Texting for pest control
Someone has ants in the kitchen right now. They are not leaving a voicemail.
Pest calls are urgent and emotional. If you miss one, the caller books whoever answers next. A text from your number in seconds keeps you in the conversation.
Pest control: the caller with ants in the kitchen is not leaving a voicemail.
- 11:30 AMMissed call, ants in the kitchen
- 11:30 AMYour number texts them back, automatically
- 11:33 AM“Can you come this week? They’re everywhere.”
- 11:40 AMTreatment booked$172
One caller, start to finish. An example, except the green figure: that one comes from the published averages in 02, with their sources.
No trap here
- No contract
- Prices on the site
- Set up for you by a real person
- Texts from your own number
Where the money goes
Four leaks in a pest control company.
Urgent calls that ring out
Bed bugs, wasps, mice. The customer wants it handled today. The first company that responds gets the job.
Quarterly plans that quietly lapse
Customers forget when the next visit is and cancel when they see the charge. A reminder before each service keeps them on the plan.
One-time jobs that never became plans
You treated the problem once. A follow-up a month later offers the recurring plan while the memory is fresh.
Lapsed accounts
Everyone who canceled two years ago still has a house. A win-back text before the spring bug season brings some of them back.
What a job is worth
What one visit is worth, and what the plan is worth.
The first visit is the one they called about. The quarterly plan is the business. Both figures are national averages, and the second one is why a missed call in pest control is worth more than it looks.
- $172
average pest control visit, in a range of $50 to $500
- $100 to $300
per visit on a quarterly plan, for a 1,500 sq ft home
What one caller adds up to
- One treatment, at the average$172
- A year on a quarterly plan, four visits at the low end of the range$400
Each line states its own assumption. The averages are the ones above.
A month of missed calls, at the average
$1,863
10 missed calls a week, one in 4 of them ready to book, at $172 each. Those are the calculator’s defaults, not your company’s numbers.
A week in a pest control company
Five days, one phone
nobody could answer.
Every rust line is a call you could not take. Every teal line is your number answering for you. Every green line is the job it became, priced near the averages above.
One week, one company
ExampleMonday
- 7:55 AMMissed call, you are loading the sprayer
- 7:55 AMText-back goes out from your number
- 8:04 AM“Mice in the garage. How soon?” Booked for 11:00$172
Tuesday
- 9:00 AMEight quarterly customers on Thursday’s route get the week-ahead reminder
- 9:40 AMOne asks to move to Friday. Two mention a spot to check. The route holds
- 4:10 PMA one-time ant job from thirty days ago gets the plan offer
- 6:22 PM“All clear. Let’s do the quarterly.” Plan started$380
Wednesday
- 11:30 AMMissed call, ants in the kitchen, you are under a deck
- 11:30 AMText-back goes out
- 11:33 AM“Can you come this week? They’re everywhere.” Booked tomorrow$172
Thursday
- 7:30 AMRoute day. Eight stops, nobody surprised, nobody home who needed to be
- 6:00 PMYesterday’s ant customer gets the review request
Friday
- 2:15 PMMissed call, wasps under a deck, kids inside
- 2:15 PMText-back goes out
- 2:21 PM“Today if you can.” Last stop of the day$172
Booked that week, from texts
$896
Made up, like every ledger on this site, and priced at the published averages in 02 so it is a week you would recognise. Your dashboard shows the real one.
What your customer sees
In your words, from your own number.
We write every message with you during setup, in pest control language. You approve all of them before a single one goes out.
Missed call from a new customer
ExampleCalm, quick, and from your number.
New caller- Missed call, 9:31 AM
- This is Jo at Hometown Pest. Sorry we missed you, we’re on a service. What are you seeing and where? Text here and I’ll get you a time today.9:31 AM
- Wasps nesting under the deck. Kids can’t go outside.9:33 AM
- We can be there this afternoon between 1 and 3. Address?9:40 AM
- Same-day service booked
Quarterly re-service reminder
ExampleSent a week before the visit so nobody is surprised.
The Parks- Hi, it’s Hometown Pest. Your quarterly exterior treatment is scheduled for Tuesday the 14th. No need to be home. Reply if you’d like a different day or have a spot you want us to check.8:00 AM
- Perfect. Can you check around the garage door? Seeing spiders.8:52 AM
- Plan visit confirmed
One-time job to recurring plan
ExampleFollow-up 30 days after a one-time treatment.
Devin A.- Devin, Jo from Hometown Pest. It’s been a month since the ant treatment. Everything still quiet? If you want to keep it that way, our quarterly plan is $95 a visit and covers ants, spiders, and wasps. Reply and I’ll set it up.9:00 AM
- All clear. Let’s do the quarterly.5:14 PM
- Recurring plan started
Every text, explained
Seven messages. Here is each one,
and why it is written that way.
