SERVPRO of Ashtabula & North Trumbull Counties

Why a SERVPRO franchise? That kind of came my way as well. I was originally looking at a ServiceMaster franchise, but the industry was starting to change. The independents were getting all the work because they had all the relationships with the adjusters. In 2011, that changed. National accounts started to pop up and agreements with ServiceMaster and SERVPRO were being made at the corporate level. All of a sudden the jobs were now going somewhere else. I choose SERVPRO because at the time, I had four jobs going at once, and I got kicked off all four because they informed me their insurer made them use SERVPRO. That was all I had to hear.

How Do You Explain the SERVPRO Difference? The SERVPRO difference lies in the system. It’s documented from the time the phone rings to the time the job is complete. It’s one system after another, and at times, it can be very aggravating. But it’s built the biggest brand in the industry and customers know what to expect. In the digital age, customers have a connection online. They know what we do, how we do it and can even follow their job online. Adjusters and insurers know exactly what they are going to get from us.

Tell us about the SERVPRO team you’ve comprised. The team has been years and years in the making, transitioning from cleaning and detail cleaning to restoration cleaning. The team starts with the office personnel, which is used to produce files. These files were once very simple but have now become very complicated. So, the team is about everyone who answers the phone and who hands the jobs off to our operations department who is then in charge of producing them. So, when you’re talking about building a team, the key word is ‘building.’ It doesn’t happen overnight. There’s so much that goes into every aspect of this business, so many things that are changing, that the team is constantly evolving. From sales, to production to accounting, it’s a massive undertaking.

What will keep SERVPRO at the top of the industry? SERVPRO is almost an unstoppable brand at this point. It was a family owned enterprise for the last 60 years. They built a brand one franchise at a time. Currently, they’re going through a massive transition, with a hedge fund company who plans to bring in a massive amount of resources. It’s not just their money, it’s the technology that will drive the websites, it’s the equipment manufacturers, and it’s the relationships with the insurance companies that they already are partners with. The brand was already dominant.

The next closest competitor is ServiceMaster with name recognition, and they are ten times smaller. As far as our local franchises, that vision is to meet corporate with our marketing and our services halfway. SERVPRO used to be a ‘mom and pops’ setup that was made up of the owner and a couple of production managers. They would always be known as the small guys who could only handle the little jobs. Over the last sixty years, it has grown to over 1,800 franchises. As the new owners came in, they began to do the commercial work and develop into larger organizations like ours.

Our local vision includes a regional processing center that we will finish this year. It’s going to be state of the art, green building technology with very low energy usage. We have invested a lot into natural lighting, low energy consumption and the latest technology in every room. We want to bring jobs back to this area. We want this area to be our corporate headquarters. As part of the SERVPRO disaster recovery team, we have the ability to work all over the country and not just rely on local work.