Are You A High Quality Cleaner?
Unless you want to get into a bidding war with fools, quality and service must be the thangs that you focus on with your business.
But what is quality?
Imagine with me that your wife tells you that she is in need of a new pair of shoes (What’s new, right?). Being the awesome husband you are, you immediately hop on the internet and start researching the best pair of heels known to mankind. You really want to outdo yourself and get her the best that money can buy.
You find a local store that carries these heels and off you go. After spending a weeks worth of income you head back to the house to surprise your wife. She is going to be so excited. These heels are made from imported dolphin lips and lined with kangaroo hair. Her feet will feel like they are walking on clouds 3 inches above the ground.
These shoes will make her legs resemble those of movie stars. Her friends will be so jealous. These heels are of the highest quality, how could anybody not love them?
You are probably asking yourself where I’m going with this, isn’t is suppose to be a hood cleaning site? Just stick with me for a second.
So now you have the shoes all wrapped up and you hand them to your wife. She opens them.
Her face goes from a huge smile to one of confusion. What? She’s not happy with them?
“These are nice, but they’re not what I wanted”, she says.
“But they are the finest quality in the world”, you scream. “How could they not be what you want?”
“I wanted running shoes”.
Doh!!!
Quality Isn't What You Think It Is
So how does this relate to cleaning kitchen exhaust hoods?
I’ll tell ya. You can talk all day until you’re blue in the face to a potential customer about the benefits of foaming technology and the super duper scrapers that you use and it can mean absolutely nothing to them.
Bare nekked metal should always be the standard, but sometimes other things hold higher value than how every spec of grease has been removed from a corner of a duct that took you 3 hours to accomplish.
Quality is giving the person exactly what they want/need.
To some owners, the time factor is what they are looking for. They may be paying an employee to stay behind while you clean and couldn’t care less about how wonderful you downstreamed their system, they want to get that employee off the clock as soon as possible, period.
Sometimes it’s how you leave the kitchen when you are done is what quality is to them. You can clean the exhaust system good enough to shave your face from, but their kitchen is a mess when they arrive in the morning so to them you do a poor quality service.
See what I’m saying?
Find out what your customers want/desire then give them that. You will be seen as a high quality cleaner. That doesn’t mean to hurry up and leave the duct looking like it hasn’t been touched. If you are bidding a customer that doesn’t care if you touched the fan or not as long as you are in and out of there within an hour, then find another customer.
Target your marketing better. Advertise what YOU offer as a company and find the accounts that want what you offer.
Here is another article on how to do that: Marketing Your Hood Cleaning Business
Your Turn:
Have you ever disappointed a customer because your idea of quality and theirs were two different things? Tell your stories below.
Yes!
I lost a three store customer today.
She said we left a mess. So far I have been unsuccessful in getting any furthur explanation.
My guys are not doing as good a job leaving the outer surfaces of the SS hoods streak free as they have done.We are focused on meeting NFPA 62 reqirements and no grease beyond the filters.
I am embarrassed to have been fired. But, I will find a way to not leave a mess.
Sorry to hear that, John. Best things I can tell you is make sure your guys have a check list and take before and after pictures of the exact angles that you want. We all lose sometimes, but just make sure you learn from the mistakes. Hang in there.
To John Hammer,
“Perspective” Like Ant said,the basis is cleaning to bare metal,and a checklist is great if the list is actually followed, but if your team does a great job cleaning the hood and leaves the floor a mess or the customers equipment dirty from your guys then the customer will not give a darn how hard you worked cleaning a fan or vent that they cannot even see.Customers perspective is bottom line.Final inspection on every job should include a polished hood and backsplash, cleaned equipment, floor moped and customers premise left better then when you arrived.
Courtesy Cleanning Service
You are exactly right, Mike. Great response!
Great Imfo Ant!!! i have been hood cleaning for the past 13 year
i have around 200 customers and have been able to retain around 90%
of them !! My Wife and I operate the business Ourselves,and have no
employees. we clean the hood from Top to bottom also there for the customers if we see something wrong we bring it to their attention, if we can fix it we do , if not we find some one who can , we clean not only the Hood behind the filters and Duct
but the outside of the hoods and the back wall of the hood
.if i can change the fan belt or grease the bearing i do,we always
mop up, wipe of the counters relight the pilots and use boards to stand on , and cover everything with Clean Plastic Tarps. We leave
the kitchen always looking better than we found it ,we charge a fair Price , and always get back to the customer to insure that they were happy with there service and always thank them for their Business, and always write down any concerns on the Invoice
we have customers any were from Rest homes to Chinese restaurants
you cant Make every customer happy but you sure can try!!
we always answer the Phone and always call them Back Promptly
im always looking to Better myself with Knowledge and the work
we do i
The industry needs more companies and people like you my friend.
Great post Ant. Often times even in the pressure washing world we “think” clients want to know the difference between DS’ing and Xjetting where all they care about is whether or not we can get their concrete or building clean.
Best advice I can give to any sales approach is that selling is not always talking. It’s about listening and 9 times out of 10 most clients will tell you exactly what they want and need.
Keep up the good work Hood Cleaning Helper!!
Thanks and great advice Carlos. We can’t scratch somebody’s itch unless we know where it’s itching.
I want To buy the duct spiner video and weapping 101
And the other there vídeos how much total
Please sand me the web optimismo thanks
HD
Great post Ant,
As usual you point out a great fact. You need to taylor your efforts to what the client wants and needs. An example of this is certian 24 hours stores we do. We schedule the jobs (these are maintianed accounts that we are just knocking down every months) at the beginning or end of thier shifts and the ability of the restaurant to drop thier labor costs to zero for 2 hours is marketed to the chains and they can see that the cleanings are almost paid for by what they save.
On the other side we do work for the government at military bases and they are adamant that they want the job done right the FIRST time and with no defects. These jobs are much more labor intensive but they are more than willing to pay for a contractor that causes them no effort to make sure a job is done right. As you said you need to listen to what they are telling you and what they want.