Editor’s Note: This article was reprinted with permission from Techletter, a biweekly training letter for PMPs from Pinto & Associates.

The deer mouse first became widely known because of its role in the transmission of hantavirus and as a reservoir for Lyme disease, but it has become an important indoor mouse pest in many areas of the United States. It is found throughout most of Canada and the U.S. except for a few southeastern states.

The deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, is hard to tell apart from the closely related white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus, and the term “deer mouse” is often used for both. Because the deer mouse and the house mouse are similar, we’ll concentrate on how their differences.

Most notably, the deer mouse has a two-tone coloration, usually a tawny brown (sometimes gray) on its back with a pronounced dividing line between its white belly, with white feet and white on the bottom of its hairy tail. The mostly gray house mouse has a mostly naked tail. The two mice are about the same size, but the deer mouse has larger, prominent eyes and larger, thinner ears than the house mouse.

Outdoors, deer mice will nest around the roots of trees, under boards or logs, in stumps or woodpiles, in animal burrows or bird nests, in sheds or in abandoned vehicles or equipment. Deer mice are active year-round, mostly at night, and can damage garden crops.

ROLE AS A STRUCTURAL PEST. Deer mice are good climbers and use vines and tree limbs to reach attics or upper levels. Favorite indoor nest sites are drawers and storage cabinets in garages, items stored in attics, upholstered furniture, wall voids and corner sill plates in basements and crawls.

These mice feed on a variety of foods but particularly like seeds and nuts and will cache large amounts near their indoor nests. Deer mice urinate and defecate in their nests and will build a new nest when the current one becomes too foul. Hantavirus is a concern for people in dusty environments with a large amount of deer mouse urine and droppings.

Deer mice indoors are controlled in the same way as house mice. Baited snap traps work, as do rodenticide baits. Use secured block baits and avoid loose baits because of the deer mouse’s habit of hoarding without eating. Make sure deer mice are listed on the label.

POINTS TO REMEMBER. The deer mouse is the most common small mammal in North America and is generally seen as more of a rural, outdoor mouse, occasionally found in sheds, cabins or barns. But it has become increasingly common in homes, especially those surrounded by natural habitats. Deer mice often move in with cooler fall weather.

The authors are well-known industry consultants and co-owners of Pinto & Associates.

In the city of New Orleans, rats face a formidable opponent. Timmy Madere, special projects coordinator for the City of New Orleans Mosquito & Termite Board, is an expert in urban pest issues and rodents. When the call for help goes out, he relies on tracking, trapping and technology to rid buildings of rats and mice. In PCT’s Rodent Control Virtual Conference hosted late last year, Madere shared techniques that pest management technicians can use, guided by old school Sherlock Holmes observation skills and technology tools.

DETECTIVE WORK. Madere has learned through extensive field and research experience that successfully tracking and trapping rats begins with detailed detective work and an open mind. Sherlock Holmes inspires many throughout the pest management industry and is famous for his detective approach, emphasizing thorough inspections using observation, reason and logic. Looking closely at all the evidence before making assumptions — the difference between simply seeing and observing — also is key to helping technicians determine the source of rodent activity and set the course for an effective rodent control program.

A recently encountered trash can reinforced this point for Madere. The can had become a convenient food source for rats and it would have been easy to assume rodents chewed their way into the trash can through the bottom. However, after close inspection, small scratch marks were discovered in the sides of the plastic trash bag leading out the top of the receptacle. They revealed the rat was entering and exiting through the top of the trash can, not the bottom, and it was found sitting inside. Had the scratch marks gone unnoticed, traps placed underneath the can may have never solved the issue.

In another case, similar observation techniques were combined with technology to gather detailed evidence used in solving a basement rat problem. Droppings found around a sewer pipe suggested rats were traveling into the building through the open pipe. Building engineers resisted, not believing rats would use a pipe connecting to sewer water as the entrance or escape route. Madere installed a camera and with video footage of a rat poised on top of the open pipe, he quickly made the case to the client to plug the hole.

TRACKING. Madere stressed that tracking rodents requires paying close attention to detail. Rats and mice leave behind many clues through odor, urine, droppings and rub marks that help technicians determine their presence, the species of rodent and the best placement for traps or stations.

