Keeping a high level of customer satisfaction….
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Motivating employees is hard. Motivating window cleaners to do their best is even harder. Think about this…Each window cleaner in our system “touches” 10 – 20 customers per day….they need to be doing their best all the time. Here’s one way I motivate them to do their best.
In our system, we don’t pay Holiday pay, or at least we are not supposed to….A few years back, and after I decided I was profitable enough, I added some things that are worth mentioning to you. One of the best things I did was let cleaners EARN holiday pay. It was the first of May, and I announced if any cleaner can get three commercial customers to call in to the office and tell me that they had done a good job cleaning that day, I would pay them for Memorial Day. By Memorial Day, all of my cleaners except one had at least 3 customers call in on their behalf to commend them. What a great feeling to have regular calls from my route based customers telling me the cleaning staff was doing a great job! Plus the cleaners really appreciated having a paid holiday.
The next round started June first. I decided that the first time was too easy…so I asked the cleaners to do a good job, then ask each customer if they did a good job today, then ask if the customer would mind leaving positive online feedback at www.fishwindowcleaning.com….I told my cleaners that if anyone got three ONLINE praises, they would earn the Fourth of July PAID. It was a struggle, but most of them met their goal and I paid Holiday pay….In the meantime though, the franchise called me and asked what I was doing to get all these online praises!! We were really running a lot of positive feedback through the Fish system and they saw how great my cleaners were! What a great feeling to have both our customers and the franchise call to say we were doing a great job out there!
As we continue this motivation, I have found that the cleaners really picked up their level of service… if they just “do their job well” they can earn paid holidays. My customers get regular stellar service, the franchise sees this, and everyone wins! Do you want to really feel good about your people? Do you want to feel GREAT about your business? Implement this with your cleaners…yes, its costs some money….but it really increases your staff’s level of service and increases your customer’s sense of satisfaction….it takes a bold cleaner to ask customers to tell his/her employer you are doing a good job…Since then I use different combinations to earn holidays…all involving leaving online praise on www.fishwindowcleaning.com or my voicemail…. AND I just LOVE my business! Good Luck! Tony