When it goes, what it says, why it works in pest control, and the one thing it will never do. You approve every word of every one before it goes live.
01
Missed-call text-back
When. Within seconds of a call you did not answer, during your working hours.
A pest call is not a comparison shop. The homeowner found something in the kitchen ten minutes ago and is calling down the list until somebody answers. A text in the same minute that asks what they are seeing is an answer, and it lets them send a photo, which half of them will.
Never. It never goes out when you answered, and it never goes out at night. A 10 PM call about a mouse waits for 8 AM, with wording that says you saw the call.
What they read
ExampleThis is Jo at Hometown Pest. Sorry we missed you, we’re on a service. What are you seeing and where? Text here and I’ll get you a time today. Reply STOP to opt out.
164 characters · 2 segments02
Quarterly service reminder
When. Seven days before each plan visit, with the date, and once more the morning of if you want it.
A plan customer who is surprised by a charge cancels the plan. A plan customer who heard from you a week before, and told you about the spiders by the garage door, feels like the plan is working. The reminder is the retention.
Never. It never asks them to confirm. The visit happens unless they say otherwise, because that is what a plan is.
What they read
ExampleHi, it’s Hometown Pest. Your quarterly exterior treatment is Tuesday the 14th. No need to be home. Reply if you’d like a different day or have a spot you want us to check. Reply STOP to opt out.
194 characters · 2 segments03
One-time to plan follow-up
When. Thirty days after a one-time treatment, once.
Thirty days is when the treatment has clearly worked and the memory of the ants is still fresh. It is the one moment a one-time customer is ready to hear about a plan, and most companies let it pass because the tech who did the job is on a different route by then.
Never. It never goes to a job that had a callback. If they called you back about the same ants, the next text is from a person.
What they read
ExampleDevin, Jo from Hometown Pest. It’s been a month since the ant treatment. Everything still quiet? If you want to keep it that way, our quarterly plan is $95 a visit and covers ants, spiders and wasps. Reply and I’ll set it up. Reply STOP to opt out.
248 characters · 2 segments04
Google review request
When. The evening after a completed service, to customers whose job closed clean.
Someone with bed bugs at 11 PM is going to pick the company with four hundred reviews over the one with forty, every time, and will not read either page for more than a minute. One request per job, the same evening, is how the forty becomes four hundred.
Never. It never goes out after a visit with a complaint, a re-treat or a missed window. We ask once and never twice.
What they read
ExampleThanks for having Hometown Pest out today, Devin. If we did right by you, a quick Google review helps a small company more than you’d think: g.page/r/hometown-pest. Reply STOP to opt out.
187 characters · 2 segments05
Season kickoff
When. Two texts a year: mosquito season in April, rodent season in September. To your plan customers, as an add-on, and to one-time customers from the last two years.
Mosquitoes and mice are the two problems a customer will pay to prevent rather than treat, and both arrive on a calendar. A text three weeks ahead fills the add-on route before the first bite and the first droppings.
Never. It never names a price that is not yours, and it never goes to someone who said no to the same offer last year.
What they read
ExampleIt’s Jo at Hometown Pest. Mosquito season is a few weeks out. We’re adding monthly yard treatments April through September for plan customers, and the route in your area has room. Reply YARD and I’ll add you. Reply STOP to opt out.
231 characters · 2 segments06
Lapsed plan win-back
When. February, once, to anyone whose plan lapsed in the last three years.
Most lapsed plans did not leave for a competitor. They moved, or a card expired, or they thought a quiet winter meant the problem was gone. One text before the season brings back the ones who forgot, and brings them back onto a route you already drive.
Never. It is one text, in one month, ever. A customer who ignores it is left alone.
What they read
ExampleHi, it’s Jo at Hometown Pest. Spring is coming and the ants are coming with it. If you’d like your quarterly plan back before the season, reply here and we’ll pick it up where it left off. Reply STOP to opt out.
211 characters · 2 segments07
Termite inspection reminder
When. Twelve months after an inspection or treatment, to that customer, once.
A termite warranty that needs an annual inspection is a visit the customer has already agreed to and will forget. Reminding them is the difference between a renewal and a lapsed warranty that becomes a $2,000 argument in May.
Never. It never claims a finding. The text books the look; the tech does the looking.
What they read
ExamplePat, it’s Hometown Pest. It’s been a year since your termite inspection. Swarm season starts soon and an annual check keeps the warranty in force. Reply with a day that works. Reply STOP to opt out.
198 characters · 2 segments
The year, already written
Twelve months in pest control,
and what goes out in each.
Set once during setup around your seasons, not ours. Change any month by texting us. The quiet months stay quiet on purpose.
January
Text-backs on missed calls, mostly rodents and the odd cockroach call. Quarterly reminders for January routes.
