[Prestige1]

My question is how do you know your staff are consistant in delivering quality on every clean?

what tends to happan with me I don't know if its the same with everyone, a customer will complain about missing something and we will put it right but, which is a great concern. But what worry's me is the ones that don't complain and put up with it for a while and then cancel out of the blue giving a lame excuse and I don't know if its true or that they are unhappy with the service?
I would put 99% of all complaints are that staff leave early. I do have some fantastic cleaners but some are not so good and if I could replace them I would.

what do you do to maintain quality with out following staff arround?
your thoughts please?
kind regards Phil

[mxg]

One thing that I try to avoid is any mention of hours. I try to sell the "concept" of a clean house/office rather than buying x hours of time. Instead I refer to £x per visit - even though in my mind I am allowing a certain amount of time!.

It is a fact that each visit is unique - some weeks can be worse than others. If pushed the way I explain it is if that all of the work is done then there is little to be gained from hanging around for 5-10 minutes just for appearances sake. And also I ask them how they would react if I wanted to charge them extra if we went over time by 10-15 minutes (which does happen from time to time). This usually shuts them up.

If on the other hand you are talking about a bigger portion of the time the possible causes are a) not doing the necessary tasks or b) too much time allocated for the work. In the case of a) its a case of educating and/or disciplinary action ! Its probably not b) anyway.

Mick

[martin19842]

hi there

phil

are you commercial or domestic?

never quote number of hours to perform the clean.

we do a variety of work, all commercial some are weekly contraqcts, others are specialists cleans.

we will always quote 'job and done'

with reqrd to monitoring quality, that is a ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT issue.  you need to look atfter your client s to win more work from them. if you keep the client happy by regular communication and site visits, then the ODD under performance in cleaning will be smoothed by the account management role.

clients look for PRO ACTIVITY, and QUICK PROBLEM RESOLUTION,  this keeps more clients than you loose.

regards

martin

[Paul Kettless]

Hiya,

This a very interesting question, and one that I can honestly say that we will not find all the answers for.  After all what is the benchmark, your clean could be my dirty and vice-versa....

The reality is to accept that most staff want the highest rate of pay, for the least amount of effort.  Off course you are gonna have your "star " performers, but these are few and far between.  When you turn this around to the customer, they want the best standard of work for the least money.

My wife and I use a varied approach, as we feel that it is the best way to keep both the staff and customers on thier toes.

Each and every account that we have has a job sheet, which is drawn up with the owner/agent.  This covers the basics, but also things like owners pet hates etc's.   We make sure that each and every cleaner has the fact sheet, each and every time that they visit to clean.  Spot checks are carried out on an ad-hoc basis, and never the same property on the same day/time.

Finally, and I personally think that this is the best way, it's the good ole dog and bone.  We regularly call our customers to make sure that they were happy with the clean.   The call shows that you care, and many of our customers have commented that more companies should do the same.

The only thing I would add is making sure that you follow up complaints.  For example, if a customer commented that the cooker was left dirty, this would be the priority job on th next visit, and so on..........

Just my thoughts

Regards
Paul

[Fox]

On some jobs it is necessary to allocate hours and let the cleaners know what they are.

50% of my clients know what hours are allocated to their site but my work is regular daily office cleaning.

Yes staff leaving early can be a problem and in my opinion there is always something to do to keep them on site for their hours.  Most clients are happy if the standards are good but you find that if the standards slip the first thing they will watch is the cleaners timekeeping.

I had one girl who left her 1.5 hr daily job after 1 hr several times I pulled her over and explained that I am not happy for her to be £9.00 per hour when the others are on £6.00 (which is what happens when hours are cut short) and that if she felt she had completed her work I would allocate more tasks to keep her busy.  She soon kept to the normal tasks within the hours and even though things looked 'ok' before and I didn't get complaints, they now look excellent and I get v good feedback.

You can also use time to your advantage, I have on several occasions upped  prices on contracts as we need extra time. 

Getting a bit long now so to the point - the way I monitor quality is with monthly audits the client has to sign off and spot checks on cleaners inbetween time.  It opens up communication and when a relationship between you or your contract mananger and the client is formed it makes it harder for a client to just drop you without talking to you first.  If a client has signed off a report to say they are happy they can hardly sack you two weeks later, things don't go down hill that quickly - unless they haven't had a cleaner turn up for those two weeks of course!!

Fox

[dustdees]

Have you got a a copy of your monthly audit sheet.This sounds like a very good idea.
regards
Denise

[blacksheep]

Hi fox, is your audit sheet wrote out like a cleaning sheet where you just tick all jobs off or certain jobs,ect chair legs, bin washed out weekly and so on.This is a good thing it gives the cleaner a sence of  pride in their work and to see the score % they got that month.Its a big help if there is a £10 gift voucher at the end for best score

[Mike_Boxall]

My question is how do you know your staff are consistant in delivering quality on every clean?

Incentives (not necessarily financial) are the best way to keep staff motivated to do a good job time after time. Once you have an auditing / feedback system in place, all the staff then benefit from providing a good service.

Some sort of tick box questionaire that the customer can fill in in a couple of seconds is all you really need but quality monitoring systems can also include UV detection kits from £19 + vat http://www.express-cleaning-supplies.co.uk/oos/washroom/490049.html through to ATP Bioluminescence testing at £500 and up.

Although it doesn't work all the time, keeping your staff happy is the first step to keeping your customers happy!

Regards

Mike

[blacksheep]

had a look ,great gadget will  look into getting one

[Fox]

I use a sheet with all areas to be cleaned listed and a reference of A=Good B=Satisfactory C=Needs Attention  with a comments and action section on the bottom.

Always stay interested in the sites your cleaners work on (even if you are fed up of the sight of them!)  People respond to your interest and levels of effort will increase.  If you don't visit sites it will seem like you don't care and neither will your cleaners!

Fox