Terminix Supplement — Gearing Up For The Future

In recent years, Terminix International has put a new focus on the commercial side of its business, having made the strategic decision to market its services more effectively and directly to commercial customers. Toward this end, the company created a commercial division in July of this year. The company now has close to 35 branches dedicated to commercial work, with more opening in the coming months. In addition, the company has written a full training program especially for commercial pest control. Prior to the reorganization, Terminix was already the second-largest provider of commercial services.

"We do a tremendous amount of commercial business," said Albert Cantu, president and chief operating officer of Terminix, "but we really haven’t concentrated on it as a focal point."

In a related move, the company also recently consolidated some business to help focus on its commercial business. "We recently made a strategic decision to sell all of our European operations because we felt that the opportunity domestically was so large and we really wanted to focus on the domestic business," Cantu said.

The company also has created the new position of "universal technician," who is trained and equipped to do termite monitoring and baiting as well as general pest control. "It’s enabled our service technicians to become more productive," said Norman Goldenberg, senior vice president of government/public affairs and technical services. And, he added, technicians like the new position because they have more variety in their everyday work. "They are able to consolidate driving time, which allows more productive time, which means more money, and through earning more money, we hope they’ll stay longer with us," Goldenberg explained.

Terminix has also designed a new truck specifically for the universal technician. The truck has one sterile section designed specifically for termite baiting, and another section for general pest control. The two sections are separated by a 35-gallon tank.

SIX SIGMA. Changes and improvements are also under way in many of the company’s day-to-day operations. Just this year Terminix — along with the entire network of Service-Master — has adopted Six Sigma, a process improvement program designed to help the company standardize and replicate procedures, leading to significant cost savings and quality improvements throughout the company.

Made famous by General Electric Corp., Six Sigma promotes the use of data, as opposed to speculation, to make improvements in the way operations are run. The protocol has typically been employed by organizations in the manufacturing sector, and ServiceMaster is one of the first major service companies to adopt it.

One recent Six Sigma project, for example, concerned how the organization purchases its office supplies. A team of employees studied the issue and came up with a list of the top 100 products. Then they researched various supply companies through which the products could be ordered online. The team found that by establishing a procurement contract with one vendor, by ordering online, and by controlling the size of orders, the company will experience savings of more than $300,000.

"This is an ongoing program in which we’ve dedicated a tremendous amount of resources," Cantu said. Under the program, managers throughout ServiceMaster have been removed from their posts so they can run the Six Sigma program. "It’s all dedicated to doing a better job for the customer," Cantu said. "If life is made easier for managers in branches, they can spend more time with customers, and that’s really where the rubber meets the road."

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. Another strategic objective for Terminix, Cantu pointed out, is to increase customer loyalty. Along these lines, the company this year completed a third-party survey to measure the voice of its customers. More than 400,000 surveys were sent out to customers throughout the country, and the results have been broken down by regions, and by individual branches, to ascertain customers’ satisfaction level with Terminix.

While Terminix has conducted other surveys in the past, it hasn’t conducted such a survey that evaluates customer satisfaction to the branch level. Goldenberg said the survey would also be repeated in 2003 and regularly thereafter, to benchmark results and look for continuing improvement.

Stephen Good, vice president of sales and marketing for Terminix, says the study confirms that Terminix’s image and reputation continue to be stellar. "What it’s told us is that our customers are very very pleased with our service professionals, they are very pleased with the effectiveness of our services, and they are very pleased with our guarantees," he said. "We know that investment will provide great returns for our customers and for our associates."

While the surveys have been an expensive proposition for Terminix, Good notes, the company is committed to continuing to listen to the voice of its customers and its associates, and make changes as appropriate.

Goldenberg says that Terminix has been flexible in its service offerings. Customers can take monthly or quarterly control services, and they can specify interior and exterior control. "The changes in technology, as far as the products we use, have enabled us to make those offerings and be able to live up to the guarantees we can make to the customer," he said.

Cantu added the Terminix of the future will continue to be flexible in its service offerings, and that could even mean a possible entry into other business areas. "We’re wide open," he said. "What Terminix is doing today could be geared in a different direction...the point is we need to be flexible."

Along those lines, Terminix will continue to look to cross-sell business with other ServiceMaster organizations, such as Tru-Green Chemlawn, Merry Maids and Service-Master Clean. "This has always been something ServiceMaster has wanted to achieve," said Cantu. "In the last two years it has come to the forefront."