The quiet month on the phone. The reminders do the work of keeping winter routes dense when nobody is thinking about bugs.
February
Lapsed plan win-backs go out in the second week. Quarterly reminders.
People start thinking about the yard in February. A text now brings a lapsed account back before the first ant, onto a route that has room.
March
Termite inspection reminders to anyone twelve months out. Text-backs pick up.
Swarmers show up in March and April. The inspection reminder lands before the customer sees wings in the window sill.
April
Mosquito season kickoff to plan customers and recent one-timers. Quarterly reminders. Review requests after every visit.
The add-on route fills three weeks before the first bite. The reviews go up before the spring shoppers start reading them.
May
Text-backs on every missed call. One-time to plan follow-ups on April’s ant jobs.
The busiest phone month. The text-back is the whole product in May, and April’s one-time jobs are ready to become plans.
June
Text-backs. Quarterly reminders. Nothing promotional.
You do not need more calls in June. You need to not lose the ones that ring while you are under a deck.
July
Text-backs. Review requests. Quiet hours hold.
Wasps and mosquitoes keep the phone ringing. July customers are the happiest reviews of the year because the problem was the worst.
August
Text-backs. One-time to plan follow-ups on July’s wasp and ant jobs.
The summer one-timers become fall plans if somebody asks in August.
September
Rodent season kickoff. Quarterly reminders for fall routes.
Mice move in with the first cold nights. The exclusion and bait work books before the customer hears something in the wall.
October
Text-backs, mostly rodents and stink bugs. Review requests.
The second busy phone month, and the one where a missed call is most often a new plan customer.
November
Quarterly reminders. One-time to plan follow-ups on fall rodent jobs.
A rodent job that went well is the easiest plan sale of the year, and November is thirty days after October.
December
Text-backs only. Holiday closed dates set so wording and timing respect them.
Nobody wants a mosquito text on the 24th, and the text-back should say you are closed when you are.
The standing reminders
The rules behind the calendar, each one a date the customer would otherwise have to remember.
- Quarterly service reminder
- 7 days before each visit
- One-time to plan follow-up
- 30 days after treatment
- Mosquito season kickoff
- April to May
- Rodent season check
- September to October
- Lapsed account win-back
- Before spring
An example month
What a month of this looks like.
Every line is a booked job that started with a text, priced near the averages above. Your dashboard shows yours, not this one.
Pest control
Example- 5 jobsMissed-call text-backs$860
- 6 jobsLapsed quarterly plans$1,140
- 3 jobsOne-time to recurring$600
Recovered this month
$2,600
Made up figures for a pest control company of average size. Not a promise, and not another shop’s results.
The first week
Set up for a pest control company, by a person.
About an hour of your time, once. We do the carrier paperwork, the number, the list and the writing. Here is what that week looks like for your trade.
Day 0
Kickoff call, 30 minutes
We ask what you treat (general pest, termite, mosquito, wildlife), how many routes, what your plan is called and what it covers, what a first visit costs, which months fill up and which go quiet. We ask for your customer list with plan dates if your software can export them, in whatever shape it is in.
Days 1 to 3
Your number, made text-capable
We register your business number with the carriers under your company’s legal name. Calls do not change. If your techs carry a second number on the trucks, we talk about which one customers actually dial.
Days 2 to 4
Your texts, in your words
We draft the seven messages above with your company name, your tech’s first name, your real plan price and your review link. You read every one on your phone, change what you want, and approve. The plan offer gets the most edits; that is normal, because it is the one that sells something.
Days 4 to 7
Go live, and the inbox on your phone
We turn on the text-back first and watch a day of it with you. Quarterly reminders start with the following week’s routes, so you see what a reply looks like before a whole route’s worth land. A 20-minute call shows you and the office the inbox.
Every month after
The dashboard, together
Before each season we look at what went out and what came back, move the kickoff dates if your season moved, and check the plan reminders against your routes. If the number is not comfortably above what you pay us, we say so.
What it costs
Three plans. Which one
is yours, by the size of the company.
Every price is on this site and there is no contract. Here is how the three plans map onto the way this trade is usually run.
Starter
$249 /month
One truck, you are the tech and the office
The text-back catches the wasp call you missed under a deck, and the review requests build the page that wins the bed bug call at 11 PM. Add the rest when your plan count is worth reminding.
Pro
$449 /month
Most pest control companies
Two to four routes, a plan book that lapses more than it should
The quarterly reminders, the plan offer at thirty days and the February win-back are where a pest company’s recurring revenue is kept. This is the plan most pest companies run.
Full
$649 /month
Running PestPac or FieldRoutes, five routes or more, add-on services to sell
Plan dates and completed services are read from your software, so reminders follow the route and nothing is typed twice. Memberships are tracked, and bilingual texting covers the customers your techs already talk to in Spanish.