Rodent odor is often the first clue to reach our senses. Madere suggests getting familiar with the unique scents of roof rats and Norway rats by putting their bedding into jars and using the jars as a training tool. He says this technique is effective for cockroaches and bed bugs too; he often will know the pest he is dealing with by walking into a room and taking a whiff.

Rodent species also can be narrowed down by taking a closer look at the shape of the droppings. Norway rats have droppings the size of raisins; roof rats are smaller and have a distinct hook. Even smaller — about the size of rice — are house mouse droppings, which are characterized by hairs that can be seen using a hand lens.

Wherever they go, rodents mark their routes with droppings, urine and rub marks (sebum) as evidence. Before placing traps along these routes, knowing if the route is still in use can save technicians time and frustration. One trick Madere finds useful is leaving his own mark by scratching into sebum rub marks. If the scratches are rubbed over a week or two later, he knows rats are still using the run. He also appreciates advancements in products like monitoring blocks that give droppings a fluorescent color, alerting him to fresh droppings. Non-toxic fluorescent dyes dusted inside rat burrows help Madere understand foraging routes. He also uses different dye colors to detect colonies with shared food sources.

Through experience, Madere says it is not uncommon for species to share paths, contrary to some thinking. He has observed rodents intermingling when the food source is abundant.

“We’ve seen evidence of mice, roof rats and Norway rats in the same area and it even appeared that they were eating in shifts,” he said.

Janet Hurley, Bugwood.org

Another rodent behavior technicians expect to see sometimes is for rats to generally travel along lines, shadows and walls. Madere cautions trackers to watch for exceptions. Studying rodent urine trails identifies places where rats are coming away from the wall, perhaps to avoid a gap or for no obvious reason. In those situations, it may not make sense to follow traditional best practices of placing equipment against the wall. Moving traps or stations into the path away from the wall may be the best strategy for getting contact with the rat.

Tracking rodent trails through dust and sand can literally mean following their tracks. A close look at prints in the dust can point in the direction the rodents are traveling, the route they are following and where to continue your tracking efforts. When he can, Madere shows footprints to customers and points out the telltale outline of four toes on the front feet and five toes on the back feet.

Once rodents have been thoroughly tracked, information gathered about their habits and travel patterns can be used to develop a strategy for trapping.

TRAP PLACEMENT TIPS. Why wait for a rat to discover the trap when success can be achieved faster by bringing the trap to the rat? Using observation skills or technology such as video or sensors, PMPs can locate lines, shadows and other paths rats use to move around an account. It may take creativity to find ways of placing traps in their route. If rats are climbing on a roof to feed on pigeons, try attaching traps to tree trunks. Modern plastic traps or classic wooden Victor traps can be anchored to pipes or beams in almost any angle or direction using zip-ties.

Another effective placement technique leverages rats’ instinct to run and follow the trail of pheromones left by other rats. Madere sets traps perpendicular across runs to catch rats as they run by. Their body passes over the trigger mechanism to be caught by the bar rather than just a head or foot when they are stopped reaching for the bait to feed.

PREBAITING. “If you’re not doing prebaiting, then you’re not doing trapping right,” Madere said. He explained that investing a few nights of prebaiting before active trapping dramatically improves catch results. “Otherwise you’re only pulling out one or two animals at a time.”

Rodents are weary of new food and objects, a behavior called neophobia, causing them to shy away from traps initially. Prebaiting is a way of overcoming neophobia by rewarding rodents with food. Madere makes note of what rodents are eating at the account and prebaits using the food they prefer. He offers eight tips to ensure a successful prebaiting strategy:

1. Eliminate or at least limit all other food sources.
2. Use four to five kinds of bait. If you plan to use 100 traps, try 25 traps of peanut butter, 25 traps with apples, 25 with tuna fish and 25 with dog food or beef jerky.
3. Be generous with the amount of bait to feed as many rodents as possible.4. Add additional traps in areas with a lot of feeding.
4. Narrow the choices to the best performing baits.
5. Don’t limit the bait to just one choice for the rats. Expect a picky eater to be in the bunch. Chances are that picky eater may be a pregnant female or dominant male and you don’t want to miss trapping the rat that continues to reproduce.
6. Don’t forget to empty and rebait the traps with fresh food.
7. Plan to prebait traps for three to four days. Madere continues prebaiting until 75 percent of the traps are cleaned out.

