Jean Hanson

Communicating with your commercial cleaning customers is very important and goes a long way towards retaining their business. That's because part of the goal with customer communication is to build their trust in your company and to build a friendship.

What do you say when calling on a customer? Maybe we should talk instead about what NOT to say when calling on a customer. Some cleaning contractors will walk into their customer's office and say, "How's the cleaning going?" That is exactly what NOT to say!

What do you think your customers are paying you for? If you don't know how the cleaning is going, then you'd better find out before you go calling on your customer. If you're not prepared for the meeting and expect your customer to report to you on how the cleaning is going, then you're not doing your job or running your company efficiently. You've also just given them the opportunity to start naming all the little nit-picky things that people are complaining about.

As mentioned earlier, the purpose of the customer call is to build trust and friendship. Eventually you'll learn what the customer wants to talk about. Some will be more personal than others and will want to talk about their family or what sports team they're following. Others may want to stick to business. There's nothing wrong with that - you can still build a solid relationship with each customer.

Since the customer is paying you to take care of their building, they may not be interested in talking about the service unless there is a particular problem or a special service that needs to be scheduled such as carpet cleaning. For this reason, you can keep your visits friendly and brief.

Remember to talk to your supervisors about customer communication. Since they see the customer on a more regular basis, they play an important role in building that relationship. They may not realize some of the things they should NOT say to the customer. Following are some statements that will have a negative impact if stated to the customer:

• I wish I had better equipment - I could get this job done a lot faster...
• My boss is always too busy to help out so we couldn't get it done last night...
• It's like a revolving door around here. We're always losing people...

Comments like these are better left unsaid. It makes the company look bad and doesn't do anything for that supervisor's job security.Spend the time training your supervisors and employees on good customer communication and you'll soon have a loyal following.

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Jean Hanson helps owners of small cleaning companies build a more profitable and successful cleaning business through his online community at TheJanitorialStore.com. Read inspirational cleaning success stories at http://www.cleaning-success.com, and sign up for weekly cleaning tips at http://www.TheJanitorialStore.com.