Schill Blog

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.

If you’re a current Schill customer, then you probably have a strong relationship with your CCS, or Client 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.

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.

When people think fall, leaves are generally the first things that come to mind. They’re beautiful as they turn from green to shades of yellow, red and burnt orange, but can start to become a nuisance as they start to drop and litter your landscape.

So, it probably comes as no surprise that each year we receive calls from our customers about the leaves on their property as fall begins to wrap up. Because we believe in transparency and education, we decided to list some of the most common questions we get about Fall Clean Ups.

Because every company operates a little bit differently, this article is going to be more focused on the way that we do things here at Schill Grounds Management. Nevertheless, if you live outside the Northern Ohio area and use another grounds maintenance provider, this information will still be useful as you get your property ready for the end of fall and colder the weather to come.

As the weather turns colder and the days grow shorter, holiday lighting and decorations will soon start popping up on commercial properties throughout Cleveland and beyond.

Here at Schill Grounds Management, we’ve installed holiday décor everywhere from major retail parks to senior living facilities, so we know what it takes to make landscapes and buildings look their best in a safe and festive manner. Because we love to spread holiday cheer, we wrote this article to help you avoid some common mistakes that people make when decorating for the holidays and to let you know what you might be missing if you decide not to use professionals for your installation.

Here at Schill, we’ve worked on hundreds of properties that are visually breathtaking. There are countless factors that are involved in making a landscape look great, from plant choice to hardscapes and architectural features. But why should the best parts of your landscape be visible to potential customers, and tenants only half of the day?

The Schill team loves perennials, and it’s no wonder why. The flowering plants and leafy shrubs make great additions to any landscape by adding pops of color, texture, or differences in height. And because they last year after year and typically require less water than annuals do, they make great investments for any property.

When we first started Schill Grounds Management 25 years ago, the industry looked very different than what it is today. Search engines Google and Yahoo didn’t exist, so potential customers had to find us in the phone book or by word of mouth, and we received weather our reports via fax and by phone. Now our website receives thousands of visitors each month (most of which come through social media) and we can monitor weather in real time online by looking at traffic cameras and doppler radar.

Innovation within the landscaping industry is something that we’re always looking out for, but it’s also good to take a look back at how things have developed in order to understand what future trends will be. So, we wrote this article to help our readers understand how advances in software, communication, and equipment have changed the commercial landscaping industry for the better.