Improve Your Customer Service Skills or Risk Losing Cleaning Clients

In February of 2021, HubSpot shared a staggering fact about customer service:

Customer Service is a big factor when choosing to do business with a company

What's more? 58% of U.S. consumers will switch companies if they have poor customer service.

Especially in a field like commercial cleaning, where your clients are relying on you to see issues before they arise and provide assistance promptly and efficiently to keep things running, the importance of customer service cannot be understated.

So, do you really risk losing cleaning clients because of less-than-stellar customer service?

Absolutely.

In fact, after more than one bad customer service experience, 80% of customers say they would rather do business with a competitor.

This means that all the best cleaning products in the world aren't enough. So while you may be first-rate choosing the right products and getting new clients, none of it will matter if you can't keep those clients happy with stellar customer service.

3 Critical Customer Service Skills

1. Know Your Customers' Problems

In many industries and countless households, budgets are likely to be tight for a while. Companies and families alike are working to get more done with less and often may not have the budget that you feel you might need to get the job done the way you would like.

This is actually a perfect customer service opportunity.

Now is the time to offer creative solutions. This could mean offering certain services at a different frequency or investing in more productive equipment to get certain tasks like vacuuming done faster and more efficiently. If you're working in a commercial environment, it might mean offering to make the switch to daytime cleanings to save on energy costs in the building so that your clients don't have to pay to keep the lights on after business hours.

The key here is to gain a full understanding of your client's pain points to discover how you can best help. They'll appreciate that you are thinking of them, and in turn, you'll earn their loyalty. If 56% of consumers say they'll stay loyal to companies that “get them,” this is the time to work to understand their needs.

2. Proactive Communication

Some cleaning business owners are uncomfortable talking with clients, or they figure "no news is good news."

But those are usually the people that get a phone call one day to find out they've been replaced by another cleaning company. And they wonder why no one called to complain. If you wait to fix problems until your client tells you there's a problem, then you are not being proactive, and you are setting yourself up for failure.

You should be communicating with your client either monthly or quarterly depending on the size of the account and how often the client wants to talk to learn more about what their evolving needs are, how you can improve, and what you can be doing to help them. What's more, you should be providing your employees with comprehensive training so that they fully understand their job.

96% of unhappy customers leave without placing a complaint. So, how are you to know that they need things to improve? By creating open lines of communication and establishing (and actually using) a feedback process with your clients from the beginning, you'll be more likely to hear when they need more from you.

If radio silence quickly turns into canceled clients, how can you encourage complaints and feedback from your clients to better serve them?

• Make sure they know you value their feedback upfront and give them a way to share that with you from the get-go.
• Share your contact information with them.
• Provide multiple ways for them to contact your company.
• Offer a space to share anonymous tips about room for improvement and spaces that need attention.
• Check-in with your clients frequently and work to earn their trust.
• Address and resolve all complaints.

It's not always easy to hear when someone isn't thrilled with your work. But it's the best way to grow and the easiest way to let your clients know you are listening to them.

3. Telephone Service Is Important Too

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more people are talking on the phone than they were in the years leading up to the crisis. From 2010 on, the U.S. saw an ongoing decline in the number of minutes Americans spent actually talking on the phone. While there was talk for years about avoiding phone calls, 2020 brought about a rapid rise in the number of phone calls — which may be here to stay.

“The phone call has experienced a resurgence during the quarantine, and I think that's going to continue as people look to stay connected in an uncertain world,” Derek Ting, CEO of TextNow, shared with Forbes.

If you haven't already, make it easy for customers to do business with you by answering your phone instead of letting it go to voicemail. Be sure to train your employees on how to answer the phone, too. You want your customers to feel they are working with a courteous, professional cleaning company, and phone etiquette is the way to make it happen. Essential phone etiquette rules include:

• Answer every call by the third ring.
• Be consistent with how everyone answers incoming calls.
• Be friendly and treat everyone with respect.
• Return calls promptly.

To discover more about building a company-wide phone etiquette standard, check out our blog post here.

How to Address Complains, Concerns, and Other Feedback

What happens when you do get feedback from a customer that shows you have some room for improvement? Any time you receive a complaint, comment, or concern from a client, have a 24 hour-or-less response policy in place so that they know their voice is heard and that their feedback matters.

A complaint isn't the end of a customer relationship — mistakes happen. According to Salesforce, if a company's customer service is excellent, 78% of consumers will do business with a company again after a mistake.

Track all complaints you get from your customers and be sure to follow up when you get multiple complaints regarding the same employee and/or multiple complaints on the same issue — like if the toilet paper didn't get refilled the night before on more than one occasion.

Most importantly? Complaints aren't always criticisms; they're opportunities to grow. Each piece of feedback you receive is a learning experience. Make sure your employees are being re-trained and talked to. And if issues keep occurring, take proper disciplinary action. However, by framing these complaints as opportunities and not personal attacks, it's likely things won't escalate to the need for disciplinary action at all.

How to Prevent Complaints from Happening in the First Place

The key to improving your customer service skills is to be proactive with your clients. Walk their accounts and their spaces regularly, looking for the things that are important to your clients. Then communicate with your supervisors and employees to make sure they understand what the client is looking for.

When talking with your clients, ask questions like: “What are you happy with? What can we do better?” Remember, the easier it is for your customers to share with you their concerns, the more likely it is that you can offer the first-rate customer service they are looking for.

By taking a vested interest in the needs of your clients and seeing things from their point of view, customer service can be a breeze!

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