When it’s time to start active trapping, use the opposite approach with bait. Madere recommends loading up the trap with generous amounts of bait when prebaiting. For active trapping, use a small dab of bait placed at the back of the trip plate. The scent of the bait will attract the rat but because it’s only a small dab, the rat will need to lean far into the trap to reach it. The less food on the trap, the more the rodent has to interact with the trigger mechanism, he says. slow and steady wins. Madere says applying technology in rodent tracking and trapping strategies may not solve problems faster, but it does provide notable benefits.

Technology enables technicians to continue monitoring for activity, even when they are servicing other accounts. Cameras and sensors capture activity for review at a later date, often in less time than it takes to observe the activity firsthand. In just one photo, Madere identified the species of rat, the pipe it was climbing to the ceiling, and the exclusion work necessary to close the hole and prevent the rat from entering the room again.

“I can’t be in the alley or in a kitchen 24 hours a day so these things are helping me put forth less effort but still do a better job,” Madere said.

Technology also helps technicians see rodents that may be difficult to find with the naked eye. There are some infrared cameras that attach to mobile phones and an app helps technicians see hot and cold spots, like rodents running through ground cover in landscaping. This is particularly useful at night when they are the most active.

Wikimedia

“This will help you follow the rodent back to where they’re entering and exiting so you know where to focus exclusion work and where to place your traps, sensors or cameras,” Madere said.

Like traps and bait stations, cameras and sensors require planning to be effective. Using good tracking skills to identify where rodent activity is occurring is key to using cameras and sensors effectively. They need to be installed in the right location and PMPs should expect that it may take some practice.

Madere learned enough that he shifted his approach to using cameras before putting out traps or stations. The cameras provide information he didn’t have access to before through observation. When evidence points to active rodent activity, the cameras sometimes tell a different story.

“We are putting out cameras before anything else so we know exactly where our hot spots are. Droppings are not going to tell you how long they’ve been there or if this is still an active trail. Maybe the food source was taken away or the water source went away. Maybe they just decided to quit walking in that direction. Everything told us rats were there but once we put cameras on watch for a few weeks, we saw the threat never traveled that way anymore.”

Another technology benefit is the ability to provide concrete evidence that a rodent program will be or was effective. As a selling tool, prospective customers may be more willing to buy knowing you have technology tools to validate the service. After the sale and after the infestation is resolved, even the most experienced technician may have trouble convincing a customer their approach worked to end the rodent infestation. Video or data collected by sensors showing the absence of activity can be an effective means of providing proof.

FINAL THOUGHTS. Training technicians to be keen observers during trapping can help them investigate small details and be more efficient managing their routes. “We’re looking for trifle things other people would overlook, such as a red drop of blood,” he said.

Madere shared the story of finding a drop of blood on a trap. Knowing the rat was injured prompted the technician to look around the trap area and find the dead rodent, avoiding a return trip back to the account later. Finding whiskers caught in a trap or glueboard also can signal trouble. If the whiskers go unnoticed, the technician may not understand why the trap isn’t getting activity or think to start over with prebaiting to coax the rodents back.

Carrie Thibodeaux is a Tacoma, Wash.-based freelance author who has been writing about the pest management industry for 20 years.

How many times do you get asked what you do for a job? Or, “What’s your company all about?” And when asked, do you have an “elevator speech?” A clear, quickly delivered “infomercial” about you or your business or other passion?

I thought it might be fun to ask what interesting bits of infomercial-worthy information might go into an elevator speech about pest control. So, I’ve put together some ideas that might serve as an interesting mixture of thoughts and facts to entertain, inform and impress those who have no idea what we do every day in the pest control profession. 

