8 Tips Your Cleaning Business Can Use to Retain Customers

As an entrepreneur owning and running a cleaning business, you might be focusing on looking for new clients. While that part is essential to your business, the key to success might lie somewhere else — in returning clients.

Building a valuable base of returning clients means three things:

• They like the service or product you’re offering.
• They trust you.
• They’ll most likely recommend you to their friends and family, which might lead to new customers.

As an entrepreneur in the cleaning business, a returning client will also mean a steady and recurring source of income.

Here are a few tips you can count on for customer retention:

1. It’s essential to focus on excellence

If you’ve landed a client where you have to mop and polish the floors of an office building once every week, then keep your word, and do it at a fixed time. For example, if your given time is every Monday at 8 am, make sure your employees turn up at your client’s location every Monday at 8 am to work. Punctuality impresses clients.

Three coats of wax look okay, but do four coats of wax make the floor look awesome? Have your employees take the time and add that extra coat of wax. All customers highly value perfection.

It is also a good idea to have an inspection checklist on your cleaning service software for quality control. This way, you can make sure your employees are doing their job with consistency and exceeding your customer’s expectations. In addition, going the extra mile will make your customer feel valued, which might mean that your customer will come back to you for another cleaning job.

2. Train your employees

To provide quality cleaning services to your customers, you also need to train your employees in proper cleaning techniques, including how to use cleaning instruments and chemicals. Also, it is crucial to train your employees in customer relations and safety protocols, so when they go on-site, the customers appreciate having them around.

3. Organize your business with the use of checklists

Organizing all the processes in your business is always a great idea. A checklist will help you understand what value-added activities you have lined up for your business.

Getting organized through a checklist for cleaning business made by cleaning business software will help you and your employees understand your workflow, prioritize jobs, analyze what work takes you more prolonged, and be more profitable.

A cleaning business checklist will also help your employees have a handy guide on their daily chores.

4. Try and look for solutions to your company’s problems

Commit to being that entrepreneur who removes roadblocks in their way by finding a solution no matter what. For example, your regular customer has a last-minute request to polish their office floors? Make it happen by working overtime. Your diligence in getting the job done will impress your customers, and make sure they stick around.

5. Stand out from the crowd

Ensuring your cleaning services are perfect is only the first step to developing a relationship with a customer. You also need to set yourself apart from your competitors and see if you can offer services that they can’t and if you can do them better.

6. Rewards your clients’ loyalty

You need to provide your customers with certain benefits or rewards to choose you over other cleaning services. For example, if you have a 6-month deal with a small business for providing janitorial services for their office, you can give them a discount if they choose to stick with you for an extra 6 months after their current contract has expired. This might look like you’re letting go of valuable profit by offering them a discount, but offering this discount will convert into a steady paying client for the following year.

7. Develop a personal relationship with your clients

You might provide the best cleaning services in town, but providing a personal touch will help your clients feel connected to the company. Train your employees to know the customers by name the next time they show up to the site for work. The key here is to make all your customers feel valued, and your cleaning service will remain appealing to all your clients.

8. Ask for customer feedback

Last but not least, ask your customers for feedback on the services you provide them. Check if they are satisfied with the services, and if not, then have a detailed conversation about what you can do better.

You’re getting many points you can improve upon, and you’re also making your customers feel valued.

Keeping your cleaning business running is no easy feat. You’ve got a million things to manage to make sure the business runs smoothly. As you work towards checking off all the items on your cleaning business checklist, emphasize to yourself and your employees how important it is to keep your customers happy. A returning customer is a satisfied customer and is a customer who will also recommend you to friends and family to bring you more business!