Purpose

🏢 Commercial property managers don’t always have it easy. They’re typically juggling multiple properties, various contractors and other concerns—often on an ever-shrinking budget. The last thing they want to worry about is their contracted company doing what they said they would do.

🏡 For homeowners, it’s a similar story on a smaller scale. They want to enjoy their yard and home, not follow up on quality concerns. What if you could erase these worries for your customers? You could not only improve client retention but also increase your enhancement revenue.

💡 One way to accomplish this feat is by implementing a site audit process. Site audits allow your company to be the proactive partner clients are looking for and ramp up enhancement revenue at the same time.

A site audit is a process that evaluates, scores, and documents the conditions of a property and communicates that information to the client. It often includes taking notes and pictures of the great stuff you see on the property and in the building while documenting the not-so-great stuff. A good site audit rates categories on a universal scale to maintain objectivity and consistency across the organization.

For example, a site audit could use a 1–10 scale and would have categories specific to your clients’ property types or areas of the building.

🍃 For the green industry: Site audits are usually performed by account managers or operations managers. They may be specific to a given service line, such as irrigation or turf care, or they can be broad in scope, addressing the whole property: including mowing, tree and shrub care, irrigation, turf care, and other details.

🧹 For the clean industry: You may see specific audits for safety or hygiene compliance requirements, or broader in scope and addressing the whole building: including restroom floors, restroom walls, office surfaces, break room kitchens, and other details.

Historically, businesses have conducted site audits on paper, walking around clients’ properties with a company form on a clipboard. They may have even taken photos, printed them out, and delivered hard copies to their clients. The specific advantages of doing Site Audits within Aspire are that they can be done on mobile or desktop devices, sent directly to clients, and used to create issues and opportunities.

How can this functionality benefit your company? Let’s take a look. 🔭

When your salespeople meet with a prospective client, they can perform a site audit to show how your company would create improvements to the property. If the customer is using another provider, your salesperson can highlight specific areas where that provider falls short and explain how your company would address the issue in a better way.
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When creating an initial audit of a potential customer’s property, you can easily select multiple areas and add issues for all of them. These issues are then used in conversation with the client to show detailed examples, helping your company to stand out against the competition.
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Using the site audit tool as part of your estimating and inspection processes can improve customer satisfaction after a service has been completed.

When account managers take notes on a property after services have been performed, they can score the factors related to the service or overall property. Then, they can add comments about the quality of the property.

For example, in the green industry, an account manager spotting a weedy landscape bed could give it a poor score, take a picture, and turn it into an internal “issue” for the production team to fix. This can also be the case in the clean industry: a janitorial supervisor catches the 2nd floor lobby’s trash cans were not emptied during the last visit, gives a category a poor score, takes a picture, and turns it into an internal issue for the production team to fix.
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​In both examples, they can also communicate the issue to the clients to let them know it’s been identified and is being addressed.

💡 It’s also a good practice to invite customers to join you for occasional inspections so they’re able to see the care you put into proactively ensuring excellent service. Since you can have multiple Site Audits you can build in Aspire, you could choose to walk through a more in-depth version when you’re with a client, even if you don’t always need to review such granular detail for your own quality control process.

🧠 This kind of proactive, consistent monitoring is a great way to keep customers happy since you’re finding and addressing issues as they occur.
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Are you missing out on additional sales opportunities with your current client? If you’re like most companies, the answer is probably yes. Even if you have an excellent renewal rate, you might not be tapping into the full revenue potential of your existing customers.
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Securing renewals and adding new clients to your CRM are excellent signs of growth, but how much time do you spend re-evaluating customer relationships? Skipping this step of the sales process could end up costing more than you realize.
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During these site audits, account managers can identify potential enhancement opportunities and communicate them to the client. It can also help strengthen your relationship by encouraging clients to see you as a long-term partner, not just a seasonal service provider.
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Finally, using Site Audits regularly in your company can impact employee education and employee retention. 📚

By seeing trends in Site Audit data or issues, managers can see which employees are struggling and may need additional support or training. Ultimately, it reinforces accountability by confirming work was completed and provides quality assurance by making sure that the work was done well!
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​Audits also give you an opportunity to highlight where service was exceptional and can be used as the basis for an employee recognition program that supports engagement and retention efforts.
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After all, employees feel appreciated when their hard work is recognized and are more likely to stay with your company!

When implementing site audits in your company, the key is to ensure that site audits are embedded into the entire production workflow, so you can promptly fix problems and efficiently capitalize on enhancement opportunities. This can be done by creating excellent SOP's (standard operation procedures).

One of the best ways to stay informed is to have your account managers or operations managers visit sites regularly—about once a month or more, depending on the size of the account.
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When it comes to implementing a process for site audits, consider setting frequency goals for account managers and tracking them. For example:

One way to do that is to set up Metrics or KPI and Insight charts in Aspire related to site audit completions and track them. Otherwise, you’re sitting back and waiting for the clients to call you with their problems.

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