01/10/2024

Service Records Provide Valuable Information

Maintaining records can mitigate liability & improve quality control

Occasionally I have the opportunity to speak with pest management professionals about record keeping and it surprises me the number of them that mark their calendars for the earliest day they can to dispose of their pest management records.  I personally believe the only need to dispose of records is that there is no more space. This being said the desire to dispose of records may be predicated on their quality.

Having been an expert witness in numerous litigations, those companies that have had thorough, accurate, and historical records typically fare the best.  Even in our own experience (Innovative Pest Management) with two lawsuits, accurate records and thorough documentation mitigated our liability.

Litigation is one of the more obvious reasons for record keeping, however there are many other reasons to keep accurate records.  At a minimum, records should provide evidence of service (date and time of service – if signed), pest problems and level of activity, products and amounts used, conditions at the time of service, recommendations, and need for follow-up.  When periodically reviewed, records provide a quality control tool for supervisors and managers.

If not done on a routine basis (I suspect for many this is the case) this time of year when business begins to slow down – would be the ideal time to review service records.  This allows you to fully understand what is happening in the company and make improvements in service and reporting information.  So, let’s look at some of the invaluable information provided by service records.

One of the most important items of information is service type and time.  This information can be used to determine the rate per hour for services provided and whether a particular service is profitable for the company.  The rate per hour is used to determine whether there are routing issues, callback problems, or perhaps a need to increase the rate per hour for that service.

The corollaries to rate per hour are pest and the level of activity.  In identifying the pest it is important to be as specific as possible, e.g., German vs. brown-banded cockroach, odorous house vs. Pharaoh ant, yellowjackets vs. paper wasps, etc.  This information allows you to analyze several service factors: the rate per hour for the pest, proper product selection, success of treatment, frequency of callbacks for specific pests, etc.

Directly tied to the pest is the level of activity.  This is a difficult topic to address unless specific guidelines are adhered to and then they are subject to the interpretation of the technician, and it is best if these findings are supported by written comment.  For instance, a lot of companies use none, low, medium, and heavy to report level of activity and some further define this with numbers.  Another variable is evidence of infestation in the absence of seeing pests. 

The difficulty in addressing levels of infestation has proven particularly difficult in dealing with bed bugs, where there may be ample evidence of infestation but few if any bugs are actually seen.  Despite training on this topic some of our technicians will call it heavy and others call it low.  To clarify these findings for our customers and to other technicians written comments are required such as a lot of speck marks were found but only three live bugs were seen.  Regardless of the situation we expect a comment on the number of pests seen, particularly cockroaches, ants, and bed bugs. 

Consistency is a must in record keeping because while we strive to have the same technicians service an account it creates a significant problem when the findings of a subsequent technician are significantly different from the first, e.g., no infestation and medium activity respectively with no comment.  The obvious response of the customer is what is happening?  After you treated how can we have more than we had originally?

Monitoring product usage for specific pests and locations is essential.  Potential label violations can be uncovered regarding site of application and in some states the pest for which the product is used must be on the label.  The amount of product used may be limited by the label, for instance aerosols specify so many ounces per 1,000 cubic feet and some liquid applications are limited per square foot of treated area.

From a business standpoint monitoring product type and amount is useful in controlling costs.  Historically, industry studies estimate the annual expense of product at 10% of revenue.  Thus, a savings of 1% can contribute substantially to profitability.

Where we have found product usage reporting most valuable is in reducing our liability.  When we take over an account it is our policy to remove other products applied by the tenant or a predecessor company, particularly rodenticides that in my opinion often are misapplied.  Our technicians are expected to note any situations regarding other products in their comments, such as tracking powder exposed in the kitchen, private labeled bait under the kitchen sink, loose block bait in the air handler closet, or all of the above.  So if a mother takes her children to the emergency room claiming they ate blue rat bait and we only use green we are fairly confident this will go away.

Leaving space for other comments on service tickets, and using that space are essential.  This is an area where the technician can leave notes regarding specific findings and recommendations.  For instance, conditions contributing to the pest problems, e.g., holes in walls, poor sanitation, clutter, failure to prepare for service, overcrowding, etc.  The need for follow-up and the recommended time frame should also be included.

A final note – it is great to collect all this information on our service tickets but if we fail to use it to improve the quality of our services and change our bottom line the fault lies with us.