Portable Sanitation Association International

ASSOCIATIONINSIGHT Portable Sanitation Association International News BIWEEKLY EDITION OCTOBER 14, 2020 Page 2 Ensuring Quality in the Field—Part I: QC for Sinks…continued from page 1 • Providing opportunities to train—or retrain—your drivers. It can also give you a chance to educate drivers on things you might not have talked about before that would enhance their service to your customers, save money or generate extra revenue. • Building in time for owners or other company leaders to meet job supervisors or event planners and show them you appreciate their business. At a recent virtual roundtable, the topic of quality assurance and quality control in the field was the main agenda item. Participants shared a great deal of information, and this has always been a popular topic at our in-person roundtables as well. So this is the first of two articles that captures the highlights from those discussions. Some General Quality Considerations Pictured at left, Ronda McMichael, owner of Wise Environmental and Anne's Cans in Alabama says, "You want to turn quality into profit. Inspecting is an afterthought sometimes. You work so hard on getting the units out there and keeping them clean…then someone drops the ball on one job when you've got hundreds to do a day [and it's not good for anyone]. So you want to make sure you always have a plan in place—the 'plan' is quality assurance; the 'action' is quality control." How does Ronda do that? She shared the following tips: 1. Get the basics right. Your plan should include a process for making sure basic information like addresses, emails, and phone numbers are correct in the system. This makes all communication with customers possible, and communication is the key to any quality program. Delivering on time depends on it. Critically, if something goes wrong, it will only make a bad situation worse if you can't easily access the customer's record or get to the site to handle the problem. 2. Schedule strategically. Make sure that you get those scheduled services in place in a way that works for both you and the customer. Doing so successfully is really part of a larger communication strategy that undergirds your quality program. You have to understand customers' needs and timetables, but you also have to do the routing and optimization for your company. That is how you manage your costs and maximize your return. And don't forget the details! Any code or keys you need to make sure that you can get in that gate should be figured out early so that you can service in the wee hours of the morning due to safety issues. 3. Be consistent and communicate with your customers. Consistency in service means showing up on their site predictably. That might be at the same time on the same day every week, or just at some other time that you've mutually agreed to. Communicate in predictable ways, including sending invoices on the same day every month. If you have to let them know about special issues such as precautions for an incoming hurricane or a changed service schedule due to holidays, do it in a manner they can count on and recognize. But don't wait for something unusual to be in touch with your customers. At least once a month have a means of talking to them, making sure it's not only your technician, but also your sales team or your customer support liaison. Make sure they are happy, their needs are being addressed, and up sell if the right opportunity presents itself. 4. Put actual boots on the ground for quality. Send somebody out to your job sites to see that the technician is doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. Whether that is happening because you want to up sell some services or you're just there doing a quality check, make sure you actually look in the restrooms to see how they are being cleaned. Make sure the stickers have been updated, and match your GPS records with the service times there. Continued on page 15

• Cover