• Pest control is more than a job. It’s a profession that’s all about protecting your property, health and welfare. 
• Pest management professionals help schools, businesses, homeowners and renters manage termites, rodents, cockroaches, ants and bed bugs. And we do it efficiently using the best science-based methods. 
• Pest control employees not only go through apprenticeships and exams to get licensed; they’re now required to get safety- and pest control-related continuing education credits annually in most states.
• Insecticides are safer and more thoroughly tested today than ever. The average cost of discovering and getting a new insecticide to market today is more than $250 million, about $67 million of which is devoted to environmental and safety testing. Next to pharmaceuticals, pesticides are arguably the most thoroughly tested products used by consumers.
• We’re a modest-sized industry doing a huge job. The pest control industry is estimated to be $8 billion a year in the United States — about the same as how much Americans spend on Halloween. 
• Speaking of Halloween, how scary is it that a cockroach doesn’t have to touch you to make you sick? Just breathing the air of a cockroach-infested home exposes you to cockroach allergens, which can lead to asthma. And more than 60 percent of U.S. homes have these allergens (the percentage is even higher for inner city homes — estimates range between 78 percent and 98 percent). 
• Almost 1 million households were treated for bed bugs by the United States pest control industry in 2016, up 11 percent from 2015.
• One of the fastest-growing pest control industry segments around the country is mosquito control, a market in which our industry battles the deadliest animal in the world. (Mosquito-borne malaria kills close to three-quarters of a million people a year.) 
• Rodents chewing on wires and gas lines in attics and walls cause an estimated 20-25 percent of all fires of mysterious origin. A PMP knows how to eliminate rats and mice while minimizing the risks of dead rodents in unwanted places.
• A single house mouse visiting your customer’s kitchen in one night leaves behind more than 50 virus- and bacteria-laden droppings and up to 3,000 micro-urine droplets on floors, on countertops and in drawers. 
• As U.S. cities grow, and apartment densities soar, the need for pest control is growing now at more than 4.5 percent ($100 million) a year.

Of course, together these facts are way too long for an elevator speech (which should be 25 to 30 seconds, no longer than 80 or 90 words). So, pick one or two things to commit to memory and pull them out when you’ve got 30 seconds with a prospective customer (or your mother who still doesn’t know what you do).

The author is an entomology specialist for Texas AgriLife Extension.

Your smart phone bleeps an alert. What is it? It’s a text message notifying you that a rodent trap was triggered at a nearby restaurant you serviced last week. You’re in the middle of a route—but good news, your next client knows you’ll be there in 20 minutes because of an automatic message that popped into that client’s mobile when you left the last job.

Better news, the restaurant has been contacted (preferred communication: email), so they know their rodent trap issue is on the schedule. You’re on it. Back at the XYZ Pest’s office, a customer calls to ask whether your team investigated the basement. (There’s “something” down there.) Because of smart goggles — wearable technology — your office confirms: Yes, the PMP spent 14 minutes probing for pests on the lower level. And now there are three smart traps set, too.

Communication is immediate. Data collection is automatic. Reporting is instant and in real-time. There’s accountability and assurance and transparency. Today’s business environment encompasses virtually everything.

This is how the Internet of Things (IoT) is disrupting service industries (including pest control) with software, hardware and infrastructure that connects “all of the things” to eliminate waste. IoT is the routing software and the smart-trap hardware — it’s sensors, smart house systems, video-enabled doorbells and your “friend,” Alexa. (Yes, talk her into turning on the light in an instant.) In a sophisticated form, IoT taps Big Data (another way of saying “all the information”) and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make better business decisions.

“IoT is enabling your business by using technology to do your job in a better, more efficient way,” defines Andrew Barrows, director of mergers and acquisitions for Environmental Pest Service, Tampa, Fla.

Barrows has seen technology in spaces ranging from higher education to healthcare staffing. As someone who manages the M&A process at a pest control firm with offices in several states, he talks to companies everywhere about how they’re doing business. “My job is to always be evaluating what is the best way to run a company,” he says.

Technology is a considerable piece of that evaluation. Pest control operations have been successful at implementing IoT in a number of ways — and in fact, PMPs might not realize that these efforts carry the IoT label. Chances are, you have some level of IoT in the works already. For example, your routing and scheduling software, linked to GPS, is IoT. At Environmental Pest Service, a text-to-pay service they’re rolling out will allow customers to access an invoice on their mobile devices, log in and “ping” their saved credit card to settle a bill. “Text is really great,” Barrows says.

