Schill Grounds Management Blog

It’s that time of year again. You’re thinking about changing your grounds management provider and you’re collecting bids.

Maybe you’re compiling them to submit them to a board of advisers or trustees for review, or maybe you’re just doing your due diligence to make sure that your property is getting the best value.

Over the years, we’ve heard from a lot of property managers that comparing bids from prospective vendors is one of the most difficult and time-consuming things they have to do. Unfortunately, comparing landscaping contracts is often not any easier, as bids differ depending on the scope of work and service offered. But beyond the ins and outs of what’s included in your contract, it’s also important to make sure (to the best of your abilities) that whichever company you choose is going to do the work to your satisfaction. After all, depending on the length of the agreement, you might be in bed with your grounds maintenance provider for multiple years.

Now is the time to secure your snow removal contract for this winter. And you might be wondering, “What’s the best way to pay for the service?”

Should you pay “per push,” every time a snow event requires the contractor to plow your property? Or, is a seasonal contract a better way to budget and keep your Northeast Ohio parking lots and walkways clear and safe?

Basically, do you want to pay only when it snows and the contractor clears your site? Or, do you prefer to secure a fixed price for the five-month winter season so whether there are 40 snow events or 100, your cost is the same?

At Schill, we like to give our commercial clients payment options so they can select the best fee structure to suit their budget. Here’s a closer look at the three types of snow removal contracts we offer commercial properties in Cleveland and the rest of Northeast Ohio.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about what we think are the most important factors for delivering great customer service. This series on C.A.R.E.—our four part recipe for providing an exceptional experience for our clients—is finally coming to an end as we discuss the last piece of the equation: expertise.

Consistency, accessibility, and reliability are all important values, but without expertise none of them matter. A company who is not adept in the landscaping space can’t be consistent or reliable. And what does it matter if your landscaping or snow removal contractor can be reached at all hours of the day if they don’t know what they’re doing?

Below, we take you through several questions to ask to determine whether the grounds management provider you’re considering are truly experts in their field.

Trust: it's something that can take years to build and just seconds to destroy, and it's the glue that holds people together in both personal relationships and professional ones. So, it makes sense that when you’re looking for a landscaping or snow removal company for your commercial property, you want them to be reliable.

We think reliability is important too, which is why it’s the third component of our C.A.R.E. customer service philosophy. Long story short, we take our customer’s trust very seriously and know we can’t operate a business without it. If you're looking for a grounds maintenance provider, this article has some questions you should keep in mind while searching that will help you figure out if a landscaping or snow removal company is reliable. And if you're a long time customer of ours, this post will show you how the Schill team works to win your trust every day.

January 19^th, 2018 marked 25 years that Schill has been in business. On that date in 1993, three brothers set out with the simple mission to make Northeast Ohio landscapes look their best. Since then, the business has changed drastically, and we know that we wouldn’t have made it to where we are without our customers, our rockstar crews, and the community this business operates within.

So, over the course of 2018, we’re going to be unveiling a variety of projects and charitable giving to show the people and communities who have had the biggest impact on our success just how much we appreciate them.

Here’s what we have planned:

If you’re a current Schill customer, then you probably have a strong relationship with your CCS, or Customer Care Specialist. We assign everyone a CCS when they become a customer, and they’re ultimately responsible for making sure our clients get the service they deserve.

But doing that wouldn’t be possible without the Operations Managers that work alongside them. These unsung heroes are on the front lines of your property every day, making sure it receives the service it deserves.

We’re proud of our company structure and we want our current and potential customers to thrive.

For these reasons, we wrote this article to help current and potential customers learn what an Operations Manager does here at Schill Grounds Management and how to get the most out of the one that’s assigned to their property. Jake Koglman and Justin Graber, two of our Operations Managers, sat down to give us their take on how our clients can get the most out of their Operations Managers.

Have you ever needed to get in touch with a business and it takes 30 minutes of phone time to speak to an actual human? Have you ever contacted a vendor about an urgent request only to receive a response days or weeks later—or worse, they don’t respond at all?

Frustrations like this are fairly common. According to a study by Super Office, 41% of companies don’t respond to customer service emails at all, and the average response time for those that do is over 15 hours.

We find those numbers upsetting because here at Schill, we believe that what our clients have to say is important.

Accessibility, which we define as the ability to be reached by clients, is so essential to us that we made it part of C.A.R.E. (an acronym for Consistency, Accessibility, Reliability, and Expertise), our official philosophy for creating an exceptional customer experience. This article covers how to tell if a grounds management provider is inaccessible, as well as how we strive to be accessible here at Schill Grounds Management.

When it comes to causing damage, Mother Nature can be dangerous and unpredictable; as sophisticated as our weather prediction systems are, you’d need a crystal ball to tell you if a branch will come crashing through your window or whether the wind will be blowing just right to fell a powerline.

Nevertheless, there are some aspects of storm damage that we can predict and therefore prevent.

And with 2017 being one of the worst years on record in the US for storm damage, it’s understandable that many people to want to know how prepare their properties for seasonal storms. So, this article discusses some common questions we get about storm damage, and how your grounds management provider can identify risks on your landscape to help you prevent some of the most common types of damage.

If you manage a commercial property, your concerns for your landscape go far beyond what the average homeowner has to think about. You have to balance the competing demands of keeping expenses under budget and creating memorable experiences for tenants, customers, and employees. And sometimes you might be doing all this for multiple properties at the same time.

The staff here at Schill Grounds Management has well over a century of combined experience in helping property managers and owners meet their goals and build landscapes that allow people to create meaningful memories. In this article, we thought we’d share some of the biggest landscaping trends we see commercial property managers adopting.

Have you ever gone to a restaurant and had an amazing dish, only to go back and be less than impressed when you order it again at a later date? It’s not a fun experience. And when you go to your coffee shop and order your favorite morning libation, we assume that you do so expecting that it’s going to taste just as great as the last time you had it.

Consistency in customer service means a lot to us as a culture. We want the experiences and goods we spend money on to be great every single time.

So, when you choose your grounds management provider, it goes without saying that you expect them to perform well week after week and year after year, through spring rains or winter snow.