What Do Sand, Merlin and your Janitorial Service Have In Common?

by Compass Cleaning Solutions • January 18, 2017

Have you ever been to the beach or a playground where there is a lot of sand? As you played with your kids or you walked along the beach you got sand in your shoes and so you tried to get all the sand out, and you thought you did, except for one or two little grains of sand. Before you were even aware of it those little grains of sand had created a cut or scrape on your foot that was extremely painful and uncomfortable. It wasn’t any fun was it?

Little irritations with your cleaning company can be like that. What starts out to be something small and insignificant becomes a major irritation that leads to a more serious problem. The disappointment for cleaning companies is that a few minor adjustments and quick attention to a couple of things here or there would have resolved the issues and a crisis would have been avoided. So what can we do to eliminate the little irritations before they become big problems?

Identify the Problem

I say to our franchise owners and our clients all the time, “I can’t fix what I don’t know about”. Information and knowledge go a long way toward heading off problems. Studies show us exactly what annoys clients the most. Missed days on a service schedule. Unlocked doors. Alarm codes left unset. Sloppy work. Shortcuts. Eating on the premises. Bringing children into a building and the list goes on. Every one of these things could be solved quickly and decisively if the proper information was received in a timely fashion. In other words communication is the key to solving almost every problem we run into.

We Didn’t Hire Merlin

As nice as it would be to wave a wand and make all bad things good again, on this side of the fairy tale it takes actual work and effort. If your janitorial company doesn’t have a written plan and an easy way to communicate concerns, its likely that you will continue to have irritations. Your janitorial company should provide schedules and clearly defined tasks to be completed during any given week, but what happens when the plan goes side ways. Don’t forget, the wild card in all of this is the human factor. People do dumb things at the most inconvenient times. But the sooner we, your janitorial provider, know about the issues, the sooner we can take steps to correct them and provide the service you expect.

Its Kind of Like Magic

Traditionally, written notes are left for the cleaning technicians, to have them correct issues. So what’s wrong with that? In my mind several things. First, if a client is paying for service and somehow the janitorial service provider doesn’t give the service expected, you the client, shouldn’t have to wait one or two days, or even a week, to have it resolved. Second, waiting until the cleaning crew returns puts them in a position of not being prepared to solve the issue completely. Third, notes to cleaning crews don’t always get to the office which then prohibits effective follow up and training to insure the situation doesn’t happen again.

We prefer a much more proactive approach. With the correct process and technology in place getting the problem solved quickly and with little disruption is a little like magic. Your expectations are met and things run smoothly. This is where innovation and technology come into play. With the communication technology available there is absolutely no reason for an issue to go beyond 24 hours unless some catastrophic situation arises. In addition, the client should be kept informed throughout the process and everyone involved in the process should have all the information available. The process should be fast, efficient and complete. The client should not have to push the process along.

The bottom line is a quality janitorial service provider will include you all along the way but most importantly they will take proactive measures to make sure that if you get a grain of sand stuck in your shoe it won’t be there long enough to cause a raw sore to develop. In fact, the really good janitorial service providers will remove the grain of sand before you even know it was there, kind of like magic.

If you are looking for a different kind of janitorial service provider give us a call, we’ll show you the difference.