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Starting a relationship is always a delicate thing. Especially when you are in business. People only do business with people whom they like, know and trust.
Well, It snowed all week where I am located and I had to reschedule quite a few homes that needed cleaning so that we could safely travel the roads.
As a matter of fact I had to change the schedule 27 times! A lot I know...
As you can imagine, 1 home, a brand new client fell between the cracks!
YIKES!!
He let me have it over and over and over again.
I apologized and even offered to show up an hour later than the mis-scheduled time that same day, to clean this home myself.
And he gave me the "I'm so disappointed in you speech; via text message of course."
And then there was the "This is a refection of how poorly you run your business." statement that was next.
I will not repeat the rest of what he said...
I didn't turn things around until I communicated that I owned my mistake and that I was really sorry as I understood that there is prep involved in getting their home ready for the cleaner to come. I also gave him the name of 2 other cleaning companies in town that they could use and if they wanted their phone numbers I would get those for him.
He politely declined as I had defused the situation and hopefully I prevented him from blasting me all over social media.
The moral of my story is we are not perfect. If we could walk on water, we would. But, having systems in place so that clients don't fall between the cracks is super important and if you make a mistake.
Own it, Apologize and hope for the best.
My onboarding process for a new 1x client is this:
*Bid right over the phone
*Credit card given right over the phone
*A tentative maker is given to hold that spot in the digital calendar system for *24 hours (How long they have to get docusign back to me)
*Docusign sent
*Completed Docusign printed
*Credit Card Charged (50%deposit given)
*Confirmation email given to client
*Put officially into digital calendar system
*Paperwork stapled and put in 1x cleaning binders
*We show up we clean
*We do a walk through
*Everyone is happy!
Incase you were wondering...how I came up with the $2800.00 price?
700.00 Top to Bottom Deluxe Cleaning
175.00 x 12 2100.00 (monthly charge)
All the Best
Shannon Miller
Klean Freaks University.com
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