Other service industries like HVAC and plumbing are more advanced in their adoption of IoT tools, Barrows says. He points to an inventory management system that an HVAC company uses involving sensors that allow for automatic maintenance. “If you can use technology to be highly responsive to leads and highly responsive with your service, you’ll have high customer satisfaction, which results in retention and referrals,” Barrows adds.

Making customers happy is the age-old motive of service industries. And ultimately, IoT allows providers to deliver service in the way modern consumers demand.

Beth Berry was executive director of the Better Business Bureau and serves on NPMA’s Technology Committee as a leader at Real Green Systems. She says IoT will make it easier for customers to do business with pest control companies.

“Think of Staples’ ‘Easy’ button,” Berry relates. “With technology and IoT in pest control, it will be easy to build a higher level of trust with consumers and provide better results.”

TRIGGERING TECHNOLOGY. Defining IoT can get complicated — connecting, networking, hardware, software, infrastructure, real-time…what does all this mean? Foaad Khosmood, Ph.D., Forbes associate professor of Computer Engineering at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Calif., puts it simply: “IoT is connecting devices to the internet. It could be connecting your phone to the internet or a smart speaker — or a personal assistant like Alexa, or a doorknob or your locks, or moisture and climate control sensors.”

That’s lots of pieces-parts. But how do they work together to get stuff done?

Khosmood illustrates the connection by describing a class project, where his Cal Poly students designed and built a prototype for a smart trash collection system. “In the San Francisco area, we have a lot of rural trails, parks and hiking areas, and some of them are remote,” he says. “The city has to haul huge trucks up the trails to empty trash bins — but the city doesn’t know when the bins are full. If you know the minute they are full and can come at that time (and not when they aren’t full), you can save that energy and gasoline.”

To accomplish this, sensors are involved (hardware) and there’s software to grab data from the trash sensors and make it available for people to see whether the trash cans are full. In the pest control industry, this type of sensing and alerting is the basis of remote pest monitoring. Systems detect rodents (or other pests), collect data, and notify a system that pushes out alerts so technicians know exactly when and where a pest is caught.

Scott Steckel, director of strategic development at Varment Guard in Columbus, Ohio, has played in the smart trap space, where manufacturers including Dow AgroSciences, Bayer, VM Products, Kness, Woodstream, Insects Limited and others are rolling out devices. For Steckel, the wonky part about implementing the technology at this stage has been software: “[The traps] are not tied to the software we are using, so we have to use the manufacturer’s software in addition to our own to manage the resources,” he says.

Another pain point of early adoption of smart traps is reliability. “We are finding that if we get a sample set of 10 devices to try, six will work and the others will not,” Steckel says.

As with any new technology, there will be bumps as kinks are ironed out. And smart trap technology is in its infancy, Steckel relates. “So, in this period of time, you should expect high cost for start-up, no perfect results and a bit of turbulence,” he says.

The smart trap evolution really began several years ago in the wildlife trapping industry with electronic trap monitoring devices that notify PMPs when traps are triggered. Steckel’s interest piqued and he has been approached by smart trap manufacturers to test out their products. He’s excited about the potential. (Real excited!) “I think in the next three to five years, we’ll have a clear winner in the marketplace,” he says of the technology.

Khosmood says of IoT in general, across all industries, “what is missing at the moment is a standard for the entire IoT infrastructure.” For example, WiFi became the standard for wireless internet. Blu-ray won out as the standard for disc-based storage. “At some point, there is going to be a standard for IoT devices, too. For now, there are too many companies doing their own thing,” he says.

A standard IoT infrastructure will give businesses an “agnostic” option — so they can integrate devices in a technology platform without having to operate many different systems, as Steckel explained.

Sprague Pest Solutions, Tacoma, Wash., also is testing some smart traps, specifically in a couple of restaurants and an airport. The traps are set up and electronically “marked” in the system. “We geocode them, so we know where they are in the world,” explains Ari Rogoway, IT director. “Now, the traps can tell us if there was rodent activity.”

