A preventable mistake

I recently signed up for regular cleaning after being thoroughly impressed with a service I used last month. The company I used was a multi-million dollar service here in New York City. Although not the same cleaner I had the first time, my new cleaner was to arrive every other week between 8-9am.

Now, owning a cleaning company I try to be fairly flexible. I know it’s a hard business to run and I know the owners deal with their daily share of headaches and hiccups and getting through a day without casualties is an accomplishment.

Some background

But this particular appointment (my first on the subscription), I didn’t have time to be my normal flexible self. When 9:15 rolled around and still no cleaner I continued to wait even though I had an appointment at 10:00 that was a subway ride away.

When 9:30 came, I finally decided to call the company.

My conversation went something like this.

Me: Hello, my cleaner was supposed to be here between 8 and 9 am and I know things come up… but I have an appointment and need to cancel if she isn’t here soon.

Clean Company: I’m sorry to hear that. You should have called us earlier to let us know she wasn’t there.

Me: Well, didn’t you know she wasn’t at location yet?

Clean Company: Unfortunately we have no way of knowing where our cleaners are and expect the client to call us if they don’t show up.

I was flabbergasted. I was completely surprised that a multi-million company didn’t have the technology to know if a cleaner had showed up or not. Had I not been home, I would have come to a home not cleaned and would have been an unhappy customer.

How could this have been prevented?

For my cleaning company (that is minuscule in comparison to this company) each of my cleaners use the Launch27 mobile app. They let me know when they are on their way and I have the app set to let me know if a team has not checked in within a certain amount of time so I can check in with the team, call the customer and keep everyone accountable and happy.

If my team is running late, they click the running late option and give me a reason as to why they are late. I can send them an in app message if I need further clarification and then I either call the customer or they can call the customer if I have call masking enabled.

With cleaning, most of keeping the customer happy involves communication, accountability and customer service. If you do a decent job on that end, your business with flourish.

Interested in learning more about the Launch27 mobile app? Watch our videos on the Mobile App Playlist or email us at support@launch27.com for a personal demo.