I have a very friendly approuch to my customers, i always call or text the night before, this is not to ask for permission to clean, but to let them know, so if they are not going to be at home, they can leave the side gate open and the money under a pot or something.
At times a customer might request a morning or afternoon visit and i will try and work my round around their schedule or fit them in later in the week, if all of these is not possible i will either turn up, clean the front and leave a card for payment or miss until I am in the area again, which is normally within 10 days.
Do I lose out by doing this, well no i don't, a lot of my propertys require the owner to know i will be there on a certain date, so they can give me access to the back, i don't do climbing.
So if I did not call i would have to set a certain day and date when i will be at these customers houses, well that is going to restrict my movements, what if i want the day off, well I can't, what if there are lightning strikes, well I'm not working with a long carbon pole in those conditions.
Or i could just turn up and hope for the best that they are home, well if they are not i could lose £800+ per month of income, you then get the jokers who say dump and replace, why would I want to drop over £20k of good paying customers.
I have a rain policy, if its showers then i work, if it is drizzling then i work, if its hammering it down, then i give it untill 12pm and if it hasn't stopped then i don't work, if it stops then i am out.
I do not operate a 5 or 6 day window cleaning round, I work on a 4 day system so If i wanted too, i can squeeze all of my work into 4 days and have a very good turnover figure.
So if the weather for the coming week is dire, then i have 3 days to fall back on, or even space in the next week to catch up on, if you are maximum on 6 days a week then you have no space to help you.
So far over the last 2 months i have not lost 1 job because of the weather or when my van broke down, yes i might have lost certain days but i always have had spare days to fill up with work.
as for payments, i have never been really bothered with domestic customers, if they have forgotten to leave the money, well next month is ok, commercial clients are different, you have to kept them in check because they will take the micky if they can.
I once had a footballers house I use to do, he plays in the prem and even for england, he has a lovely house, and his window bill is only £12, I do a few where he lives and all pay by cash or cheque on the day, yet he would not, i would always get a cheque 3 to 4 weeks later, he or his wife was are always at home.
I do not know if it is because they are tight, or the fact that they pay on a cheque from Coutts and co and they want to impress, I would be more impressed if they paid straightaway, i cleaned the carpet of a team mates of his as well and he was totally different, he had money all over the place.
As has been said we are in a service industry and we are the first to complain when we get bad service from a supplier so why should we treat ours customers differently than what we would want.
