If you install advanced onsite systems, you may need to find a memorable way to promote annual service — a customer prompt or special offer as a way for homeowners to remember the importance of regular maintenance.

It’s pretty obvious why this is a critical step for you as the service provider. First, one of your main missions is to find the most affordable route to safe, clean and effective wastewater treatment for your customers. Second, you want to make sure homeowners are following the maintenance interval rules set forth in their state’s regulations. You don’t want to feel responsible for your customers being in violation of the law and facing fines for inadequate care of their systems.

WHOA, AUNT GINNY!

And probably most importantly, ensuring maintenance follow-through protects your hard-earned reputation as a wastewater professional. There’s nothing like the premature failure of an expensive household system to draw complaints from customers or worse … those customers telling friends and family their broken septic system is your fault.

Imagine this conversation as the whole family is gathered around the holiday table later this month:

Uncle Buzz: “So why is your backyard all tore up? Is there something wrong with the septic system you had installed a few years ago?”

Aunt Ginny: “Yes, I spent $15,000 for that fancy new system and it just stopped working. That #$%&# at XYZ Septic never told me I had to have the thing serviced every year. How do they expect me to know how it works? I just flush the toilet.”

Cousin Frank: “So I guess I shouldn’t call XYZ when I need my septic replaced in a few years? Pass the turkey.”

You get the picture. A single unhappy customer can have a devastating impact on a business that lives and dies on a reputation for good service. Word may spread from that holiday dinner table like wildfire as Cousin Frank tells the horror story to all the guys at work, Uncle Buzz takes the opportunity to share with his morning coffee group at the local café. And Aunt Ginny, well she’s going to call and make your life miserable off and on for the next several years.

MAKING A POINT

One way to avoid these troubles is to make sure your customers don’t gloss over the maintenance component of system care after the installation. As I’m sure you have experienced many times, homeowners can become overwhelmed or distracted when you explain about their new system and its limitations. You sit them down and share what can and can’t be put down the drain and the many ways to spread out usage to stay within the parameters of daily flow limits.

While you are carefully explaining how waste travels through the system and effluent is distributed, here’s what Aunt Ginny is thinking to herself:

“This is awesome. Now that I have a new system, I don’t have to worry about the kids’ long showers anymore and I can wash all the laundry at once. Boy, I’m so happy I won’t have to think about that stupid septic tank for another 20 years. Hooray!”

So now you understand the challenge — putting a mechanism in place that ensures optimal performance … and zero callbacks. Here are a few ideas:

Get them thinking about making maintenance routine.

Talk to your customers about their lifestyle, and look for obvious triggers to call for necessary system maintenance. Do they host a big family event every year where visitors may tax their onsite system for a few days? If so, tell them to add septic system inspection to the checklist of pre-party planning and call you a month before the big event. The change of seasons is also a big trigger to get any type of home maintenance done. Tell them when they’re cleaning leaves from the gutters in the fall to think about calling you for an appointment. Or when they thatch the yard in the spring, it’s a perfect time to have their system checked.

Better yet, offer to remind them when service is needed.

If you don’t already have a sophisticated scheduling program for customer service reminders, get on that right away. Tell customers that part of your comprehensive customer service plan is to automatically notify them when required or recommended service intervals are reached. You can make specific service recommendations based on each customer’s unique usage situation — for example, more conservative monitoring intervals if they experience heavier than typical usage during certain periods.

Or partner with a pumper, and turn the task over to them.

Maybe your company doesn’t have a maintenance division and can’t or don’t want to provide that service. Find a pumping contractor you trust, and create a partnership that is beneficial to both companies. First, when a system is in the ground and operating properly, turn that homeowner’s contact and system information over to the pumping professional for follow-up. Be sure your partner will continue to promote annual inspection and maintenance to protect your customer and your reputation as an installer. In return, ask the pumper to recommend your design and installation services should one of his customers need a system replacement in the future.

CUSTOMER EDUCATION TOOL

Encouraging an appropriate maintenance schedule is half the battle. Ongoing consumer education is just as important in the war for trouble-free operation of the septic systems you install. And a Michigan State University video — now posted on the MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources YouTube channel — may be a helpful tool for onsite service providers.

The video, titled “Septic Systems: Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind,” can be found here and shared with your customers: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtppgvPlOCU&feature=youtube.

The main message homeowners will take away from the video is that preventive maintenance is not a difficult challenge and it’s the right thing to do for the environment.

Prepared by the Michigan Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association and the MSU Extension and Biosystems and Agriculture Engineering programs, the video explains that an estimated 1.2 million households in Michigan, and about 25 percent of state residents, utilize onsite systems for wastewater treatment. For the good of all, many of these systems should be inspected annually, according to Eckhart Dersch, a professor emeritus at MSU.

“Septic system maintenance is not rocket science. It’s really common sense, but people need to know what they’re doing,” Dersch says in the video. “They have to know they have a septic system and not ignore it.”

But continuing education is a constant challenge, reflects Terry Gibb, a natural resources and government and public policy educator at MSU.

“We have a lot of people moving from the city and sewers to the rural areas and on septics, and they had no clue that they were totally different systems and they had to … maintain them and protect them,” she says. “People think they can put anything and everything down them, and that is the surest way to get into trouble.”

IT AIN’T OVER TILL IT’S OVER

You may get tired of repeating the basics of septic service care, but power through that and get reenergized. Customer education is one of the most important tasks for an installer. This positive message will reap happy and loyal customers and is an important public health service. Without it, poor water-use habits continue and maintenance failures threaten a homeowner’s pocketbook and the environment surrounding all of us.