends on kind of the emphasis and the need, right, of where your Google review systems are currently at. You know, if you're at a low rating with a low review count, might be worth it to, you know, increase the amount that you're willing to compensate the technicians for for every review that does come in. On average, we see anywhere from about $10 to $20 per review that comes through, and that'll vary based upon, you know, how... Important reviews are to each one of the different organizations. That's the beauty about our system though is it's a set it and forget it type of environment, right? So our AI is actually doing all the work that this administrative agent was doing before. We built an AI agent now to go through and make sure all the matching is happening. Instantly delivering these bonuses to the technicians. So it kind of negates that administrative burden that the companies are feeling, you know, while at the same time creating this better transparency into the work that the technician is doing. Because they want to know too, like I want to know how I'm doing. My impact on the business because they ultimately they're pretty removed from the business right there in their trucks most of the day they're siloed from the rest of the org so to create a culture around that that's tough like I feel for you know being part of the HR world I feel for these pest control companies these home service companies just because it's difficult to make sure that your tech feels like they're involved it feels like they're contributing because they're you know up in the meeting at the beginning of the day but then they're out in the trucks for seven or eight hours providing all their services. So, you know, very difficult situation to be a part of, yeah, I think we've helped out a little bit on that front in creating a great culture of performance amongst technicians.

12:00 Dan Leibrandt

For sure. Yeah, I was at a Mastermind a few months ago, the Swarm Mastermind, you might be familiar. And I was talking with one of your, yeah, yeah, one of your team members, Andy. And I was kind of under the false impression that you guys were just a really good review platform. It's kind of the same as GatherUp or Birdeye. But what he made me aware of, we spent like a whole dinner talking, what he made me aware of is that, kind of like what you're already hinting at is that it's not just about the reviews. Like it's not just about let's get as many reviews so we can boost our SEO and get more customers, but it really, actually the core component is building your company culture of incentivizing your technicians, of creating like a, what people call like a five-star culture. Can you talk more on that of like why that's so important and why that's the focus?

12:30 Chris Anderson

Bye.

12:42 Chris Anderson

Yeah, so reviews are an output, right? That is the result that a lot of companies are striving to achieve. NPS ratings, that's an output, right? But to drill down and really understand what is, you know, compelling customers to leave reviews and compelling customers to leave high rating services is it all comes down to that initial interaction with the technician. It doesn't depend on the owner, it doesn't depend on the branch manager. They're not having those one-on-one interactions or they're not going to the homes of the customers directly. The biggest influencer in our companies is going to be the technician because they're the ones that are having the interactions and the opportunities to connect with those customers. So that's what we kind of determined is, okay, there's reviews. That's an important metric. Know, some are doing really well, some aren't, some have incentive plans, some don't. So what are the key differences in those that get a lot of reviews and those that don't? And it all comes down to that core issue is, my technician incentivized enough to provide a high quality service so that we qualify for more five star reviews, right? Because if we're just asking for reviews and not necessarily incentivizing on it, then ultimately we're just kind of shooting in the dark hoping that we hit on a customer that had a solid experience. But if we're incentivizing the behaviors that we know are going to result in a good customer experience, we just better our chances in converting on that Google review. Again, reviews are one aspect of the business that are really important that are dependent upon whether or not a technician is providing a great service. Focus more so on the behaviors of the technician and incentivizing their day to day so that we get the outputs that we desire on the review side of things if that makes sense.

14:39 Dan Leibrandt

Is there anything the technicians can do like anything you guys advise regarding Making sure that you are worthy of that five-star review like I've heard some people like Tommy Mello say, know Bring dog treats or you know play with the dog or bring a little goodie bag Like do you guys have anything in that realm of like how can we make sure that we are worthy of getting five stars?

15:01 Chris Anderson

Absolutely, it comes back to the basics, you know, when it comes to your training that you provide your technicians on some of the things you want them to do on every environment. One of the things that we hear the most about from a negative sentiment is somebody's left the gate open, right?

