Pest & Termite Consultants mitigates unauthorized use, curbs unsafe driving with Verizon Connect Reveal

Pest & Termite Consultants is a 30-year-old company serving one of the fastest-growing areas in the U.S. With a main office in Raleigh, NC, the company is on a mission to meet the rising need for pest-control services in an area experiencing a building boom.

“The main portions of our service are quarterly service and one-time service, and then termite work,” said Will Adkins, Branch Manager for Pest & Termite Consultants. “That can be pre-treatments for new builds, or additions on homes, to maintaining termite warranties on homes.”

To meet the demand, the company has assembled an army of pest-control technicians, each of whom is entrusted with a company-issued, take-home vehicle. With a fleet of 58 vehicles covering Raleigh and its surrounding communities, Pest & Termite Consultants has upgraded its method for tracking its team in the field to help make sure service appointments are kept on time and vehicles are cared for and operated safely.

After years of relying on hand-written notes and maintenance-reminder stickers, the company now leans on the cloud-based, fleet-management power of Verizon Connect Reveal to keep operations moving.

Increased demand means more boots on the ground

The demand for newly-built homes in the Raleigh area not only affected the local housing market. It also has impacted the natural environment of termites and other pests.

“We’re taking away so much natural habitat that they have to go somewhere,” Adkins said. “At this point, it’s just going into the homes.”

That means more work for the team at Pest & Termite Consultants and a need to expand operations.

“As the company grew, we had more and more customers and we had to add routes and add guys in order to maintain,” said Josh Wood, Termite Manager.  

But, to keep the team on track and working efficiently, Pest & Termite Consultants faced several challenges.

The company needed a way to track the location of technicians to confirm appointments and to adjust routes if necessary in real time. Managers also needed a way to confirm that company-issued vehicles weren’t being used for personal reasons outside of normal work hours, and a way to know when each of the vehicles needed servicing or when licensing tags were due for an update.

And, if one of the vehicles had been in an accident or reported for an unsafe driving incident, the company needed a way to review the incident to confirm or refute claims of liability. The same went for cases of excessive speeding, hard-braking and other unsafe driving habits on the part of technicians in the field.

It’s all a part of the company’s goal to coach good habits and create a culture of safe driving for the team representing the company in the community.

“When you’re out there, you’re a driving billboard for this company,” Adkins said. “Being seen in these neighborhoods is what makes us known in this area.”

Meeting the challenge with higher-level fleet management

To tackle these challenges, Pest & Termite Consultants deploys effective tracking tools— Verizon Connect Reveal with dual-facing AI Dashcams.

Verizon Connect Reveal is an intuitive, cloud-based fleet-management system that offers a near-real-time, 360-degree view of Pest & Termite Consultants’ daily route operations. The GPS tracking and high-resolution maps of Reveal allow the managers not only to monitor the location of company vehicles in the field but also collect data pertinent to how the vehicles are being operated and when they need servicing.

Pest & Termite Consultants uses Verizon Connect Reveal and integrated dashcams to:

• Deter unauthorized vehicle use
• Provide ETAs and verify proof of service
• Locate the nearest technicians for unplanned jobs
• Get vehicle maintenance alerts
• Get harsh-driving alerts and coach technicians on safe driving
• Quickly review video footage of accidents and other incidents on the road
• Mitigate false claims

“It’s happened a couple of times, where people have tried to claim that we hit them when they actually slammed on the brakes purposefully for us to hit them,” Adkins said. “We have a giant target on our vehicles, and they see it as an insurance payday.”

Technicians, managers in sync with enhanced fleet management

With Reveal in place for managers to use, the company has confirmation that routes are being run in a timely, efficient manner. The ability to replay routes also allows managers to answer questions from customers about the service they’ve received.

“If somebody calls and wants to know if a job’s done, rather than me needing to track down the technician, I can pull up the report and see that our guy’s been there,” Wood said.  “I can answer the question without having to make another phone call.”

Data and alerts from Verizon Connect Reveal and video footage captured by AI Dashcams help Pest & Termite Consultants maintain a culture of safety and accountability. Adkins said he uses Reveal to check for any unsafe driving trends, such as excessive speeding by the group, so he can address them at monthly meetings.

“If it’s more of a one-off thing, I won’t bring it up with the group,” he said. “But, if I see a trend across the board of 10 miles per hour over the limit, I’ll say, ‘Look, we really need to be conscious of this.’”

“We haven’t had very many major issues, thank goodness. It’s been mostly, ‘Hey, correct yourself before we have to correct it for you.’ ” 

The safety-first culture is also important in the way the company is portrayed in the communities it serves, where the trucks serve as representation of the company’s commitment to its customers in a growing market.

“We have a very long history serving this area, and we have a reputation and a certain standard to uphold,” Adkins said.