But Rogoway has bigger plans for the technology “where we are hoping to do more proactive services — preventive care and treatment,” he says, noting that the existing technology as it is used is reactive. The trap alerts when a rodent is caught. “The smart trap is the first piece of the puzzle, but we’ll probably get to the home automation side where we’ll understand the whole environment of a facility — we’ll know the temperatures and humidity, which doors are opened or closed. This will give us Big Data so we know where pressures are coming from so we can be proactive.”

The data piece is what could ultimately separate the “caught a mouse” approach vs. a service philosophy.

As Rogoway points out, smart traps are just one tool for PMPs in the IoT world. He shares how Sprague Pest Solutions used sensors in a major aircraft facility it services. The building had significant fly pressure, especially in paint booths. And, that’s a problem. (Insects in paint could ruin the aircraft, Rogoway says.) An engineer at the facility figured out that the flies were attracted to the lights in those work spaces.

“So, we put sensors in the building to let us know when there was light activity, so we could predict when the flies would come,” he says. “It turned out they were keeping lights on at night when the paint was drying. Because we put out sensors, we were able to provide anecdotal information and instruction to turn off the lights — and we gave them auto-timers, so the lights would turn off at night, and paint could dry without flies getting on the aircraft.”

Here, Rogoway explains how a “smart home” approach and using sensors to share information about the environment allowed Sprague Pest to make recommendations to prevent flies.

It’s IoT IPM.

Rogoway says, “We’re going to begin analyzing data, looking for pressures and thresholds, and identifying problems based on what sensors tell us.”

Enter the “AI” piece of the IoT puzzle. If pest management professionals across the country implemented smart traps, the manufacturers of those devices could access and share data related to pest pressure, Berry says. “Say PMPs are finding a winged termite problem in Massachusetts that hasn’t been there before, so they begin to provide data to chemical companies—maybe there’s a resistance,” she relates. “This data pattern recognition can allow companies to be more pre-emptive on pest trends.”

SMARTER WAYS TO WORK. IoT goes beyond routing technology and smart traps. It includes the potential for using sensors, as Rogoway detailed, and even drones. “That’s an interesting dynamic — service delivery via drone,” Berry says. “If you have hornets’ nests in areas where it is unsafe to treat [in person], a drone service delivery technology [would be safer].” Berry notes that Real Green Systems is currently working with a chemical provider to see how this technology might be applied in the pest control industry.

Already, drones are widely used in agriculture to collect data, Khosmood says. “In our area where there is a lot of winemaking and viticulture, growers are embracing this, using drones to detect how ripe crops are,” he says, adding that sensing devices are used to detect soil moisture, as well.

And, because chips that go into sensing devices are so inexpensive now, Khosmood says, you can expect to see more sensor technology readily available for businesses and consumers.

Already, the consumer market is grabbing on to the smart home concept — and consumers tend to hop on board with technologies about 10 years before most businesses, Rogoway says. “In the consumer space, we’re seeing IoT all over. Now, we’re talking to our house, ‘Turn out the light switches.’”

Some companies like UPS are adopting smart home concepts, Berry says. “Their No. 1 problem is that packages can get stolen off of doorsteps,” she explains. But, if a homeowner with a smart home system (such as Ring or Nest) that allows access to the house with a code, you can see when the delivery guy shows up, notify him of a unique code to enter, then he can leave the package inside the door. (Because there’s video, you’ll know the delivery person didn’t walk into your living room.)

Berry muses over how this type of system could work for PMPs, when only 18 percent of residential customers are home during visits, she points out. “If you can provide remote access to your home, see the PMP walk in, know how long he’s there and watch him via cameras, that reduces liability on behalf of the PMP and gives the homeowner peace of mind,” she says.

IoT is moving from “cross-vertical implementation” (fleet management, for example) to more industry-specific solutions such as smart traps for PMPs, says Todd Givens, vice president of technical services for Tellennium, a Louisville, Ky.-based tech consulting firm that implements IoT systems for businesses. The evolution is going from that general smart home, accessible consumer technology to more data-driven business IoT solutions that address specific issues, Givens notes.

