Should You Use Sub-Contactors?
What You’ll Learn
- Compare employee cleaners to subcontractors
- Set how much work is subcontracted
- Call the customer to check in
Short Summary
Subcontracting adds one more step between the company and the customer. A cleaner on the company payroll keeps the company nearby each visit. An outside sub can make the business feel farther away over time. The customer may only see the sub working in the building. Small issues can be missed, since the owner is not on site. Compare each staff-cleaner option to each sub option first. Set a clear limit on how much cleaning work is sent out. Call the customer to check in and ask how things look.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is using subs always a bad idea?
No. It depends on how much work is sent to subs. The risk is one more step from the customer.
What is the biggest risk when a sub cleans?
The customer may only see the sub in the building. The company can feel farther away.
How can a company stay close when subs clean?
Call the customer for check-ins. Keep some work with staff cleaners.
Should subs handle all accounts?
No. Set limits on how much work goes out. Keep key accounts with staff cleaners.
What should be compared before choosing staff or subs?
Compare how often the customer sees a company worker. Compare how easy it is to call and fix issues.
Transcript
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Hi there. Welcome back. Dan again from CleanGuru.
I’ll pass along a quick story to make a point about subcontracting. There’s an awful lot of it, and you know my feeling about it. It’s not a bad thing or a good thing. Like so many things in life, it’s in what way and to what degree you are using this mechanism of subcontracting.
Let’s take it from the position of: you’ve landed an account. Do you want to subcontract out the work? Do you want to find a sub to do the actual cleaning for you?
I remember this story I heard recently about a person that owned a restaurant. He said these food delivery services, where they drive around in cars and someone arrives and brings your meal to your home, happen all the time now. In the past, you used to drive into the restaurant to pick it up.
This restaurant owner was saying this has, in some ways, been challenging. Yes, it can be a source of revenue, but he mentioned he used to really have a connection with the customers. He got to know them. They became regulars. He was able to throw them an extra appetizer or entree once in a while. They really appreciated that.
These personal connections—when he was the actual person coming in and he got to talk to them—helped. That intimate, close contact of understanding one another and getting to know each other as friends, professional friends, helped.
Now, if you don’t have your employee of your cleaning business, you can kind of talk about the training, supervision, the hours—really everything—because it’s an employee of your company representing you. A subcontractor is different, and you don’t have that much freedom to do all those kinds of managerial things.
So all of a sudden, this third-party subcontractor is in the building, removing you one more step away from the customer.
Now, I know that you can make customer service calls, and those are important. I’m just saying that subcontracting can sometimes remove you one more step from the closer contact you had when it was your actual employee cleaner there.
Till next time, remember: you can do this. You really can
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