CMM - January 2012
Editors note A recent discussion on the Cleaning Maintenance Management Online Bulletin Board centered on maintaining satisfied clients Thoughts pertaining to the various lengths some are willing to go to ensure stellar customer satisfaction follow below Posted by Amanda Martini Hughes 11 14 2011 How do you keep your clients happy Are there certain things that you as the service provider can do in order to ensure that your client gets exactly what they want without you having to break the bank or your back What happens when a customer is dissatisfied How do you go about soothing riled tempers What advice can you give others who have to deal with perpetually unhappy customers Responses John Markey 11 21 2011 Lots of Chapstick if you know what I mean TJ 11 22 2011 I hope I can help you There are some that are never happy no matter what you do its just their personality When I take on a job I ask them what they want with my services and then go one step above Also communication could be a factor here Instead of waiting for them to complain ask them first Are you happy with our services is this what you wanted what can I do to improve things By approaching them first it shows that you take pride in your work Good luck John Markey 11 22 2011 Actually we start with establishing what is to be done and how many times each task is to be completed through good specifications or scope of work Stay away from using the term as needed because your as needed will be different than the clients as needed The tasks and the frequency are the most important part of a service agreement If it says in our service proposal that something is to be cleaned once a week then we clean it once a week We do what we say when we said were going to do it Excellent communication is a must We use building or suite logbooks for associates to sign in and for our clients to leave messages to our team leaders Supervisors and managers review these logbooks when visiting accounts We also keep those pages within the logbook for over a year to train new associates on past issues Establish a special e mail address for clients to use when an issue or compliments need to be relayed In our company theses e mail messages are automatically distributed by our server within our office to the vice president the director of operations the quality control inspector the division manager and to our administrative assistant as a back up 6 CM Cleaning Maintenance Management January 2012 We use a series of four comment cards during the year which are soon to be web based asking different questions about the quality of our cleaning for different areas of the facility and inquiring as to the quality of our associates onsite We refrain from using the same card over and over Our cards have a seasonal color photo on the front to make them pleasing and more importantly they grab the attention of the client We have an inspection person who interacts with our contact person and to key tenants she is on the road every day and visits some large clients every week smaller facilities every other week or once a month When a customer is dissatisfied we reclean the area or object and the sooner the better There have been instances that our vice president has gone out to facilities to empty trash containers that have been missed during the previous evenings service We do have a small gift basket of office supplies about 70 worth of tape sticky notes pens pencils thumbtacks etc to which we attach a preprinted sorry note asking the client to forgive us We deliver that as soon as possible If we screw up we over apologize and do our best to retrain associates not to repeat mistakes How do we handle perpetually unhappy customers We have an 80 20 rule 20 percent of ones clients will be responsible for 80 percent of ones headaches We fire those clients yes send them a letter of cancellation We have only had to do that three times in 35 years CM letters and views
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