15:17 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

15:17 Chris Anderson

So remembering to shut the gate, you know, easy enough, but ultimately, if you leave the gate open, you pretty much compromised your ability to convert on any kind of positive rating or even a five-star review. I would say that interacting as often as you can with the customer in a way that allows a handshake, right? Create a person behind the service that's being provided, because that's also going to have an influence. Part of our messaging is that we try to inform the customer, hey, if you leave us a five-star review, we're going to bonus your technician $5, $10. So there's almost this play towards the empathy that the person, the customer would have for the technician and trying to create that relationship and leverage that relationship into something meaningful for the business. The other thing too is just making sure that they take great notes within their CRM or at least they get the opportunity after the service is completed to walk the customer through everything you did. A lot of customers don't really have a whole lot of insight into everything that happens when a pest control technician comes on site. And these guys are working hard and they're doing a lot of good stuff for the home and protecting their environment. But ultimately the customers kind of, you know, removed from that. They usually come when either the customer or as an ohm, so as often as you can. Try to either relay through direct communication what's being done to the home. I found a few of these webs up in the eaves or there was some nests over here in one of the umbrellas or something to that effect so that they know everything you're doing or input that into the CRM. So when a post-service notification goes out to the customer, they see exactly what you did in full scope so they understand the value behind the service that's being provided. The other thing too is like you mentioned, I think Tommy mentioned, bring dog treats if you know they've dogs, know, gather up the dog toys and put them in one area before you spray so they know you take, you know, serious consideration into the safety of their animals and their pets because that's always an issue. And then just do the job that you've been trained to do, right? Make sure that you don't have to provide any kind of reservices in the future. Make sure you're thorough in all your inspections of the exterior of the home.

17:29 Chris Anderson

So those are a few of the things that we find usually create a better opportunity to convert into some kind of five-star review.

17:37 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Yeah, the phrase that's ringing in my mind right now is show that you care. Like just all these little things, you know, you can come in and do the pest control service, but anyone can come in and do the pest control service. But it's those little extra things of like you said, bring the dog treats or shut the gate or, you know, organize something in the house or get a handshake, like all these tiny things that they seem like they wouldn't really be important, but they are important, right? Like.

18:08 Dan Leibrandt

You need to establish that relationship and that relationship is how you get that review, right? And ultimately, it's not just about the review, but the review is the outcome, like you said. And then at least what, tell me about how Applause works of how do you guys then generate those reviews? So we had a great service, we did all these great things, we established the relationship. Are you sending out a text, an email, phone call? How do you go about actually generating that review?

18:32 Chris Anderson

Great question. Again, back to the core of what we want to create is we want to create less administrative burden for any of these companies. They've got enough on their plate. They've got a ton of stuff to do. They don't have to worry about, or they don't need to worry about a lot of these little minute administrative things that need to happen in order for us to get that kind of from the customer. So what we do is we integrate with the CRM. And that gives us a lot of information that we need in order to create triggers. And these triggers will then send out a text message to that customer. Now text message just being it's the best and most, not utilized, but it's the highest conversion opportunity that we have when it comes to asking a customer for something. So with that text message that's going out, there's a number of different things happening in the background as well. So our tool and our algorithm is going to identify the service codes on which you want us to send out these messages, right? So we're not just sending out messages to everybody that has an interaction with us, but there's going to be specific service codes that we identify that we send out on behalf. And then from there, the customer is going to get a hyperlink that's going to take them to a web-based platform. And that web-based system doesn't need a login. It doesn't need any credentials. It just starts the flow of us asking the customer for certain things. And the beauty about our system is it isn't just reviews. There's a number of different outputs and outcomes that can happen after a customer interaction. So what we've done and what we've built is a prioritization model. That allows for certain sequencing. So for example, if we are prioritizing reviews, that's really all we're going to ask for upfront and out the gate because if we ask for too many things from our customers, we're going to create fatigue, right? They're going to maybe do one thing for us, maybe two, but three is just asking for too many things. So on this interaction, we're going to prioritize the thing that's most important. And usually that is Google reviews. But what our system does is it starts to learn. We built that an AI model that allows it to get smarter with every interaction with the customer. So once we've converted on a Google review, then we can move into other important things that we want to ask of the customer, like maybe an NPS rating, right? Zero out of 10. That five-star Google review is important, and it helps our SEO, but ultimately it's one and done, right? We don't get a good insight into the pulse of the customer and how they're feeling about the service throughout the year if they've already given us that one review.

