What’s the biggest mistake a growing carpet cleaning business can make? In a nutshell, investing too much in vans, offices and employees rather than organically growing the business operations with customer service in mind. After all, it’s the carpet cleaning business software that optimizes all that equipment and manpower while reigning in costs and ensuring customer satisfaction and billing.
What does carpet cleaning business software do?
Basically, it helps keep everyone on the same page. A good carpet cleaning business software creates efficiencies for managers, onsite cleaners and the customers they’re serving. Customer relationship management starts with scheduling an appointment or generating a job estimate, then getting the job done and paid. Many of today’s customers want to schedule appointments over telephone, but it’s important to have a customer Web Portal solution where “plugged in” customers can also interact. (Carpet Cleaning business managers can administer information over telephone for the customers, or customers can do it themselves.)
Customer-facing features for “Web Portal”:
Customer Log In and Account History
Upon logging in, your customers can see current information regarding their account, including past jobs, estimates or responses to their questions.
Customers Can Make Appointments
Customers can view schedules and availability for booking their cleaning, then book online.
Customers Invoices
Customers can view details about past payments or money they owe. In addition to viewing invoices online, customers can also pay invoices online.
What about customer complaints?
You’ve heard them all before, complaints that you’ve had based on truths, half-truths or downright lies. You’ll lose clients because of problems, but you’ll also earn your customers’ respect when you demonstrate responsiveness and solve problems efficiently. Most of the time customers just want to be heard. Do these customer complaints sound familiar?
The carpet cleaner missed the appointment.
The carpet cleaner didn’t arrive on time.
Miscommunication on the task that needed to be done.
Some requests by the client weren’t followed.
In today’s online world, an angry customer complaint can go viral online and ruin your hard-earned reputation. But carpet cleaning business software can manage customer satisfaction as well. Here are just some of the ways on how this software can help you satisfy your clients:
Never miss an appointment
A good carpet cleaning software will take note of all the upcoming appointments, send out reminders and keep the customer informed of any changes. It can even notify your workers about upcoming appointments so they can’t forget.
Carpet cleaners task lists
Before sending out the carpet cleaner, a carpet cleaning business software solution will alert the worker with all the details about a job. All this is available via mobile phone or at their desk in the office.
Customer history
A good software will also have notes about past tasks done. These notes will be helpful to set expectations and to make sure that the whole home is taken care of.
Knowing your customers makes for happy customers.
Notes will be helpful if the client has special requests. For example, a lot of clients request for pet-friendly chemicals to be used.
You can easily pull up a customer’s information to give the impression that you’re offering personalized service. We all know that having satisfied clients equates to getting paid quickly and easily. We also know more new clients come on board by word-of-mouth than any other means. Today’s referrals come from website reviews on YELP or Google Reviews, and your company will be scrutinized for its efficiency, fairness and responsiveness.
What do other experts say about optimizing carpet cleaning businesses?
“One of the biggest mistakes we see people make when they start a carpet cleaning business is trying to do everything themselves, or doing everything on the cheap. Yes, it saves money initially but what point is it when the money you do spend is wasted or doesn’t get results. That’s why it’s worth considering spending less of your budget on vehicles and equipment and the largest portion of your carpet cleaning budget on business development related areas.”
What’s the best way to satisfy your clients? Generally speaking, you need to do a lot of things but it all boils down to one thing – doing the job well. If you’ve been in this industry for a long time, then you know that there are a lot of challenges. Taking charge and control over those challenges with carpet cleaning business software is the first step to successfully optimizing a carpet cleaning business.
