In general, when it comes to inspecting cleaning accounts -short, general and frequent beats long, detailed and occasional.
Let me tell you a story…
In the early years, we used a very formal system of checking our accounts.
It included a rigid schedule, either weekly or monthly, where a manager would be required to fill out a very lengthy and detailed inspection form.
It wasn’t a bad system – it just wasn’t very good.
Why?
Well, our experience was very detailed inspections done only occasionally don’t fit very well in the our type of work.
You know the cleaning business can be very fluid, fragile. so many things can change from day to day, including whose cleaning the building.
So, when you only do an inspection monthly, the challenge of employee turnover can create problems.
You can find yourself literally checking the cleaning of an employee who just quit – and end up reviewing the results with his or her replacement – who themselves just gave notice ‘Friday’s gonna be their last day!’
Yeah, ouch… talk about ineffective!
And then there’s the length and detail of the form.
Seriously consider keeping them short and general.I mean, really, who’s kidding who?
I’ve seen the longest and most detailed inspection forms AND and in my experience, they’re nearly worthless.
It’s true, they can be so overwhelming, nobody wants to complete them, even fewer want to read them… and yeah, nearly no one acts on them.
Some cleaning companies require them and I’ve often thought… it’s simply an exercise in phony, or at least, misguided ‘professionalism’.
They seem to think just idea of filling out forms and generating paperwork has value – It doesn’t!
Plus, the time, effort and expense of scheduling and performing these long but mostly lame reports is crazy considering they mostly end up in the trash – or a file.
You know it and I know it. So, what’s the answer?
I mean we need to check our work to consistently deliver reliable and high quality cleaning.
So, consider inspecting your work while keeping it as short and sweet as possible.
And, remember frequent beats occasional.
We started to have our on-site leaders at our accounts fill out a short checklist each night and send it to our office nightly to the attention of our customer service manager.
That’s right, it’s short; only has a few very important things to check, like making sure the dispensers are all full or checking the entry door glass, things like that.
And by the way, it’s not like it doesn’t catch the details – it can! Our on site leaders spotted them as they did their quick nightly walk-through and jot them down as they went.
AND, they do it – because it’s easy and it works!
It only took us minutes to complete but we’ve found it helped us reduce complaints and mistakes.
And because it’s a daily, short, easy to complete, process, the information you learn is current and useful.
Come up with your own way of checking on and inspecting your accounts, but think about keeping it short, general and frequent versus long, detailed and occasional.
Discover the Guru in YOU,
Dan
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