21:04 Chris Anderson

So, NPS rating is a great tool for us to kind of keep tabs on our customers, make sure they have a channel to communicate to us any negative sentiment that they have about the service being provided so we can rectify it. So that's one other option. Some of the other options that we've incorporated as well are other review channels, right? Google review, probably the 800-pound gorilla. But there's Better Business Bureau, there's Nextdoor, there's Facebook. And what our system will do is it'll cycle through each one of these review channels for you so that you're always optimizing your ability to convert something from the customer and not necessarily saturating an ask where you've already got value from it. So you can start to get a Facebook review, you can start to get a Nextdoor review, et cetera. The other interesting thing that we can do as well is we can track with our tools internally the customer's behavior and recognize the optimal time to ask for an upsell. So you just gave us a 10 on your NPS rating or our model and our AI. Tool is going recognize that as, this is a great opportunity for us to showcase or educate our customers on alternate services that maybe they haven't purchased in the past. So our AI tool is actually going to go into the CRM. It's going to identify all the service codes that have been provided to this individual, identify the ones that haven't been provided, and it's going to promote some kind of a campaign that you can create internally. But it's prompted by this dynamic nature of recognizing those best opportunities and the right opportunity that has the most probability to actually convert. We have a mosquito treatment, get $10 off your first mosquito treatment. We have a termite inspection, a free termite inspection. You can prompt them after they've given you that 10 NPS rating. But again, it's all about the timing of the moment the customer is best primed to receive some kind of upsell opportunity.

23:10 Chris Anderson

That use as well as referrals. So if an upsell campaign isn't something that you're necessarily pushing right now, it's always a great opportunity to leverage an awesome experience from a customer and turn it into some kind of introduction into one of their friends, one of their family. So they can either submit a form directly that has all the referral details, or they can use one of our hyperlinks that allows them to just post directly to their social profiles. So maybe they don't want to necessarily give somebody's name directly, but they're happy to promote your services to their friends and family on their Facebook account. So again, there's a lot of dynamic nature that goes into when we prompt for things, what we prioritize based upon what the business need is, as well as looking for those right opportunities to prompt the right thing that will result in kind of the best conversion of the thing that we are asking and the call to action that we're providing to the customer. So that's a little bit of how it works on the front end, right, of how the customer interacts with our system. They can have a number of different asks, but they're all prioritized, they're all consolidated, so they're not getting peppered and bombarded with a number of different asks at one time. Hey, if we're doing monthly or quarterly service, we have a few times and a few interactions to convert on different things. We'll, you will pace our asks to make sure we're doing it at the right time. Now from the technician's perspective, we have a downloadable app similar to that of like a Venmo or a Cash App that allows the instant delivery of bonuses tied to performance metrics that we're using to determine whether or not they're deserving of the SPIF. So in real time, the technician is out in the field and they can see, hey, I just got a $10 bonus on the Google review from John, the service that I just did.

24:49 Chris Anderson

So this creates like this little shot of dopamine for him while they're out in the field. They get a little excited, they realize, hey, my work is appreciated. But also it's this reminder that every service is an opportunity. And that starts to condition the behavior of the technician when you have this transparency into the work that they're doing, as well as immediate spiffs associated with a good performance. That's what's going to start to shape their mindset when it comes to every service. It's, hey, John is necessarily just a customer that I need to service. It's an opportunity for me as a technician to make a little extra money. They could be making money on Google review bonuses. Could bonus automatically on NPS ratings. So if we already get the Google review from the customer, it doesn't necessarily mean we can't make any money on them anymore. It's, if I get an NPS rating, maybe I can get a dollar bonus. A 10 NPS rating equates to a dollar bonus for me. A tip. You can have tipping activated. Voluntary system that is very customizable so we don't have to be asking your customers for tips if you don't want to but it is a great tool to incentivize the behavior of the technicians is because that money is no longer coming out of the company's pocket to supplement the wages of the worker it's coming voluntarily from the customer which sometimes has a greater impact over the technicians job satisfaction is knowing that the customers really appreciate about their work. So again, the technician experience is designed to be automated. It's designed to be transparent so they can see in real time where I'm at on my reviews. And we've even gone a step further in identifying other metrics that are important to companies. And we've recently released a tool that we're calling Scorecards. And scorecards essentially is the measure of the technician's performance outside of the qualitative, meaning like NPS ratings, tips, and Google reviews. Those are usually more of a qualitative measure of the performance. And we've started to measure other things like reservice rate. Oftentimes, the technician doesn't even know what their reservice rate is, but we've created a transparent tool that allows them to see their percentage in real time.

