Natural State uses Pest SOS as an extension of its team to deliver responsive, knowledgeable, and personal customer experiences—even when its own staff can’t answer.
Challenge
Natural State’s five-person customer service team needed help covering overflow, after-hours, weekend, and holiday calls. Its previous answering service provided basic coverage, but fell short of Natural State’s service standards.
Solution
Pest SOS became an extension of Natural State’s team. Working directly inside FieldRoutes, Pest SOS agents answer questions, sell services, and schedule appointments, all while providing the exceptional service experience Natural State’s customers rely on.
Results
Pest SOS handles approximately 35% of the company’s inbound call volume. During one holiday closure alone, Pest SOS fielded more than 85 calls—taking care of Natural State’s customers even when its internal team wasn’t available.
The Client: Natural State Pest Control
Founded in 2016, Natural State Pest Control is a locally owned and operated pest and lawn care company serving Northwest Arkansas. The company has built its business around a straightforward philosophy:
“We kill bugs. We help people. Period.”
Natural State’s brand is built on the care and know-how of its office staff and technicians. As the business grows, maintaining the personal experience that helped build its reputation becomes increasingly important (and increasingly tricky).
The Challenge:
Natural State’s customer service team can handle just about anything, but there are only so many hours in the day. During peak periods, evenings, weekends, and holidays, even the best need backup.
Natural State had already tried solving that problem with an outsourced answering service, but wasn’t convinced by the results.
Meg Carter, Natural State’s Office Manager, says the biggest limitation was that too many interactions ended with a message instead of a resolution. For Natural State’s staff, this could mean a potential customer waiting until Monday to talk about a service they were ready to buy on Saturday, leading to lost sales and a dip in brand confidence.
For a five-person customer service team already near its inbound capacity, starting the day with a backlog of follow-ups certainly wasn’t helpful.
“Having a message-taking service wasn’t enough. We didn’t want to keep losing business over the weekend, after hours, or during overflow.”
— Meg Carter, Office Manager
There was also a noticeable knowledge gap. Natural State Owner Amanda Ragar recalls that previous agents didn’t know Natural State’s business well enough and sometimes provided inaccurate information or pricing. Natural State needed a partner who could understand the business, make a genuine connection with customers, and resolve issues on the first call—as often as humanly possible.
The Solution: Pest SOS becomes an extension of the Natural State team
Pest SOS began by developing an exhaustive company profile covering Natural State’s services, pricing, protocols, and sales processes. After a thorough review and sign-off from Natural State, Pest SOS trained its agents and added the profile to its software, allowing agents to reference up-to-date information in real time.
Pest SOS and Natural State meet quarterly to review the profile and ensure it reflects the latest service offerings, pricing, and operational best practices.
Because Pest SOS agents work inside Natural State’s FieldRoutes instance, they’re able to perform the same core tasks as Meg’s internal team. Agents can answer questions, sell eligible services, take payments, and schedule service.
“With Pest SOS, it’s genuinely like having one of my CSRs. They can sell, take payments, and handle customer service questions. They’re genuinely an extension of our office.”
— Meg Carter, Office Manager
In most cases, Pest SOS is equipped to give customers exactly what they need on the first call, no matter when that call takes place. As a true extension of the internal CS team, Pest SOS agents can capture new business while strengthening Natural State’s reputation for responsive, knowledgeable customer care.
Natural State still handles certain specialized interactions with its internal team. For calls requiring a more complex quote, such as Christmas decor or commercial service, Pest SOS agents add notes directly to the customer’s account in FieldRoutes and queue a follow-up for a Natural State specialist.
But Meg says those situations represent a relatively small portion of the calls Pest SOS handles. The guiding principle is simple: “We just want our customers to be taken care of in the best way possible, whether or not we’re available.”
When an external partner becomes an extension of the team, keeping everyone on the same page is critical. Pest SOS keeps Natural State’s internal team connected to every interaction. On top of the information already available in FieldRoutes, Pest SOS provides full call recordings, ticket tracking, and customizable follow-up notifications through its proprietary web app.
The Natural State team can see what happened, who handled the interaction, and what needs to happen next. And when Meg spots an issue or an unusual edge case, she can take that specific interaction back to Pest SOS as a training opportunity. She says the team’s willingness to respond and solve problems is one of the biggest reasons Natural State has continued the relationship.
“Their customer service is phenomenal, and that’s definitely why we’ve stayed with them. If there’s an issue, they’re super responsive and fix it as soon as they possibly can.”
— Meg Carter, Office Manager
[h2] The Results: Natural State builds business without sacrificing quality
Over time, the Pest SOS partnership has become much more than an occasional backup solution. Meg estimates that the service now handles roughly 35% of Natural State’s inbound call volume through a combination of overflow, after-hours, weekend, and holiday coverage.
One holiday provides an especially clear example. When Natural State closed ahead of Independence Day 2025, Pest SOS fielded more than 85 calls over a 24-hour period, providing immediate and friendly support while the office was closed.
| “We want that personal touch. We want the phone answered by the second ring. You’re not calling a call center—you’re calling a genuine person. We’re in Arkansas and people like to talk to people.”— Amanda Ragar, Owner |
While Pest SOS helps capture additional business and makes life easier for the internal customer service team, perhaps the most important thing the partnership provides is confidence. With Pest SOS fully integrated, Natural State Pest Control knows that no matter when a customer calls, they’ll be interacting with a friendly, responsive, and knowledgeable professional—even if the home office is closed.
After working with other outside service providers, Amanda Ragar says the difference is clear: “I feel like they just do more.”
For a growing company built around genuine customer service, that little bit “more” makes all the difference.
