August focus: Domestic Cleaning Service
Customer Service – CLIENT⇔ MESSAGE ⇔ CLEANER
The most important thing in your job apart from being a ‘super cleaner’ is communication. Contact between the clients and yourself is vital. This is why it is important that when a new client leaves you a message that you call them right away to introduce yourself and set up your initial appointment. The client will be shopping around, so the sooner you get back to them the more chance you have to secure their booking. When you do you will want to make arrangements with your client about keys, security systems, dogs etc.
What is the most amount of time you should allow to lapse before getting back to your client?
If you were having difficulty contacting your client, what would you do? Could it be that you took down the client’s phone number incorrectly, or the number you were dialing was not connected? What would you do then?
I recommend that you contact the client within 3 – 4 hrs of them leaving a message for you, and speak personally with them. You will be likely to lose the inquiry to someone else if you leave it too long to return their call. Also, it would be a good idea to call again the night before your appointment to confirm the next days’ booking.
How would you introduce yourself to your new client over the telephone?
Call your client well before the time that you are supposed to be there if you are going to be late.
What would you do if your car broke down on the way to the job, and you were going to be late or not get there at all?
It is not recommended that you disrupt your appointment time with the client after you have agreed upon a time, unless instructed to do so by the client themselves.
What could happen if you change a client’s booking to suit yourself if:
- this is the first time you have serviced them?
- they are one of your Regular bookings?
Try to arrive at your new clients’ appointment five minutes early – this creates the impression that you are eager, willing and able to do the perfect clean. If you have agreed with the client that the job is for three hours, you should give the client three hours worth of work – stay for the whole three hours. Find things to do to make up the time. List jobs that could be done to fill in time.
Personal contact with the client is important by leaving notes to relay information or just to say Hi! Practice writing notes so that the way it is written sounds friendly and polite as well as getting your message across. Also, when your client is at work and never there it is good just to leave a note that says ‘how was your week?’ This will maintain a relationship with them, whereas if you don’t do this there is a higher chance that if your work is not the best on one occasion you will be easily dismissed. Having a bond with your client through communicating via these notes will help to keep your position with them.
What would your note say if you had to ask your client to purchase more cleaning products?
What would your note say if you had to tell your client that you had broken or damaged something?
What would your note say if there were not enough time to do all the work that your client wants done for the amount of money that had been left to you by them?
What would you do if you arrived at the job as a couple and you had forgotten to explain what happens when two people do the work?’
You can read more in the next article about: Working in Another Person’s Home
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Free From the Gilded Cage is the education arm of the Loving Heart Foundation Australia where we teach the basics of self-employment and basic budgeting skills. This is so that women can learn the skills needed to manage their own lives without feeling trapped in a relationship with a man who is beating them up. With these skills they can easily leave him.
Update: The first novel in our series of seven written to raise funds for those whom we assist is now published. It is the courageous story of a young teen growing up in a home filled with domestic violence, and how she manoeuvres her way through such a difficult situation. Click here if you’d like to know more about this novel.
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