Getting Along with Clients

A good professional relationship between a client and building service contractor is what we all strive for, but like all relationships it can be very challenging and requires a lot of experience and effort.  There is no perfect recipe or a one size fits all approach, but over the years we’ve found that a few basic ground rules are important for achieving a good professional relationship with our clients.  Not only can we learn a lot by looking at who our best and most long term clients are now, but we can also learn from the contracts we’ve lost over the years. Those contracts have probably offered us the best lessons in how to improve our services and our professional relationships with our clients. 

Below are a few of the areas we think are most important for building trust and satisfaction with our clients, as well as some of the ways clients can contribute to helping their cleaning contractors to the best job for them.  These are not by any means all of the aspects of a good client contractor relationship, but they are very important ones worth noting if you are a janitorial company who wants a mutually satisfying professional relationship with your clients, and visa versa. 

What do clients appreciate? 

• Reliable and trustworthy janitors who consistently do good work:  When a building service contractor can deliver a quality service and provide good employees, 95% of the battle is won.  Knowing how to hire, train, supervise and relate to employees is critical to running a good janitorial company and satisfying the client. 
• Good communication & customer service:  More than anything, clients want responsiveness to their needs and requirements. They want to know that whatever they need done is going to be taken seriously and carried out promptly and with quality by the contractor.  If a client is comfortable with the cleaning personnel in the field and management staff in the office, and they feel that there is good communication, it helps resolve problems and issues much easier and builds trust.  Even when the cleaning is very good, bad communication can lead to many misunderstandings and damage a professional relationship.   
• Industry expertise & quality control:  Competency and expertise shows the client that the contractor knows what they’re doing and can meet their expectations, taking the burden off of the client for the care and maintenance of their facility.  Most clients are very busy and they need a contractor who can handle the job without having to communicate very often with them except when absolutely necessary. 
• Quality control:  It takes a lot of drive and experience to be able to offer a quality service, and a high standard of excellence in all areas needs to be the primary goal at all times.  To achieve consistent excellence in all areas a company should have a quality control program in place that is applied on a continual basis. Once a company slacks off in any area, the quality in the cleaning will decline without fail. When the cleaning quality declines, so will the client/contractor relationship.
• Reasonable and competitive cost for janitorial services:  It goes without saying that clients want an affordable service that fits their budget, yet they don’t want to sacrifice quality if they go with a lower bidder.   “You get what you pay for” definitely applies to the cleaning industry. It can be a challenge for a janitorial service to be able to meet the client’s cleaning specifications and still do quality work when there are time constraints because of a low bid, but it can often be done with flexibility and compromise.  Especially during difficult economic times, clients appreciate a contractor’s creative solutions to cutting costs without sacrificing quality.  This can be done by reducing the number of times certain tasks are done, eliminating some tasks for a while until times get better, or the client and their employees can take over some of the easier tasks like cleaning their own personal work spaces, or emptying their own recycling.  

In our opinion, these are a few of the most important ways to build a good relationship between client and building service contractor.  Of course it works both ways.  A janitorial company can be the best in the world, but it still won’t work out if the client’s expectations are unreasonable and they are not respectful.  Fortunately that rarely happens.  Usually, when a janitorial company provides an exceptional service, the client recognizes it.  Below are some of the ways a client can ensure that they too will have a good professional relationship with their cleaning service and help them do the best job possible for them. 

The best kind of client! 

• They are professional and courteous. They are respectful with janitorial workers and office staff.
• They have reasonable expectations and make reasonable requests.
• They understand how much cost is involved in providing a good janitorial service.
• They are loyal to the janitorial company who has served them well and aren’t quick to drop them just because other companies who come knocking at their doors are prepared to do the job cheaper.   More often than not, you get what you pay for in this business. 
• They understand the maintenance needs of their facility, including what it costs to properly maintain floors and carpets.
• They clearly and respectfully communicate their needs or complaints, and ideally they have one designated contact person who has the authority to deal with the janitorial service.
• If some task has not been completed or done properly by the janitor and it warrants a phone call to the contractor, the client is specific about what cleaning task was overlooked, the exact day it was not done, and in exactly what location it happened.   This is very important for problem solving.
• The client does not jump to the conclusion that it is the janitor who is responsible if something is missing, broken, or out of place.  They investigate and question their own colleagues and staff first before calling the janitorial service.
• They don’t call at the last minute or after 5:00 p.m. with special requests that they would like that night.  The office needs time to contact their night crew and some requests require a supervisor’s attention or an additional cost might be involved.  It’s best to call earlier in the day to sort out the details and to give the contractor the time to make arrangements.
• When locks and combinations are changed, don’t forget to call the contractor the day before so they can pick up new keys and let the janitor know.  When a janitor gets to a building and the key doesn’t work, sometimes a supervisor has to make an extra trip to the building to make sure it’s not a key problem.  This is time consuming and of course increases the cost for the contractor. 
• The client responds in a timely manner the few times there is a question or concern.  Always assume that if the janitorial service is contacting the client about something that it is important enough to warrant a reply in a timely manner.   The janitorial service just wants to be able to do the job they are expected to do and to run their business efficiently.   
• When the cleaning personnel leave supply requests, the client orders those supplies in a timely manner so the janitor is not left without paper products, soaps, liners and other supplies needed to do his or her job.
• Clients pay on time because they know that most janitorial services are smaller local companies, and they depend on prompt payments to run a good operation and to pay their hardworking employees!
• It never hurts to know who your personal janitor is and to tip him or her at Christmas time if you think he or she is doing a really good job!  Even a little thank you note now and then means a lot to a janitor and will motivate them even more to do a good job. This is a low wage industry, and pats on the back are few and far between.  Janitors are hard working people, and because they mostly work at night they often go unnoticed.    

This was a long post, but hopefully it contains some good information that can be useful to not only people in the janitorial business, but also to business people who have their cleaning done by a building service contractor.