Introducing the Applause Top 10 Awards: Setting the standard for service excellence

This year, we’re launching the Applause Top 10 Awards: an annual celebration of exceptional service quality in home services.  

There are dozens of ways to define a top-performing home services business. You could compare profit margins, number of locations, new business growth, etc. But at Applause, we believe the most reliable and meaningful indicator of long-term success is customer satisfaction. 

These awards recognize the top-performing home services companies in the country based on what matters most: real customer feedback and consistent service execution. 

Customer feedback serves as both a holistic and granular snapshot of a company’s performance. Dozens of inputs inform a customer’s experience, from on-time arrival to price point to first-time fix rate to a technicians’ attitude and level of professionalism. 

We combed through over 18,000 data points and compared review and CSAT (customer satisfaction scores) for the more than 3,000 companies in the Applause database to find the businesses that consistently meet and exceed customer expectations. 

The result is a short list of the top 2% of home services companies in the nation in terms of service quality. 

What are the Applause Top 10 Awards?

At Applause, we work with thousands of home services companies and analyze millions of customer interactions each year.

We see firsthand that the highest-performing businesses don’t rely on individual hero technicians or one-off successes. Instead, they set a quality standard and implement tools and best practices to ensure every technician on their team meets them. 

The Applause Top 10 Awards honor companies across three major home services industries:
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• HVAC
• Pest Control
• Lawn & Landscape
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Winners are recognized in two categories:
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• Best Google Ratings
• Highest Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
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Each Top 10 list highlights companies that consistently deliver high-quality customer experiences at scale and over time. 

How Winners Are Selected

The Applause Top 10 is powered entirely by performance data from the Applause platform.
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• 18,000+ data points analyzed
• 3,000 companies evaluated
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Companies were evaluated using:
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• Google review ratings
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores
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To ensure fairness and accuracy:
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• Google ratings were adjusted for review volume to reward consistency at scale
• CSAT scores were adjusted for response volume to ensure statistical significance
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The result is a ranking that reflects sustained service excellence based on real customer feedback.

Recognizing this year’s top performers

This year’s Applause Top 10 winners across HVAC, pest control, and lawn & landscape represent the highest standard of service in the industry. Below is a complete list of the 2026 winners by industry.

HVAC: Best reviews
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HVAC: Best Customer Satisfaction
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Pest Control: Best Reviews
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Pest Control: Best Customer Satisfaction
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Lawn & Landscape: Best Reviews

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Lawn & Landscape: Best Customer Satisfaction
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Turn your technicians into top performers with Applause

Applause Top 10 companies don’t leave the customer experience up to chance. 

They use Applause to define, track, and reward great performance with automated Scorecards and instant performance incentives. 

Scorecards give owners, operators, and technicians real-time visibility into performance goals and progress right in the Applause app, creating the clarity and accountability you need to drive daily improvements. 

With Scorecards, you can set KPIs based on your unique business goals and automatically trigger instant incentives as soon as techs hit their targets to motivate your team to do their best work on every job. 

Ready to turn service quality into automatic business growth? Chat with our team. 

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