Call your own number tonight: a pest control check

Every pest control owner knows what they say when they answer the phone. Very few know what a caller hears when they don't.

Tonight, find out. It takes five minutes, a second phone, and a pen.

A note from Logan

When I sit down with an owner, I start with this check before anything else. I call their line the way a customer would, at the time a customer would, and we listen together. Most owners haven't heard their own voicemail greeting in years. Some have never heard it at all, because the phone company set it up.

I'm in Prosper, and I test everything I recommend myself, including this. You don't need me to run it, though. Here's how to do it on your own.

Step one: call after 6 PM from a number you don't know

Borrow your spouse's phone, or a friend's, or a work phone that isn't saved in your contacts. Wait until after 6 PM on a weeknight. Then call your business number and don't pick up.

Why after 6? Because that's when a lot of your new customers are calling. Someone gets home, flips on the kitchen light, and sees ants along the counter. Someone hears scratching in the attic after the kids are in bed. Someone finds a scorpion in the bathtub. They don't wait until morning to look you up. They call right then.

Why an unknown number? Because that's what a new customer is to your phone. If your phone treats unknown numbers differently, with silencing or spam filters, you want to know.

Step two: count the rings

Write down how many times it rings before anything happens. Then ask yourself whether you'd sit through that many rings for a company you'd never called before. A caller who gives up early hangs up and tries the next company before your voicemail even starts.

If it rings a long time and then cuts off, or goes to a full mailbox, write that down too. Those are the worst two outcomes, and they happen more often than owners think.

Step three: listen to the greeting like a stranger

Now listen to what plays. Pretend you've never heard of your company. Ask yourself:

• Does it say the company name? A generic "the number you have dialed" greeting makes a caller wonder if they got the right business.
• Does it say when you'll call back? "We'll return your call" with no time frame tells them nothing.
• Does it sound like a real business? A greeting recorded in a truck with the AC blowing sounds like it.
• Is it current? Old hours, an old address, or a person who left two years ago are all common.

Write down one word for how it made you feel as a caller. Be honest.

Step four: leave a message and time the callback

Leave a short message as if you were a homeowner: name, a pest, a neighborhood. Then see how long it takes for that message to reach you and for you to act on it.

If the honest answer is "I'd see it tomorrow at 7 and call back around lunch," write that down. To the caller, that's half a day. In that time, they had the evening and the next morning to call two other companies. Pest problems feel urgent to the person who has them, even when they aren't urgent to you.

Step five: check what happens on a Saturday

Repeat the call once on a weekend afternoon. Weekends are when homeowners walk the yard, find a wasp nest under the eaves, or notice fire ant mounds along the fence. If your phone does the same thing on Saturday at 2 as it does on Tuesday at 7 PM, you now know what every weekend caller gets.

What your notes tell you

Look at what you wrote down. If the greeting is clear, the callback is the same evening, and nothing cut off, you're in good shape. Fix any small thing you heard and move on.

If the notes say long ringing, a generic or stale greeting, and a callback the next day, that's the gap. It isn't a character flaw. You were on a job, or you were home with your family. The phone just didn't have anyone behind it.

That's the gap missed-call and after-hours answering fills. Your phone still rings first. The calls you don't pick up forward to an answering line that greets the caller in your company's name, asks what pest they're seeing, where the house is, and how soon they need someone, and then texts you the details. You still decide when to go out and what to charge. The caller just doesn't sit on voicemail while you finish dinner. More on how it works is on the call answering page.

What this looks like with 14 free days

You can run this check by hand tonight. Or you can let the trial run it for two weeks. During the 14 free days, every call you would have missed is answered and logged, with the time, the caller, and what they wanted. At the end, you can see exactly what came in after hours and on weekends, and decide whether $250 a month is worth keeping. There's no contract, and your number never changes.

Out here in Collin County, new neighborhoods keep going up, and new homes bring new bugs and new homeowners who don't have a pest company yet. Those are the people calling at 8 PM.

If you'd rather count the calls you're missing first, read three phone numbers every owner should know. It's written for landscapers, but the check works the same for pest control.

Call your own number tonight. If you don't like what you hear, Logan will set you up and walk you through what the trial finds. Start your 14 free days.