What to do when your lawn care business gets back logged?
It doesn’t take much to get yourself back logged with mowing jobs. A day or two or rain in row, or maybe even getting a cold and not being able to work for a few days can really set you back. But what should you do when you find yourself in a hole that is getting deeper and customer after customer is calling to see why you are late to their job? That is the question asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and a simple yet effective strategy followed that should help you.
One lawn care business owner wrote “I have taken on quite a few jobs recently and the lack of time I have is making me look bad.
Today I dropped my assistant off at the weeding job and I went on to mow my lawns. Next I picked my assistant up and went to a house that needed a hedge trimmed ON TIME because they were going to take professional family photos on their yard. I got it done, thank god.
So then I trimmed and mowed the house that has had me waiting for them to call me back to work because they needed to put grass seed down. It was a big job. Then on that same day one of my other lawn care customers needed her hedges trimmed and has been on my @ss for 2 weeks about it, so I told her I’d do it today.
The problem is, I have a few more lawns to mow today, an estimate to give, hedges to trim, and a garden that needs to be weeded and finished today as promised, but it’s no where near finished. All these lawn care customers expect me to serve them today first priority, but I’m quickly getting back logged and not sure what to do.
The space in my truck is limited too. I’ll be running around a lot picking up and dumping weeding job and hedge trimming job debris. I just don’t know where to start… It’s already 11am and I’ve only got a few houses mowed.”
A second lawn care business owner said “when I am back-logged, my strategy has always been to service the greatest number customers as possible, as quickly as possible. This normally means doing the easiest and quickest jobs first.
I would rather have 1 ticked off customer with a big job left to do than 10 customers with small jobs waiting for me. Explaining why you’re late to 1 customer is easier than explaining the same thing to 10 customers over and over.
Once I’m caught up, I will then dedicate serious time to that one remaining customer.”
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