What COVID-19 Taught Us

The pandemic has changed everything. COVID-19 has been devastating from a human health perspective. It’s caused everyone to adjust personally and professionally. Businesses have introduced best practices ranging from masking to social distancing to touchless service. In the pest control industry, some companies were shuttered while others were launched. Some labor up and left while other team members proved, “We’re in this together.” Who would have thought we’d be talking about a pandemic 24 months after the initial United States wave of cases in March 2020?

But a silver lining is the lessons learned in business and life. Abrupt change forces us to reevaluate, reinvent and, in some cases, press reset.

PCT magazine spoke with pest management professionals across the country about the lessons learned amid COVID-19. Here’s what they had to say.

NO BUGS ABOUT IT. “The bugs were not affected!” said Rick Stanford of Maverick Pest Control, Blackwell, Texas. “Being in the pest control business, the show must go on, and the bugs didn’t have a pandemic. And people don’t like bugs, so they were willing to take more of a risk [of letting someone in the home] than have an infestation of some kind.” During the past two years, countless numbers of pest management professionals have shared similar stories of increased service calls from customers who are at home more and thus observing more pest control activity (see “Wasps and COVID-19,”).

AN ESSENTIAL BUSINESS. The pandemic emphasized what it means to be an essential or frontline worker, and Gary Brogna of Pest B Dead, Webster, Mass., said his services and protocols sustained during the waves of COVID-19 cases. “Pest control is both recession-proof and pandemic-proof,” he said. “We are busier than ever.”

The fact that people stayed home “unequivocally” boosted business, especially in regards to rodent control in central Massachusetts, Brogna said. He pointed to wet, but not frozen, conditions as a trigger to mice “running amok.”

And, while customers might have cut out the wining and dining, they were willing to invest in professionals, Brogna said. And if they tried to control pests with big box-store fixes, they were around the home to see what wasn’t working. “People get exasperated quickly, and they call a professional,” he said. “I’ve seen my number of quarterly accounts double since all of this started in March 2020.”

TAKE A LEAP. Norman Stafford sold his partnership share in a company and started Home Fixer in 2020. Because of the sale, he launched the new firm debt-free and with a fine-tuned focus. “I explored disinfection and all kinds of services, but we stayed with what we know and then are slowly adding services that are in demand,” said Stafford, whose business is based in Solomons, Md.

Home Fixer performs general pest control for restaurants, retailers and residences with monthly service calls April through October. And what Stafford’s doing differently with the new operation since he has a home improvement license is capturing a growing trend of performing renovation and fix-it services that support pest remediation/exclusion. “I saw that in our area, other pest control operators were doing this and I was like, ‘What are we missing?’” he said.

Plus, Stafford said he can now charge more for his services and attracts clients who are committed to keeping their end of the pest-reduction bargain since they’ll invest in home improvements to keep bugs and mice out.

FEELING ROACHED. Yes, the pandemic caused many of us to feel spent — or roached. But the meaning is two-fold with cockroach business climbing in Stafford’s Maryland market, he said. “There are lots of theories of why, but German roaches love cardboard, and who’s delivering cardboard now?” he said, referencing how the pandemic basically Amazon-ed business as we know it. “People are home and they are stockpiling.” Meanwhile, they are unknowingly creating an attractive habitat for this pest.

REAFFIRMING PARTNERSHIPS. “We wanted to make sure our customers got through the pandemic just as much as we wanted to make sure we got through it, knowing that coming out on the other side would be beneficial to both sides,” said Jeff Katzenberger of Adam’s Pest Control in Minneapolis, Minn.

That means adjusting pricing structures for some commercial clients to assure they could continue service even if their businesses had declined or were shut down for periods of time. Adam’s Pest Control’s commercial clientele consists of multi-family housing, retailers and some restaurants, which were more heavily impacted by COVID-19. While the business did not experience growth in the commercial sector during the past two years, contracts were maintained. “Now, we are starting to see some growth because we are offering them support,” he said.

And because of the way Adam’s partnered with its struggling clients, word passed on that the company is a truly service-centered provider. “Some companies in our area maybe didn’t do the same types of things, and we might be benefiting from how they approached it because we are picking up plenty of commercial customers now from competitors,” he said.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION. COVID-19 has caused some PMPs to re-examine the products they use. “I take people’s concerns and what they are afraid of more to heart,” said Stanford, adding that he’s been asked by clients on a number of occasions if the products he sprayed could cause COVID-19 or could impede their health. “With the breathing problems people might be having, I make sure all the labels say a product is safe for hospitals, day cares, schools and nursing homes,” he said.

NO TOUCH, NO PROBLEM. If your operation was bound by paper receipts and service tickets before the pandemic, customers’ desire for touchless transactions forced paperless initiatives in a hurry. Because Stafford started a business from scratch during COVID-19, he went digital from day one — a departure from his previous operation. “That was definitely a focus and we went paperless from the get-go with photos online and the whole nine yards — everything we do,” he said.

Touchless goes beyond digital communications and extends to how service is delivered in a hands-off yet customer-centric way, limiting in-person communications. “Customers are open to a touchless service as long as the same or higher level of quality is delivered,” Katzenberger said.

