When incidents happen, do you know who will handle it?
You show up to work, and you notice rooms weren’t cleaned the night before. So, you call, but you’re taken to a voicemail. You call again. You’re told someone will reach out. Three days later, someone finally reaches back out. By then, the cleaner came back and the space was ignored a second time.
Franchisees want to increase profits, but forget an important rule, that is to serve the client. Because of this, many franchisees only offer the minimum cleaning available so they can keep more money.
Where franchise problems start – “It’s Just Business.”
Investors take saved money, pick the company they believe will get them the most return, and invest their money to become a franchisee. The investor now operates the local branch of ABC Janitorial Franchise.
There’s just one problem. They only signed up because they didn’t like the returns they were getting in the stock market. So now the focus is, “How can I get my money back and then some?” After this, the dynamics change.
Sure, customers may be taken care of initially, but profit increases become the central focus.
Franchisees aren’t family, they compete for your business
Now, multiply each investor wanting a profit across thousands of franchisees. They’re all fighting for your business, and each one has a different standard. The unfortunate reality is, one investor may value service more than another, so you get inconsistency across all owners.
Furthermore, the franchise (the corporate brand) divides territory between each owner, all fighting for more returns, and the end result is that service quality becomes an afterthought. You never know what you’re going to get.
But how do they hold themselves accountable to you?
You call for help. Again, nothing. You decide to escalate to the franchise’s customer support line instead. You get routed to someone, they’re nice enough, they log your concerns and assure you someone will reach back out. But 3 days pass before the callback, and by then the cleaners missed the problem again.
Franchisors have different objectives than franchisees. Their goal is to grow, to get more investors buying their franchise packages, and finding more ways to get their investors more customers through marketing. Sure, they’ll take your call and can handle basic concerns, but their entire operation is to grow, leaving your account to the franchisee that brought you in as a client.
How we measure accountability, so clients get consistent cleaning
Unfortunately, the issues above are recurring problems in the industry. Very early on, we decided that DJS would operate differently, and it’s why we’re hands-on with accounts.
We know that to be accountable means creating a system where facility managers have a direct line to someone, and the owner if needed. Overall, our priority is to see follow-through on issues, and it’s why we provide custom cleaning scopes and have account coordinators visiting sites monthly.
Your cleaning scope is specific to your facility and is finalized before the cleaning start date, so you always know what needs cleaning without guesswork. Each coordinator visit is designed so that we walk rooms to check that dust accumulation, trash, and general cleaning is being handled.
Furthermore, every coordinator communicates with facility managers while on site if they are available. But we know that sometimes that’s not possible, so we send message updates instead. If incidents happen, the manager knows who to call right away, and the coordinator will stay on the incident until resolved and follow up so managers never chase and instead know the job gets done.
Looking for a vendor that shows up when called?
If you’re evaluating your next cleaning vendor and would like to see if you can reduce cleaning costs, improve service quality, get a benchmark against your current provider, or all of the above, you can request a free site walkthrough here.
