[niceandclean]

I don't ring the night before, sod that! I tell all my customers that I dont ring, and to make sure I can have access somehow, either that or I will climb thier gate if they don't mind or just do front only....otherwise you'll be spending most of your time on the phone with all these custy's who want a phonecall first and that time could be used for something much better like drinking a nice cold beer! 

I always contact my customers the night before, always have, wether i need to get access or not. Takes me around 15-20 mins per night, if they are not in i leave a message/or/and text. If they forget to leave the gate open, i clean the fronts, and they are then charged for the full clean. I again find i pick up more work this way, as they say oh could you do the gutters, cladding, garage door ect, and i build up a nice rapour with my customers as i never hardly see most of them during the week. Just what i do!! 

[Cleaner Windows]

each to thier own mate, I'm glad it works for you but personally I dont want to waste my private time doing stuff like that. I still have a good rapour with my customers because I am honest with them and polite, curteous etc and they are loyal to me in return. 

[LWC]

i really couldnt be doing with ringing them either, would take forever. and we're last thing on their list to do so most probably forget

[niceandclean]

Very rare i have any problems, but each to there own! It works well for me!

[Dale Smith]

When we started out in Swindon, we told all we would phone..... and when we do we get all the favourite excuses......
Now anything new we pick up gets told we do not phone....

From the learnings of that, when we got going in Devizes we told all customers we would not phone....... never have any problems there......no cancellations at all.......... I know which round I prefer.....

[frames to panes]

Wish i'd never started the phoning lark. When i next txt this customer he will have the perfect opertunity for a "not today thankyou" excuse.

[Dale Smith]

Dave I ask existing custies in Swindon now if they still need a phone call.... slowly getting the phone calls down ....

[frames to panes]

Mmm Devizes next week it is.

Which reminds me i was offered to price up the Tescos there last year in the high street - they might still be worth a try (high windows round the back).

[Dale Smith]

Lol ..... stay off my land..... lol 

All joking apart there is about 23 w/cleaners in Devizes... and all are busy. The amount of building going on there is close to the amount they are doing in Swindon... not sure how long it will last in the present economic climate though....

Hmmmm Tesco.... might give that a shot..ta muchly 

[frames to panes]

They are seviced by a contractor (from Wales). Last i heard they had no high reach facilities, there was a whole string of stores on offer right down to Weymouth. Things might have moved on since then but i wasn't experienced enough to want them at the time and didn't want to travel.

[frames to panes]

That's a lot of cleaners in a fairly small town too, which explains why it takes so long to build up a decent round. I spotted a van in my town the other day (top of the range all the kit) so i stopped for a chat. I mentioned i had seen him cleaning in one of the local villages "oh that would have been my brother in the other van" - turned out it was another brother of his in the THIRD van. Lots of competition down this way.

[Dale Smith]

Swindon's like that Dave, we find it a tough nut to crack

[Paul Coleman]

each to thier own mate, I'm glad it works for you but personally I dont want to waste my private time doing stuff like that. I still have a good rapour with my customers because I am honest with them and polite, curteous etc and they are loyal to me in return. 

In my entire round, I only have perhaps 4 that I need to ring first - and I make sure that the price justifies the potential hassle.  With the jobs that I subcontract (3 days per month or thereabouts) most of them require prior notification.  I get really fed up when I've taken the trouble to make contact (sometimes by voicemail) and still there is no access (like if they've forgotten or if they've gone away).  It really brings it home to me just how right I was to stop taking work that required pre-notifying.  If the customers on the subcontact stuff were mine, I would only have about one third of them remaining by now.

[Cleaner Windows]

yup, same as most things in life, basically..."keep it simple"!
otherwise in the end we would probably get fed up with the hassle and give up. If your work is nice and easy to manage then there is less stress so it makes the job more bareable, isn't it bad enough for us having to put up with rain and wind, cold and god knows what else thats a pain in the rump for us wc'ers?  the more simple and stress free the better me thinks!   

[Paul Coleman]

yup, same as most things in life, basically..."keep it simple"!
otherwise in the end we would probably get fed up with the hassle and give up. If your work is nice and easy to manage then there is less stress so it makes the job more bareable, isn't it bad enough for us having to put up with rain and wind, cold and god knows what else thats a pain in the rump for us wc'ers?  the more simple and stress free the better me thinks!   

I tend to agree with you on this one.  The best bit about this work for me is the low stress element and having a certain amount of freedom.  I believe we tend to shape our businesses to suit our own personalities.  Mine requires low stress and low hassle levels.  Doesn't seem that my prospects of becoming an employer are too high does it?   

[Pureandclean]

Why do customers not want us to access the back when they are not in? The only answer I can see is that they don't trust us around the back of their house.

My view is that, if they cannot trust me, I cannot trust them, and therefore I have dropped a number in the past.

This last week one lady who I dropped for this, came back to me and asked if I would take her back on. She had asked her next door neighbour to tell me not to do the back because she was on holiday.

I explained to her that my name and integrity are very important to me, and that her neighbour would obviously conclude that I was not a trustworthy person, because of her actions.

After 25 years of cleaning windows, and 20 years on this particular estate, having customers treat you as though you are a burglar does not put them in my good books, and so I now tell them so.

[Paul Coleman]

Why do customers not want us to access the back when they are not in? The only answer I can see is that they don't trust us around the back of their house.

My view is that, if they cannot trust me, I cannot trust them, and therefore I have dropped a number in the past.

This last week one lady who I dropped for this, came back to me and asked if I would take her back on. She had asked her next door neighbour to tell me not to do the back because she was on holiday.

I explained to her that my name and integrity are very important to me, and that her neighbour would obviously conclude that I was not a trustworthy person, because of her actions.

After 25 years of cleaning windows, and 20 years on this particular estate, having customers treat you as though you are a burglar does not put them in my good books, and so I now tell them so.

Some years ago, a few of my customers were burgled over about a year or two.  One of the questions aasked by police was "Have you got a window cleaner?"  I know this because the customers told me so (all of them said they stuck up for me as I had been a regular for quite a while).  I even said to one of them that it's odd that all the burglaries occurred on one particular policeman's "patch" and maybe they should keep an eye on him.  It was tongue-in-cheek of course but I felt I needed to make the point.

[Cleaner Windows]

good man!

[Dave Turley]

BIN EM....BIN EM ALL!

lol   

[Tim82]

 I don't like ringing them the night before. It's a big hastle trying to find 'em in in the evening cos a lot of people go out anyway.

 I have an arrangement with a handful of customers where I text them instead. I even text to a couple of customer's land lines so they get a robotic voice message and it just rings them back automatically til they get the message if they're not in when I text. It's surprising how many people prefer a text. In this modern day of mobile phones it makes sense!

 I'm even the only person one customer ever gets a text from so it's a novelty to her!