THE VALUE OF GOOD PEOPLE. To be successful in pest management, people need to feel as if they’re part of a team. The best employees are those who come together and have a do-whatever-it-takes attitude. The pandemic shined a spotlight on these flexible, quality employees while naturally excusing those who were unable to keep up with change or fell under the category of complacent.

“What we realized as we went through the pandemic is we needed the right type of people who were rowing in the same direction, and that it’s more important to have good, right, dedicated people in both employees and customers than it is to have more,” Katzenberger said.

This isn’t an epiphany, really. “We know that having the right people on the bus is key,” Katzenberger said. But amid COVID-19, the ability for some employees to flex and grow while others did not became even more apparent. The company didn’t have to lay off workers — some naturally moved on, and overall Adam’s Pest Control maintained the same size workforce. Going into the pandemic, the team was about 95 people, and today there are 115 employees on the roster with about 80 technicians.

Keeping a strong staff has been critical for maintaining momentum through the pandemic and today, growing into the future. “We have seen some competitors who cut too thin or too deep and they don’t have the capacity to grow and take new customers now,” Katzenberger said. “We didn’t go there.”

In fact, Katzenberger said Adam’s Pest Control built a more robust remote workforce, with 80 service technicians throughout the state now equipped with the systems to carry on business without being in an office. “This will allow us to have a larger geographic area where our people live,” he said.

ADD DISINFECTION, PLEASE. When COVID-19 first hit in March 2020, no one really knew how the virus would impact life at home and at work. “We didn’t know if people were going to let us into their homes, so we said, ‘What skills do we have to help?’” said Craig Sansig, service director, Viking Pest. “We looked at some treatments we had done related to rodent droppings, and we realized we were already equipped to do sanitization and disinfection services.”

The company recruited a professional with a background in crime scene cleanup. “She had done some really hardcore decontaminations, and she is very familiar with the regulations and safety procedures,” Sansig said, noting that early on in the pandemic, it was uncertain how the virus would spread. “We built a program based on Ebola,” Sansig said. “Let’s say, ‘This is the worst disease in the world,’ so how do we disinfect a building?”

At first, the company recruited existing staff as volunteers to perform the Viking Pro-Clean service. “Our goal also was to make sure staff had enough hours,” Sansig said. “So, that was initially a driver — to have a safety net.”

The company researched products and chose one designed for emerging viruses with data proving its efficacy with existing viruses, including coronaviruses. Viking Pest sold the program to commercial accounts, and the service includes disinfecting all hard surfaces (desktops, arm rests, handles, chairs, light switches, buttons and so on). A treatment is performed on carpeting, floors are disinfected and so are countertops and any surface people might touch. Some companies have purchased the program for more than 18 months as a weekly procedure. “We go in every Saturday and disinfect the buildings,” Sansig said.

Other clients purchase it on an as-needed or a one-time basis. There’s flexibility. “It has been well received and we are still getting calls for it now,” Sansig said, relating that one customer wanted the service because of flu season, not necessarily COVID-19.

At Western Pest Services, the PurClean program is marketed as “a disinfectant treatment for modern times and peace of mind.”

Interested customers include the hospitality industry, schools, hospitals and some residences. “It can be sold as a one-time service, weekly or monthly,” said Jennifer Brumfield, division technical director, Western Pest Services.

PurClean involves using a disinfectant — not a long-term residual — that is wiped or sprayed and kills 99.9 percent of bacteria on nonporous surfaces, the company reports. Western staff was trained to perform the service.

“When businesses and schools began to re-open, people needed peace of mind that surfaces were being disinfected and viruses deactivated. We embraced the opportunity to provide this service for our customers,” Brumfield said.

TRAINING AND TOUGHING IT OUT. “We used to do face-to-face training and tech ride-alongs — and everything went to a virtual platform,” Brumfield said, relating that social distancing limited lots of teachable moments that happen in the truck between stops.

The pandemic exacerbated labor pains across the board in service industries and beyond, and Western was no different, but Brumfield said hard-working staff stepped up. “We followed CDC guidelines, and we didn’t suffer a supply shortage of masks and PPE, so we practiced the safe protocols, stopped riding together in trucks and staggered check-ins when technicians come in to get chemical and equipment,” she said.

Meanwhile, technicians pursued and fulfilled licensing requirements via Zoom, and “we rose to the occasion as an industry,” Brumfield said, relating that “our industry is built differently. We don’t clock out at 5 p.m. Everyone works until the work is done, and I truly believe our frontline people — technicians, salespeople, service managers — are our unsung heroes.

“Technicians remained in public spaces throughout the pandemic and no one ever said, ‘I’m not going to work today.’ They stayed on and fought through this pandemic side by side.”

And when labor was thin, dedicated employees embraced the essential- frontline nature of their work and sustained the account load.

The labor shortage is getting better now, Brumfield said. “We’re staffed up and ready for the busy season,” she said, relating that supply chain shortages are also evening out.

The author is a frequent PCT contributor.