27:02 Chris Anderson

Driver safety score, attendance, production value. Even within the last little bit, we've started to release time on site route completion. And what we've done is allowed for the companies now to bonus on any one of these metrics when a certain threshold is achieved. So from the technician's perspective, I can go into my app and see exactly where I'm at for the month on my driver's safety score, let's say I'm at an 89 and I need to get to a 90 and I've got a week left, you better believe that I'm gonna be buckling my seatbelt and I'm gonna be easy on the brakes because I want that $50 bonus associated with that driver safety score if I get above a 90. And we see significant impact almost immediately when creating this kind of transparency and this kind of incentive to the team. We had one group that started to track their driver's safety score and traditionally they were at like a 75 and 80, couldn't ever get them to the threshold of 95 where they wanted them to be at. They had about 15 technicians and once they rolled Applause out, 14 out of 15 techs got above that 95. Just because they created the transparency, they didn't even have a bonus attached to it. But because they knew where they were at in the month and we created a leaderboard to show them where they stacked rank against the rest of their peers, that competition alone fueled the behavior, the desired behavior, which was that they wanted to drive safer. They've since activated a bonus and that has got all 15 drivers driving above like a 96 now. So it's just crazy the impact that the spiffs and the incentives can have when you've created a method of transparency and instant delivery for those bonuses. So I know that was a mouthful.

28:41 Dan Leibrandt

Dang, wow. No, no, that was awesome. I love that. I'm fairly familiar with Applause and I've even recommended to a lot of people, but even some of those things I wasn't aware of asking reviews on different platforms. Me as an SEO guy, that is huge. And this is also something that's becoming more prevalent. I'm not sure if you're aware, but with something like large language models of ChatGPT and Perplexity. Google is obviously gonna prefer Google reviews, but ChatGPT and these other platforms are kind of unbiased. They're pulling from everywhere. So to get reviews on all these different platforms and really what I'm collecting there is just, number one, an amazing job at the service. And then number two, make the most of those customers that you do an amazing job for. So absolutely love that. And like I was saying, really, and actually like I mentioned, before the call is I've heard so many good things about your company. Even when I was at PestWorld about a year ago, I told you this story that we were in a room, a woman was in front of the room talking about all of the top technology tools that they're using. Someone asked about a review platform and she didn't really have an answer, but then everyone in the crowd was saying, we use Applause, we all love Applause. It goes to show you guys are actually doing a genuinely good job and. What you were just talking about for the past five, 10 minutes, it shows you guys are just way beyond all these other review platforms. It's not just about reviews, but it's about all these other aspects. It's about different platforms. It's about building our culture. It's about all of these different things. Absolutely amazing. And something I did wanna mention is that we actually do have a referral link if people are interested in using Applause. So you can check that out in the description or the comments, because I am a huge advocate for your guys' company.

30:28 Dan Leibrandt

I've actually never taken on a sponsor before, before this, if people are interested, then they can check out Applause in the comments. Something else I wanted to cover is how does this directly affect technicians? Like how do technicians feel about getting the tips, about getting incentivized? Like what does this do for turnover and overall culture?

