3 Ways Pests Can Be Harming Your Business

If you are a small or medium-sized business owner, you know that it takes lots of hard work and sweat equity to get where you are today. Success does not come easy, especially in this tough financial market. Unfortunately, pests, of any kind can hurt your business in a few key ways. A nuisance pests can mean a whole lot more to a business and its consumers.All it takes to hurt your business is a cockroach scurrying across the floor of your restaurant, a mouse hiding in the changing room of your retail store, or a rat spotted feasting out by your garbage bins. How exactly could a pest problem hurt your business? Let's take a closer look.There are three main areas that you will want to consider: reputation, physical damage, and financial cost of repairs.

Financial Loss

Pests can cause serious financial problems when it comes to your finances. Carpenter bees, termites, mice, rats, and other wildlife can take up residence in your commercial business and cause some serious damage. While many pests like to burrow in wood like termites, carpenter bees and ants, others like to chew on items like your insulation and electrical wires such as rodents of all types.Either scenario can be a costly problem for business owners. From the clean up needed for bio-hazards caused by the droppings to the fire hazard caused by chewing mice and rats, the cost of a pest clean up could be high. BizzBeginnings reports that, Companies that are unlucky to have been infested by critters could lose tens of billions of dollars every year as they try to curb and ward off pests.

Property Damage

Whether pests have chewed through drywall, eaten your pantry items, or defecated around your office space, the damage can be appalling. Many cleaning companies are available to clean and sanitize workplaces, but the damage often results in property needing repairs, and work being shut down while extermination techniques are used or repairs are made. This lack of productivity again leads us back to financial losses caused by pests.Closely related to the financial loss, is this idea that your property was infiltrated and used as a haven by pests of many different varieties. Business owners often find themselves part time fix-it repair people, trying to determine the point of entry of these pests so it will not occur again.

Reputation Damage

For a public facing company, having a pest problem can be absolutely devastating. All you need is a client or consumer complaining about a mouse, rat, cockroach, flies, or bugs and you have a huge public relations and reputation problem.Given that it is extremely easy to spread word of a bad experience or a pest problem with online reviews, it behooves business owners to find solutions to a pest problem immediately. In this age of social media, the speed of circulation of posts can spread like wildfire, tarnishing your reputation for a long time. Getting that reputation back is much harder than one would think as people will remember a photo, comment, or negative review for weeks, months, and even years.The financial loss, property damage, and most importantly, the damage of reputation should be enough for business owners to examine your pest control protocol and be proactive in your remediation techniques. Contact our specialists about how you can keep your reputation intact and save yourself a loss of productivity and revenue.