While developing trust with clients is important for any business, it’s especially important for the cleaning services industry. Individuals and businesses are literally opening their doors so you and your team can make things spic and span with little to no supervision. For your business to be successful, your clients need to not only trust you but be wowed by you. And achieving this goes far beyond vacuuming floors or dusting shelves.

Your team needs to be punctual, have good quality equipment, offer competitive rates and have great communication. But this isn’t easy. Every day they have to travel across multiple locations, adhere to strict time limits and perform a high level of service while not going crazy on expenses.

To make life easier, your business can implement a number of cutting edge solutions to help maintain trust with your clients and take your operations to the next level.

Up your responsive times

The nine-to-five workday is quickly becoming a thing of the past. More and more businesses are starting their office hours earlier and working into the wee hours of the evening. For house cleaning services this means you have a shorter window to make everything spotless. Tightening up communication is essential for making the most of your time. Technology, such as job management software, allows you to track and manage jobs and communicate directly to your clients and staff. If an upcoming job needs to be moved to another day you can update the job record and notify your team instantly. Or if a staff member is running late they can send an ETA to the client so they don’t lock up the building before they arrive. All the necessary info and tools are in one place so no one is left in the dark. It acts as a middleman throughout the job to ensure your team can complete jobs more efficiently.

Keep tracks of costs

Your team don’t use the same mops and cleaning cloths over and over, so it’s essential they have a constant stream of new and hygienic supplies. But over the course of a few weeks, these costs can add up. Without a way to track and manage everything, this can be a huge chip into your profits. You need to know when and what your team are expensing throughout the day and online job management is a great way to do this. Whenever you or your team makes a work purchase it can be recorded and tracked against a specific job. You can then view all your costs and determine whether you need to adjust your pricing or cut down on spending. Integrating this with inventory management software also ensures you don’t buy anything that’s already in stock.

Manage time more effectively

Taking bookings over the phone or email may seem convenient, but without a clear way to mark up your staff’s schedule, you could end up double booking jobs or putting too many jobs on a single day back-to-back. You want to make sure your staff are keeping busy without overwhelming them. Online job and project management and timesheeting tools let you view all your jobs at once on an online calendar, as well as make edits to booked jobs. If one week is overloaded you can reschedule a few jobs to another week. If a client requests a job you can instantly look up days and times that are available to avoid double booking. This not only saves time and helps to utilise your staff more effectively, it reduces the risk of having to contact a client and tell them that you’ve made a mistake and need to reschedule for another day.

Improve Customer Service

Feedback is the most vital part of the business/client relationship. It’s a key component of building long-term trust and winning repeat services. There are plenty of ways you can take better care of your customers with technology. Trust is built on transparency, so doing things like having your prices clearly listed on your website or social media pages is a great first step. Granting customers access to your job management software is also beneficial as you can keep them in the loop throughout the entire job. If a staff member is running late, having difficulty getting into the building, or needs a bit more time to finish off they can send a message right away so any inconvenience is minimised. A big fear of customers is that a cleaner will either do a poor job, not show up or break something, adding this extra level of transparency shows that you and your team have nothing to hide and that, in the unlikely event that something goes amiss, they’ll be kept in the loop at all times.

A cleaning business with messy processes isn’t one that can thrive. Taking your operations online and making the most of the latest technology can help clear out the clutter and confusion created by manual processes. You can effectively streamline your processes and set yourself up as a reputable and trustworthy business for present and future clients.

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