30:48 Chris Anderson

Yeah, absolutely. Well, as you can imagine, when you give technicians more money, they become happier. So to answer that in a very short way, they're super excited. The feedback that we have gotten from the technicians is that they love the transparency into the quality of the work that they're doing coming from the customers. That is probably one of the bigger impacts is, know, as you know, before we had a system in place to transparently deliver the feedback, it was they go through their day and they might get like you know, a shout out every now and again and like the company. But any positive feedback that's provided through an NPS rating or a Google review, they get that and it just feels good, right? To hear from a customer that you just did a service for, that your work is appreciated, that all the hard days of grueling sun and just being hot out there in the middle of the day, that it is recognized. So that part of it was really cool to see that kind of an impact. Anecdotal, and then this is all kind of anecdotal information, but we have a lot of technicians that are kind of saving up their funds and their digital wallets for special events and special things. So, you know, we had one guy that was saving up for the big screen TV, right? This ancillary thing that he couldn't have probably afforded beforehand, but with Applause, he now can. Another guy was saving up for his Christmas fund, right? He's just like, this essentially just pays for Christmas. It doesn't come out of my base wage anymore. I can accommodate all the things that my kids and my wife need just through the bonuses and the tips that I've received through Applause. So we hear those stories all the time and that's really kind of what fuels us over here is yes, we're doing great work for the company and you know, we're fueling more reviews, NPS ratings, getting better production out of the workforce, but ultimately hearing the stories of the technicians of what they're using the funds for, these additional funds for, while at the same time hearing from the companies that hey, we're happy to pay these bonuses to the technicians because like I mentioned before at the beginning of the call, it's aligned with the business objective, right? It's we're bonusing on time on site, we're bonusing on route completion, bonusing on driver safety score on Google reviews. So it's not just paying money to pay money, it's hey, we're seeing significant impact and improvement and even ROI in a lot of these things just by having these small spiffs that are immediately delivered to the technicians.

33:08 Chris Anderson

Now on the more quantitative side of things, we see significant improvement in customer retention as well as employee satisfaction and retention. We work with a company called Certus that many you may be familiar with. Larger organizations within the pest control environment. And they started using Applause for about a year. And they reported back a significant increase on Google reviews. What was more interesting is that they saw a significant improvement on customer retention as well as employee retention. And I don't want to botch the numbers, so I'm going to get the numbers pulled up here so I can share them with you. But they were really significant. Study here. Yeah, Certus results from July of 23 to May of 24. Their employee attrition dropped by 10 points, which doesn't seem like a lot, but for a company like Certus, where they've got three, four hundred technicians, it's estimated that each technician that you lose probably costs the company anywhere from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. So you start to add up the numbers there, you lose five technicians over the year, you're looking at $75,000 in cost. So if you can reduce that even by one, two, that's having a significant impact, your bottom line. And Certus saw a 10 point drop from 39%, 29%. So significant, significant decrease in their employee churn. Just because the people that were working in these jobs, they felt more valued, they felt appreciated, they were receiving bonuses and incentives that elevate their ability to make more money. So there was really no reason why they would want to leave at that point. Now on the customer retention side, we saw a five point improvement from about 76 to 81 percent annualized. So about a seven percent improvement overall of the amount of customers that were maintained. Now again five points doesn't seem like a lot, but this to Certus, five points is worth more than four million dollars in annualized recurring revenue that was saved and you being an SEO guy in the marketing space it also was an avoidance of a probably like 1.7 million dollars in cost acquisition. So just significant, significant savings just by instituting this simple tool that's just automating the delivery of spiffs, creating more transparency into the work of the technicians while just driving the behaviors that they want out of the technicians in a way that they're happy to do.

35:41 Chris Anderson

So that's some of the quantitative information regarding some of the results there on employee retention, on customer retention. One of the other great indicators within the software environment here is just that what we track internally is how often are our users using the tool. And for technicians specifically, they're checking the app three to four times a day. Now that is usually unheard of in any kind of technician realm where you're trying to get them to use any kind of software that you're... But come to find out if you put money in an app, they usually check it. So they're going in there to really cash out the amounts they're receiving in real time. So they could be getting three or four bonuses throughout the day and each time they're going in there to cash it out immediately to their bank account so they get access to it. The beauty about that is we've got their attention. Right, which is probably the hardest thing to do with any kind of technician in the home service business. So this is really why we decided to branch out in this realm of scorecards is because companies have always tried to gain the attention of their technicians while they're out in the field with this kind of information, but ultimately just kind of fallen short where it's in the CRM, but the technician never sees it, never really interacts with it. But because we've got their attention, we built out these scorecards. So now they're in the scorecards one to two times a day so they can see their performance in real time and all the different metrics that the company is measuring. So again, know, the anecdotal information is there, the quantitative information is there on the ROI. And on the review side of things, it's really, really interesting what we see as far as the impact on reviews. We did a case study with White Knight Pest Control. They were one of our earlier adopters, and they were using a system beforehand where they had a text delivered with a link associated with them going to the Google review platform and order to leave a review. So not a whole lot of differentiation there in the methodology in which we asked for the review, but just to give you some numbers, on 27,000 services within the month of June, they got about 191 reviews. So on open rate, about 2 % conversion, which by any standard on the review side of things, pretty decent. So it's not, know, outlandish to say that that's a bad conversion rate. But when they switched over to Applause, some interesting things started to happen, right? The technician became more aware of the service that they were providing because they were receiving the feedback from the customers in real time.