Givens sees opportunities for PMPs to utilize IoT for inventory control, using RFID tagging and asset management. And, in the fleet management area, he has worked with some large-scale trucking organizations that use GPS tracking (an IoT concept) so customers can be alerted before a delivery. “That way, they can be prepared,” he says.

Meanwhile, the consumer smart home space is adding specific tools to deal with problems, including dealing with pests. Wink offers a smart mouse trap. Homeowners can set them up and get text alerts when the trap is full. Rogoway says, “That could be a huge disrupter for residential pest control.” Though, the trap catches a rodent — it doesn’t provide service.

Technology doesn’t replace the technician. But, IoT provides tools that PMPs should leverage to gain confidence from customers. Berry talks about how wearables can enhance the pest control service experience, while upping accountability and lowering liability. She says one of the top five frequently asked questions from a pest control customer is whether the PMP made a chemical application. (Makes sense, since most customers are not home at the time of service.) But, what if that PMP were wearing smart goggles that showed his or her path through a building...and any treatments?

“Not only will the consumer get a high level of confidence, but if you are an owner or manager of a pest control company, you have a great roadmap for quality assurance because now you can sit down with the technician and say, ‘You missed this area, or you only spent two minutes in the food-processing area and we know it takes nine minutes to successfully check those rodent traps,’” Berry relates.

Information gives power to the PMP to improve, and to the customer to believe in the quality of service that was delivered.

Not to mention, with the right sensors on wearables, a pest control firm could monitor a PMP’s health on the job. “In Houston, Texas, one of the biggest workers’ compensation issues is heat exhaustion,” Berry says of PMPs servicing hot attic spaces. Wearables can monitor heart rate and blood pressure. “Hopefully, at some point we can measure absorption of materials, so we can potentially moderate how many materials are absorbed by technicians to protect their health and safety.”

SECURITY OF SYSTEMS (& JOBS). With IoT — connecting everything to the internet — comes the issue of security. Who else can see this data? What could they do with it? Is Big Brother watching?

First, technology is nothing new — and we’ve always been advancing. Just, now, we’re moving at “internet speed.” Barrows reminds, “Technology has been revolutionizing the world for years — even with the advent of the wheel, which fundamentally changed how people lived. So, the Internet of Things just sped that up to a level we haven’t seen because the world has gotten much smaller, more interactive and more connected.”

Security is clearly one of the biggest IoT fears, says Phil Dawsey, director of marketing at Infiswift in San Francisco, Calif., which develops IoT solutions. And, many consumer devices that were rolled out early on (and inexpensively) were “not really built with security in mind,” he says. “They were like, ‘We want to see if this catches on and works and make it as low-cost as possible.’”

The key is to make security a part of IoT implementation. “Think about it up front when you are building solutions,” Dawsey says. Also, be sure devices have the capability to perform remote updates, he says, “so you can patch and do software updates wirelessly without going out to each device to manually update them.”

Updates reduce vulnerabilities.

Khosmood acknowledges that intelligent devices have been broken into, but encrypted communication and more sophisticated devices make this harder to do. “It used to be a home security camera that was on an open channel, so you could see your front door from your living room—but someone could tune in from across the street,” he said. “Now, there is authentication on devices so not just anyone can log in. Security is getting much better.”

Other fears of IoT are more centered on keeping up — and falling behind. Or, that the technician’s job will be replaced by machines. Barrows wonders, what if a customer pressed a “pest Uber” button and the closest, most cost-effective technician were routed to provide service, regardless of the firm he was affiliated with? “The better model, and what we see it moving toward, is you have a pest control company you work with and then you route your own technician to service your property because you are under contract,” he says.

Customers could snap a picture of the pest in question, text it to their PMP and immediately get scheduled for a visit.

Steckel says he’s looking ahead at how IoT tools could dramatically change the way he prices and delivers services. He says, IoT is a “game-changer, like Uber in the taxi industry.” He sees a day coming, in the near future, where PMPs are not trap checkers — but data collectors.

A definite positive is technology can free up PMPs to spend more time investigating vs. removing rodents from traps or checking empty traps. And, connectivity and data collection is what customers today seek. Berry affirms, “Our ability to provide the consumer more transparency in what we do is going to strengthen their confidence in the entire industry.”

The author is a frequent contributor to PCT.