Software we commonly connect
On the Full plan. Names only; what we can read depends on what your software allows, and we confirm yours on the call.
- PestPac
- Customers, service plans and their next dates, completed services.
- FieldRoutes
- Customers, recurring services, route days and completed stops.
- Briostack
- Customers, subscriptions and service history.
- GorillaDesk
- Customers, recurring jobs and completed visits.
- Jobber
- Clients, recurring jobs and quotes.
Why not just…
The other ways a pest control company handles a missed call.
Each one is a real option, and some are the right one at a certain size. Here is what each costs and where it falls down, as plainly as we can put it.
Keep letting it go to voicemail
Nothing on paper.
A pest call converts in minutes, not days. The caller with mice at 7:55 is talking to the next company by 8:00, and it never shows up on a report because nobody counts the calls that did not become jobs.
An answering service
Roughly $200 to $500 a month, more in season.
A stranger who cannot see your routes, cannot say whether the plan covers carpenter ants, and takes a message. The message does not book the stop, and the customer who had to describe the problem twice calls someone else anyway.
Hire an office person
A salary.
The right answer past a certain route count, and the texts still help them: the reminders are a day of calls they do not have to make, and the text-back covers lunch and the two calls that ring at once.
The texting built into your routing software
Often included, or an add-on fee.
Good at the appointment reminder from inside a scheduled stop. Quiet on the missed call, the thirty-day plan offer and the lapsed account, which is where the money is, and the texts usually come from a number that is not yours.
A big texting and reviews platform
Typically $300 to $600 a month, on an annual contract.
You set it up yourself, the account manager goes quiet after the sale, and the texts come from a number your customers have never seen. Cancelling takes ninety days’ notice.
Questions pest control owners ask
The ones specific to your trade.
The contract, the number and the cancel-by-text answers are on the FAQ page. These are the ones that only come up on a call with a pest control company.
Because the surprise is the cancellation. A customer who sees a charge for a visit they forgot was coming calls to cancel the plan; a customer who got a text a week before, and told you about the spiders by the garage, feels the plan is working. The reminder is not about access. It is about keeping the plan.
Yes, and most do. Photos land in the inbox with the thread, so the tech knows whether it is odorous house ants or carpenter ants before the truck leaves. You can reply with a photo too.
It can run alongside it. PestPac is good at the confirmation from inside a scheduled stop. This is about the call you missed, the one-time job that should become a plan, and the account that lapsed, from your business number, with the dollars tracked. On the Full plan we read plan dates and completed services from PestPac so nothing is typed twice.
They get the annual inspection reminder and the text-back, and nothing else unless you want it. A termite warranty renewal is a phone call from you; the text books the inspection that keeps it in force.
Yes. The price in the thirty-day text is yours, and it can differ by service area or by what was treated. If your pricing changes mid-season, you text us and we change it the same day.
On the Full plan, yes: the next-service date comes from your software, so if you shift a route to Friday the reminder shifts with it. On Pro, the dates come from the list we set up together, and you change a date by texting us.
On the Full plan, yes. Each customer is marked for English or Spanish on the kickoff list, or from the first reply, and every message above has a Spanish version you approve the same way. STOP works in both languages, instantly.
They go out twice a year, to plan customers and to one-time customers from the last two years, and anyone who ignores one is not nudged again. A customer who said no to the yard treatment last April does not hear about it this April. If you would rather the kickoffs went only to one-time customers, that is a one-line change.
Nothing goes out while the plan is paused. When it resumes, the reminders pick up from the next scheduled visit. If a paused plan has not resumed by February, that customer gets the win-back, once, and then is left alone.
Lines we do not cross
Six rules, written for pest control.
They are not settings. They are how it is built, and no plan or request turns them off.
Nothing goes out between 8 PM and 8 AM, the customer’s time.
A pest company that texts at 11 PM is the company that texts at 11 PM, and the bed bug customer at 11 PM is already upset enough.
One reminder per visit. One plan offer per one-time job. One win-back, ever.
The point is to be the company that reached out once, not the one that keeps reaching out.
STOP means stop, in English or Spanish, instantly, on every message type.
It is the law, and it is what you would do if a customer said it at the door.
No automated text ever names a pest, a diagnosis or a price that is not yours.
A text cannot see the droppings. The tech can, and the price is the one you set.
Review requests go only to visits that closed clean, once.
Asking for a review after a re-treat is how a company earns its first one-star.
Imported lists get no marketing texts until the customer has heard from you another way.
A mosquito offer to someone who had one wasp nest removed in 2021 is, to them, spam from a number they forgot.
Book a demo
Fifteen minutes, about
your company.
A phone call with the person who would set it up. We look at how many calls you miss, what pest control jobs are worth to you, and whether this fits. If it does not, we will say so.
- No contract
- Prices on the site
- Set up for you by a real person
- Texts from your own number