38:14 Chris Anderson

They got the spiffs and bonuses in real time. So they're getting these shots of dopamine throughout the day that fuel this desire to provide a high quality service to qualify for more reviews. They saw better notes in their CRM, which were going to the customers directly, which is something that the company always wants to see. But what was happening is the customers started to understand the thoroughness that each of the technicians took with their interactions with their homes. So they're more likely to leave the reviews and on 30,000 services the next month, they did over 1300 reviews. So similar amount of service count, but from 191, with a similar methodology, sending text messages, but when you incentivize the workforce, 1,300, almost like a 7x conversion, just when you start to incentivize and align some of these incentives with the outputs that you're wanting, which is reviews, which can be translated to any metric that you're measuring, right? You create transparency into the measurement, you create some kind of an incentive based upon a performance metric that needs to be met, and your technicians are gonna do it. So a little bit of the data to support what we're doing is make a significant impact on the outputs as well as just kind of the internal operations of what we're striving towards on customer retention and employee retention.

39:34 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, awesome. No, I'm glad you asked or I'm glad you provided some case studies and success stories. I was actually gonna get into that, so that's awesome. Yeah, no, I've actually done some work with Certus. They're crushing it on reviews. I'm sure that had something to do with you guys. And that increase in reviews, I mean, that is just insane going from like 190 to 1300. That is just like unheard of. And the way I frame it, again, I'm not so much on like the technician or customer service side. I'm on the SEO and digital marketing side. But from what I've seen and just, think this is just a fact that reviews help everything. Reviews help ranking, they help conversions, they help retention, they help everything. They make everything easier. Even though it is kind of like a one-sided metric that there is a lot of other things that go into it and we're saying that's kind of the output, getting a ton of Google reviews, like you're never gonna complain about getting more and you should be willing to pay for those reviews. So I thought that was just so great. Then something else I wanted to ask you is, who does this make sense for? So I think you guys started out in pest control, now you're branching out a little bit. And I've heard, like I think Andy told me it's a little bit for bigger companies, like who does this make sense for?

40:48 Chris Anderson

Yeah, so the great product market fit where our ideal customer profile is somebody in the home services business that has a recurring amount of services that are happening on a regular basis. So not to say that we can't do well in other environments like the one-off installations of roofing or solar and home services. There's just less at bats for us to convert on anything meaningful for the company. You have a roofing company that's doing one, two jobs jobs a week, whereas you have a one service technician that's doing 12 to 16 a day, right? And that's just the one technician. The volume is definitely something that is important to us so that we have most opportunities to convert on reviews, on NPS ratings, referrals, upsells, whatever it is that you're after. So that's first and foremost. The second is employees. We are an employee engagement solution, an employee engagement platform. Unless you have employees, it might not make the most sense for you to be, like if you're an owner operator, doesn't make sense for you to be incentivizing yourself with the Google reviews that are coming in because that's just going to your pocket anyway. So the threshold that we usually say where you get the most value is about the five technician range. Ultimately though, can work with any home service business and if it makes sense to them then we'll have a conversation about it but that's usually where you start to see the most benefit is around five technicians. As far as the industries and the verticals that we're targeting we're working in all of them. Pest control is where we're heavily marketing, we're heavily involved in the events and podcasts and other outreach like this but ultimately we still get interest from those outside of pest control. Have about in the green space. We have a number of HVAC and plumbing companies, even electrical as well. And all the other ancillary home service business like window washing, poop scoop. We've actually got a pretty big amount of pet waste cleanup companies.

