The problem with a lot of cleaning service business owners is they start to get affected by all the complaints they receive. If you are interested in establishing your own cleaning service, you should expect to get negative feedback all the time, even if you are doing your job well. You may think that if you just keep on addressing the problems immediately, they will all go away in time, revealing a highly satisfied customer. If you are fortunate enough to meet this ideal client of yours, then never ever let him go. But, you have to disillusion yourself right now; most clients will always have at least one criticism every couple of days.
Whys is this complaining so common?
1. No matter how good you are at cleaning, organizing, de-cluttering and sanitizing spaces, you are not perfect. If you keep on repeating your cleaning tasks to make sure that your client does not see anything amiss, then you will probably spend all your waking hours cleaning up. In a big office for example, one cubicle that you missed dusting off will negate the twenty nine others you have left spotless, plus the immaculate toilets, plus the gleaming floors. Your client will focus on that one cubicle and you will not be able to say that you probably missed it because you were tired.
2. Improvements are easily taken for granted. Cleaning is one of those tasks that is as easily forgotten as it is noticed. Take your mom foe instance; she did all the cleaning at home and always looked for ways to maintain the household but did you ever notice? Did you ever wonder where the dishes went or why the refrigerator seemed to miraculously smell clean and fresh even if you left a whole carton of expired milk a few weeks before? It is the same with a cleaning service. If you were taken in by the client as a replacement, the improvements will go unnoticed and your cleaning service will likely not receive any compliments (and hopefully, no negative feedbacks too) for a couple of months. Afterwards, the client will start nitpicking and will begin pestering you about small stuff. Then the cycle repeats itself.
3. Remember those personality tests that you and your friends took just for fun? There is one that shows you a big blank piece of paper with a really small black dot in the middle. It has been proven that a majority of people would see that speck and will focus their attention on that. This is because the human eye is trained to see what is there, not what is “not” there. So your client, in checking if the bathroom has been cleaned properly will not look at the lack of dirt and dust in the whole area; he will start looking for something, anything that is “there”. This means before he notices the gleaming tiles, he will first notice the small white spot of dried soap on the mirror.
Discouraged? Don’t be. Every business has its own share of customer problems. The first thin to do though is to recognize why your clients have this attitude. It is probably not because you did a bad job, it’s just customer nature.
For more info:
How to start a cleaning service
