6 Cleaning Company KPIs You Should Provide Clients
Your clients invest a lot of money in your services. How do they know they are getting their money's worth? It's a question they are certainly asking themselves, even if they've not directly asked you.
Proactive BSCs don't wait for that question. Instead, they go out of their way to make sure customers feel confident that they are meeting the objective of maintaining a clean, healthy, and safe building environment. They do this by providing regular KPI reports.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable metrics that a company uses to measure how it's doing in terms of strategic and operational goals. They provide a baseline for assessing performance or growth in a variety of areas.
Most companies have numbers like these, even if they don't call them KPIs, for internal purposes. You can't improve what you don't measure, after all, so it's essential to collect data about things like customer satisfaction scores, employee turnover, and cleaning costs.
Less common, however, is sharing KPIs with clients. But failing to do so can leave customers making assessments about performance based on anecdotal evidence, not real numbers. That's why many proactive BCSs see the value in providing detailed reports that outline the client's objectives and KPIs to objectively measure how well they are doing at meeting them.
WHAT KPIsTO MEASURE
Commercial cleaning can be an involved process, so exactly which of the many components do you include as KPIs? Typically, you'll want to include six overarching categories in your report. Within each of those, narrow down which metrics most accurately gauge the specific objectives of each client or even each building.
The six most common umbrella categories for the cleaning industry are:
- Quality of Service
- Client Satisfaction
- Janitorial Workers
- Safety
- Financial
- Health / Sustainability
Within each of of these six areas, there are a wide range of possible KPIs. Work with your client to determine which matter most to them, but you should provide at least one per category.
1. Quality of Service
This category is meant to determine how well you are doing at delivering an acceptable appearance level. Possible KPIs to measure include:
a. Results of quality audits by location and/or department (identifying if a particular location or department needs improvement)
b. Results of quality audits by individuals and/or team (identifying if a particular individual or team needs improvement)
c. Results of quality audits by item (identifying if a particular service such as dusting needs improvement throughout the location or by individual)
NOTE: All quality audits should be compared to the established quality requirements of the location.
This is usually accomplished by regularly scheduled audits performed by supervisors or area/operations managers. Audits can be done with a simple quality control audit form, or with apps such as Cleantelligent or Swept.
2. Client Satisfaction and Responsiveness KPIs
This area is about how happy the customer is with your staff and their work. It can include several KPIs such as:
a. Results of client surveys
b. Number of special requests submitted vs. completed
c. Number of client compliments
d. Number of client complaints and their disposition
You can survey clients about these KPIs, using a scale from one to 10, via an online survey, and can track compliments and complaints in a spreadsheet or CRM. The results will generate a basic numerical average to help you gauge which areas shine and which need improvement. In general, anything that yields less than a 7 likely needs work.
3. Janitorial Worker KPIs
Help clients see that your team is professional, reliable, and does quality work by tracking KPIs like:
a. Employee productivity (identifying production rates of square footage cleaned per hour;
cost per cleaned area; area cleaned per full-time janitorial worker)
b. Employee retention
d. Employee attendance/absenteeism
e. Training hours for cleaning procedures, safety and policies
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Employee retention rate / turnover rates per branch
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Number of training hours provided for cleaning procedures, safety and policies – especially if you have several branches and have done some renovations with different floor types and surfaces that need special attention.
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Number of times a specific employee is sent back to training –and for which training areas? The more you know the better your chances of further evaluating your current provider when it's the time to put up your contract again for bidding
Highlighting your efforts in training and employee retention tells customers that you care about quality.
4. Janitorial Safety KPIs
Clients want to know that you are committed to making their buildings safe for all occupants, both your workers and theirs. KPIs to consider in this area include:
a. Number of near misses
b. Number of lost work days due to work-related incidents
c. Number of OSHA recordable incidents
d. Floor slip resistance testing is measuring the coefficient of friction (or resistance to slip/fall accidents), in order to test floor safety.
It is helpful to have a record of safety numbers during different seasons so you can objectively determine whether problems exist with the flooring, chemicals, frequency, or training. Putting safety in black and white can help you sell clients on relevant safety measures, like matting.
5. Financial KPIs
This category is about evaluating the “dollars and cents” data, and may include KPIs like:
a. Comparison of actual expenses to budget, (labor, equipment cost, chemical cost and consumables cost).
b. Overall cost of cleaning (cost per cleanable square foot).
c. Electricity savings (for day vs. night cleaning).
Knowing these numbers can help you better streamline and standardize cleaning processes, tools, and frequencies.
6. Health and Sustainability KPI's
Many owners and facility managers are becoming more interested in how cleaning is affecting the health of their buildings. Possible KPIs to measure this include:
a. ATP levels on different surfaces measured using a luminometer
b. Dust levels in the air, using a device like a TSI particle instrument
c. Average daily attendance numbers
d. Occupant perceptions of health and well-being
Better cleaning promotes health, but it's important to give customers a disclaimer. There are confounding variables, such as ventilation and occupants' pre-existing conditions, that can affect many of these numbers.
HOW TO TRACK KPIs
Once you establish which KPIs you'll track for a client, you'll need to create a reliable system for collecting the data. It's possible to do the work manually using online surveys, spreadsheets and CRMs. Or, you can invest in commercial cleaning software that will pull from the data already included in your workflows.
If KPIs are new to you or your clients, the process may take time to implement. It will almost certainly be worth the effort, however, by providing real data to help you make educated changes on how to improve your operations.
Also, some BSCs charge a modest rate increase to cover the payroll related to tracking KPIs and creating detailed quarterly or monthly reports for clients.
Sharing KPIs with customers will go a long way in giving your clients peace of mind, knowing they are investing a quality cleaning service that is delivering real results.
FREE DOWNLOAD!
Cleaning Company KPI Tracking Report
Use this form to track any Key Performance Indicators you'd like to give your clients on a quarterly basis. Some fields are filled out for you but you can customize it to fit your business.
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