42:53 Chris Anderson

Because they're similar in the pest scene right they're doing multiple services a day They're doing work that most homeowners don't want to do and they're happy to you know Provide some either gratuity or happy to provide some appreciation for the work that's being done Pooled pool cleaning company so any real home residential service business is Really where our essentials products shine. Now on the commercial side of things, that's where scorecards really shines because Google reviews, NPS ratings, they're important but they don't necessarily drive a commercial business like a residential business would be driven by. On the commercial side, they see more value in our scorecard environment where they're able to track the performance of their technicians on time on site, driver safety scores, route completion, attendance, know those quantitative metrics that indicate whether or not a technician is doing what we ask them to do. And there's two product lines there. So you've got your essentials package which is like reviews, upsells, referrals, know incentivizing the technician to improve their quality of service and then scorecards which is more the quantitative side of things where we can bonus on any one of those environments. So you can have them both as a bundled package or you can have them separately depending upon what the need is of the company. So yeah, that's a little bit about who would be the best fit. We have some that are outside the home service vertical, but you know, again, we're building tools and solutions around technician performance and those that are in the field, like field performance. So it doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense where they're not getting the full holistic value of what we've built here at Applause because all you build is within the home services realm. We find that having this hyper verticalized strategy of going after this market helps us on a number of different fronts, which includes our product development. We're not just going out there and picking and choosing features with our team just guessing about what our environment needs. We're doing interviews with each one of these pest control, lawn care companies, poop scoop companies to understand what are some of the gaps that exist within your systems that we can streamline, that we can automate to make things run a lot more smoothly.

45:02 Chris Anderson

And that just helps us build a product that really resonates with the environment, which is why at PestWorld, you probably heard a lot of people clamoring about Applause. Whereas in any other industry vertical, you probably wouldn't hear anything about us, is because we're hyper verticalized within home services to make sure that we're building a product that really resonates with them. So kind of a long-winded answer of who the great customer profile is, but that's who we think is the best, that's what the best use case would be.

45:32 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely, love that. Okay, so should be five technicians or more and should be a home service company. Maybe outside of that, but usually anything in home services. Okay, awesome. Well, I think this is a great show. I'll end off with one final question, which I like to ask my guests, which is, what is your final message for pest control owners or for home service business owners? What do they need to know? What do you want to tell them? What is your final message for them?

45:57 Chris Anderson

Yeah, final message for them is your technicians do great work and oftentimes you're too busy to acknowledge or provide that kind of atta-boy and that pat on the back for the work that's being done. But look for those ways to encourage these behaviors of your technicians and know that they are appreciated. Whether you use our system or some other internal program, these guys deserve a lot of recognition, right? They are the lifeblood of your business. They're the ones that are interacting with your customers on a regular basis. So as much and as often as you can show appreciation for the hard work that they do and ultimately I think it'll pay dividends regardless of the method that you do it in.

46:42 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Cool. I think that was a great show. Thanks so much for coming on, Chris. Usually I have my guests plug their link or whatever they want to plug right now, but I will provide the link in the description. So we'll have that in the description and the comments. So if you want to work with Applause, then you can go ahead and go there or just applausehq.com. And Chris, where can people find you on social media, connect with you and anything else you'd like to plug?

47:05 Chris Anderson

Yeah, so we're on Facebook. Know, our website's probably going to be the best place to be going to. Applausehq.com. We're also going to be attending a number of events. You know, it's a great time for us to interact with you guys in a face-to-face environment. So PestWorld, any of the NPMA events. So we're always going to be at those. So if you ever wonder if we're there, just try to look for our booth, come and say hi to us and we'll be happy to have a conversation with you.

47:31 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Well, as I mentioned, I'm a huge advocate for Applause. I've heard nothing but good things. You're totally crushing it. And just having you on the show today, I'm like, dang, you guys really know what you're doing. This is like, this is totally next level. I don't know anyone in the home services space that's doing this. So I'm wishing the best for you guys. And I think you're really going to take over the whole home services space, not just pest control.

47:50 Chris Anderson

I'll appreciate that Dan. Yeah, the more impact we can make in technicians lives, it makes us happy. So that'd be awesome if that could happen.

47:58 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. Well, thanks again so much for coming on, Chris. It's been a pleasure.

48:02 Chris Anderson

Likewise Dan, thank you for having us.