Two years ago this month, we featured Florida restroom provider Porta Serve Portable Sanitation and its outstanding service to the Suwannee Hulaween festival. This is the company’s biggest event gig held every October and drawing up to 30,000 attendees to take in diverse live music, spectacular light shows and a weekend of camping.

In that feature, we learned how the Porta Serve deploys more than 500 restrooms and lots of associated equipment, eight service trucks and 30-plus employees — full time and temporary — to the 800-acre Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, Florida, about 50 miles from company headquarters. The crew is constantly moving to make rounds at 62 service points in the park, collecting about 160,000 gallons of waste. The crew stays on-site throughout working around all those revelers.

This type of event would be the highlight of the summer season for most PROs. You’d like to land a job like this and provide the best service possible to keep the contract.

THE REST OF THE STORY

We covered all the facts and figures of the event during an interview with Porta Serve owner Ross Ambrose. But with the event season right around the corner for most PROs, and after a recent email follow-up conversation with Ambrose, I thought that, as Paul Harvey used to say on his radio program, it’s time to tell “the rest of the story.” 

And that is a tale of how to prompt an avalanche of positive responses from attendees; not about the music or the light shows, but about the portable restrooms at their favorite event. Believe it or not. Here is just a sampling of the social media buzz Porta Serve enjoyed during and post-Hulaween:

“Y’all did a badass job that nobody else would want to do. So for that, thank you very, very much.”

“Cleanest porta johns I’ve seen at any fest! Great job guys. Thank you.”

“Thanks for what you guys do! Honestly the cleanest Hula potties have ever been. I used to dread having to go into them. I would stand in the never-ending line for the very few flushing toilets. But never had an issue this weekend. Even with as hot as it got during the day.”

“I’ve rented from y’all for at least the last five Hula’s. You guys always work so hard and are always in good spirits. This year was the absolute best! Our camp was a little larger than expected and you guys were like clockwork.”

“Cleanest port-a-potties and always stocked on TP. Honestly the best bathroom situation out of the 10 fests I’ve been to yet.”

“Never used too dirty of a bathroom all week. 100% kept up to better standards than any other fest I’ve been to.”

“Hands down the best toilet crew in all of America. You’re doing God’s work.”

“You guys literally make events like this possible. Thank you so much for your service.”

EDUCATING THE CROWD

And the thread of comments went on and on after Ambrose posted a “thank you” message on the Hulaween Facebook page. Besides the positive reviews, social media posts allowed attendees to call out specific members of the Porta Serve team that helped them. They also made a number of requests for future service, including adding more units with open grid floors, adding more KROS International standing urinals and praising units with solar lighting and convenience shelving. And users were actually educating others on topics such as bagging so-called flushable wipes and throwing them in the trash rather than dropping them in the restroom holding tank.

Five-star Google reviews or website testimonials are potent sales tools. So at a time when small businesses have to practically beg customers to leave positive reviews, how did Porta Serve generate more endorsements from Hulaween than a busy editor could actually get through while trying to write a column?

The key to success is working for it, both on the front end by providing the type of service folks would rave about, and on the back end by maintaining a consistent social media presence and asking users for feedback. Ambrose enjoys engaging with festival-goers and they seem to appreciate it.

“When you throw this out to a fan base with 43,000 followers on the page [Hulaween’s social media] and these are the responses, it is telling,” Ambrose wrote to me. “We think the effort impacted how people took care of the units and made it easier for us as a team to do our best. Things were certainly not perfect, but by the reviews, we did a pretty good job and I’m not sure these responses would be typical of other large events.”

GAINING TRUST

Ambrose explained that multi-day festivals can be challenging for PROs at the outset. Attendees can be careless and disrespectful of the portable restrooms and create more time-consuming and difficult scheduled services. You have probably witnessed this yourselves: When users are rough on equipment and create messes to clean up or vandalize units that require on-site repairs or swapping out, it takes longer to make the rounds and restrooms can become overused. It’s a downward service spiral that can kill a PRO’s reputation.

“We all know that the public often has a poor perception of portable sanitation, especially for multi-day events, in this case a camping festival,” Ambrose said. “Over the years we have engaged online and been very aware of how the team interacts with the crowd. We see more and more care being taken by guests when they see there is a serious effort to maintain the facilities.”

Back to the front end, Ambrose said the Porta Serve crew:

• Keeps a regular service schedule in the campground areas.
• Has a marked cart that routinely checks on the condition of restrooms and will call for additional service as needed.
• Returns frequently to units determined to have excessive usage to replenish paper products and pick up trash.
• Engages on social media when immediate feedback will improve service.

Ambrose is the funnel through which all social media posts from the company flow. He feels it’s important to have one person acting as a clearinghouse for comments, to sort of moderate responses and personalize the experience.

“When there is a name behind the issues of sanitation, there is more accountability,” he said. “We openly own, on social media, mistakes when they happen. We don’t always get it right, but we do try and make notes to improve. Just responding when people have had issues makes them feel heard and they don’t have to be the victim of a faceless company contracted to handle sanitation.”

NOW TRY THIS

What can PROs start doing this season to build a strong reputation for event service? Ambrose shared a few suggestions based on Porta Serve’s success with Hulaween:

Share social media efforts with your event client. Back and forth with your users and positive comments like those above can show event planners the true value of providing quality portable sanitation. “A promoter will spend money to improve the atmosphere in any number of ways. If you can get promoters to also understand that the cost of sanitation is not simply overhead, but also a marketing cost, they are less likely to go for the least expensive option,” Ambrose said.

Take a green approach to the use of standard restrooms. Going green is a trend many festival-goers can get behind. Ambrose has a way to use that message to turn a negative into a positive. “People talk about wanting to be green and recycle at festivals. Yet they often complain at the lack of flushing, plumbed toilets. We try to create some acceptance of traditional drop tank toilets by connecting the saving of water and how these systems reduce environmental impact,” he said.

Build personal relationships between your crew and the crowds. Every year, Porta Serve designs a creative new T-shirt the workers wear while they’re on the grounds. It’s something that generates a lot of interaction with attendees and they hear a lot of compliments. This builds rapport and makes attendees and campers want to reflect the goodwill and take care of the portable sanitation equipment. “The shirts and the tone of the posts work to help humanize the team, while demonstrating that we can have some fun during their vacation, too,” Ambrose said.

RISK AND REWARD

We have all heard harsh commentary about portable sanitation from users on social media. The reality is that one bad experience with a portable restroom can lead folks to jump on Facebook or Instagram and brand all restrooms as disgusting. Frankly, I have found this to be quite unfair to PROs, but that’s just the cards you’ve been dealt when your work is cleaning up human waste.

But Porta Serve’s experience suggests you should be seeking social media feedback rather than running from any negativity that comes along with it. And the results could be particularly fruitful when it comes to your biggest summer event clients, those you want to work especially hard to satisfy and keep on your calendar. It’s hard to argue about the way it’s worked for Ambrose and Hulaween.

“This type of relationship is hard, but when you do large events year after year, it is important to immerse yourself in the vibe,” Ambrose said. “Being a part of the event’s social media really helps you know more about the crowd. I know it works because people who I do not know will come up to me and say, ‘You’re Ross, right? Doing a great job’ and then wander off to get back to the music.”