Holy moly, we all hate this. I have experienced customer churn more in the last two weeks than ever before. I've lost 6 customers in two weeks. What are you doing about this in your company. I try to stop the bleeding and offer whatever I need to keep them, but some are leaving anyway. Curious what others do about this.
For the pet waste pros in here: how do you handle the first cleanup when a yard is really backed up?
I’m curious how everyone structures it:
Do you charge a flat initial cleanup fee?
Do you charge by time?
Do you waive it if they sign up for recurring service?
Do you have a max amount included before pricing changes?
Do you walk away from yards that are too bad?
At Scoopy Doo, we’ve tested a few different approaches because the first visit can make or break the profitability of a new customer. Some yards are simple, but others can take way longer than expected if they haven’t been cleaned in weeks or months.
I’m leaning toward keeping the policy simple and transparent: recurring service is priced separately, and the first cleanup is based on the condition of the yard. That way we don’t underprice the worst jobs or scare away normal recurring customers.
Would love to hear what’s working in your market. What do you charge, and how do you explain it to customers without overcomplicating the sale?
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I wanted to share a high-level look at how we’ve been working on automating more of our pet waste removal business.
We’re not trying to replace the human side of the business. Customers still want reliable service, clean yards, good communication, and someone they trust showing up every week. The goal is to remove the repetitive admin work, tighten up the systems, catch mistakes faster, and free up more time to focus on growth.
Here’s the big-picture version of what we’ve been building and improving.
One of the first things we focused on was tracking where leads are coming from and what happens to them after they contact us.
We want visibility into things like:
The goal is to stop guessing which marketing is working and start making decisions from real numbers.
For example, if yard signs are producing cheaper leads than Facebook ads in a certain area, we want to know that. If a specific neighborhood is converting better than others, we want to know that too.
We use Jobber as the CRM/field service backbone, so a lot of our automation thinking is built around what can be pulled from or pushed into Jobber.
We’re looking at automating and tracking:
The big idea is that every customer interaction should create useful data, not just disappear into a text thread or memory.
A huge leak in small service businesses is slow or inconsistent follow-up.
So we’ve been building systems around:
The goal is not to spam people. It’s to make sure good leads don’t fall through the cracks because the owner is busy running routes, answering phones, handling employees, or putting out fires.
Reviews matter a lot in this business, especially locally.
We’ve been working on a system where every customer email is collected and stored so review requests can be sent consistently.
The review workflow we’re building around includes:
This is one of those areas where consistency matters more than intensity. Asking once in a while is not enough. It needs to be part of the operating system.
We’ve also put a lot of emphasis on Google Business Profile because local search is so important for this industry.
Our planned weekly GBP workflow includes:
This is something we want an automation/agent system to help manage, but not fake. The photos still need to be real and current. The goal is consistency and accountability.
We’ve been using AI heavily to help generate and organize marketing ideas.
That includes:
For us, the best use of AI here is not just “write a post.” It’s more like, “Create a campaign that fits our market, our offer, our customer pain points, and our brand voice.”
We’ve been building around hyperlocal SEO instead of just broad keywords.
That means creating content and strategy around searches like:
The goal is to become the obvious local choice when someone searches for the service.
Residential recurring service is great, but commercial accounts can be very valuable too.
We’ve been building systems for:
Commercial work needs a more organized sales process than residential. It usually requires better tracking, better follow-up, better proposals, and clearer service descriptions.
This is one of the biggest areas we’re trying to improve.
We want automation that can help pull information from Jobber and QuickBooks to show things like:
The goal is to find the money leaks before they get expensive.
The bigger vision is to have one dashboard that gives a clear view of the whole company.
Something like:
The owner should be able to open one place and quickly know what needs attention.
The long-term goal is not one giant chatbot. It’s a multi-agent system where different agents handle different business functions.
Examples:
Each agent has a specific job, specific data it watches, and specific actions it can recommend or take.
The owner still stays in control, but the system helps catch problems, suggest next moves, and handle repetitive workflows.
Pet waste removal is simple on the surface, but running the business well is not simple.
The actual scooping is only part of the company.
The harder parts are:
Automation helps us work on the business instead of constantly being buried inside the business.
We’re still building and improving this, but the goal is clear:
Create a cleaner, tighter operating system for a pet waste removal company so fewer things get missed, customers get better service, and the owner has more time to grow the business.
I’d be curious what everyone else here is automating.
Are you using Jobber, Sweep&Go, Housecall Pro, Zapier, GoHighLevel, QuickBooks, spreadsheets, AI tools, or something custom?
What part of your pet waste removal business would you most want to automate first?
I wanted to start a pricing discussion and see what everyone is charging for weekly recurring pet waste removal in different markets.
For us at Scoopy Doo in the Chattanooga, TN area, our weekly residential pricing generally starts around $22–$30 per visit, depending on the number of dogs, yard size, cleanup difficulty, and route density.
We price higher for:
We also treat the initial cleanup differently from recurring weekly service because the first visit can take a lot longer if the yard has not been maintained.
I’m curious how everyone else is handling weekly pricing.
A few questions:
I think pricing is one of the biggest things that separates a side hustle from a real business. Too low, and you stay busy but broke. Too high without the right positioning, and conversion drops.
Would love to hear what’s working in your market.
I wanted to start a discussion around software and systems for running a pet waste removal business.
There are a lot of different ways people manage this business: Jobber, Sweep&Go, Housecall Pro, Service Autopilot, Google Sheets, QuickBooks, GoHighLevel, Zapier, custom automations, or just a simple calendar and notes app.
At Scoopy Doo, we currently use Jobber as our main CRM/field service system, and we’re also working on building more automation around lead tracking, follow-up, review requests, reporting, and owner dashboards.
What I like about using software is that it helps keep customer info, recurring jobs, scheduling, quotes, invoices, and payments in one place.
What I don’t like is that most software still does not automatically show you the full picture as an owner. I want better visibility into things like:
Curious what everyone else is using.
A few questions:
I think software can either make the business feel organized or make things more complicated than they need to be.
Would love to hear what’s actually working for everyone.