There are many commercial cleaning services to choose from. How can you choose the right provider for your needs?
Let’s take a look at five factors that set a commercial cleaning service apart.
1. Communication.
You may not think of communication when you think of commercial cleaning – but cleaning is ultimately a service, and all effective services are based on effective communications.
High-quality communications make cleaning higher quality, too.
Commercial cleaning services that communicate well set clear specifications.
Communications will shape the terms of your cleaning engagement. Companies that focus on communications will dig in to understand your needs well. But if a company isn’t built to communicate well, they may end up misinterpreting your needs and over-servicing (providing more than you need at too high a cost) or under-servicing (not providing the services you believe you signed up for).
Accurately defining the terms of a cleaning service engagement is critical to getting cleaning right – and it requires good communication.
Commercial cleaning services that communicate well address challenges effectively.
Once an engagement is defined, there will almost certainly be challenges to overcome. Maybe a building occupant is overly messy, or maybe the cleaning schedule needs to be reworked in different seasons to accommodate changing business needs.
These challenges will simply be easier to tackle if your provider is an effective communicator.
Commercial cleaning services that communicate well are better partners.
Finally, besides overcoming challenges, cleaning services that communicate well can also help you to better accomplish your goals. You may have cost-reduction goals, for example – a cleaning company that communicates well could partner with you in seeking efficiency. You may have environmental goals – the same principle applies.
A cleaning company that communicates well is more than a provider – they’re a partner.
So, as you evaluate potential commercial cleaning providers, ask them about their communication processes. (You can read about our processes at The Wilburn Company here.)
2. Quality assurance.
This point is pretty obvious, but it’s important: In commercial cleaning, quality assurance is a big deal.
When you choose a provider, you need to be able to have confidence in their work. Quality assurance increases the level of confidence you can have.
At The Wilburn Company, we prioritize performance audits to review each service delivered in each space we clean. These audits allow all stakeholders to access and track results, increasing the trust our clients can have in the cleanliness of their buildings. We even go as far as to separate our performance management teams from our project management teams to increase objectivity and incentivize accuracy.
As you’re evaluating a commercial cleaning provider, be sure to evaluate how they perform quality assurance.
3. Organization.
There can be a temptation to view cleaning companies’ operations as black boxes – in other words, as long as cleaning happens, you couldn’t care less about the organizational structure of your vendor. The thinking goes that the results are what matters, not the processes behind them.
That’s fair; there are certainly other things that demand your attention. But the truth is that the organizational structures of the vendors you use affect the end products – and so they affect you.
At The Wilburn Company, we’ve committed to intelligently structuring our organization in a way that empowers our people and provides the most value to our clients. In the beginning of 2020, we enacted significant organizational adjustments, including breaking off quality assurance roles into a dedicated team, allowing the people in operations to focus solely on logistics there, and delineating responsibilities at our leadership level with greater clarity.
The result has been an increased ability to focus and serve – and, in the midst of a challenging year, our new organizational structure has served us well.
You don’t need to know the ins and outs of your vendor’s structure, but you should know that they’ve built their company strategically in a way that will allow them to offer quality service.
4. Staying on the cutting edge.
We regularly harp against the misconception that commercial cleaning is a static industry. It’s not. Like any other industry, the cleaning industry is growing and changing to adapt to new circumstances and capitalize on new technologies. Over the past few years, for instance, we’ve optimized our cleaning procedures, introduced green cleaning processes and products into our services, and incorporated technology into our workflows.
Being on the cutting-edge of cleaning trends has always set the best companies apart. In 2020, though, adaptation and innovation have become necessities.
To maintain safety, for example, we’ve introduced specialized disinfection services through various methods of service delivery, including via new electrostatic equipment. We’re also working on a Disinfection Certification program for cleaners to equip them on best practices and prepare them for the crucial work of environmental hygiene.
As you consider cleaning providers, don’t settle for a stagnant partner. As this year has shown, being on the cutting-edge can be crucial.
5. Employee education.
Finally, the last (and arguably most important) consideration you should make when choosing a commercial cleaning company is this: How do you they treat their employees?
Employee education and training are huge components of treating people well, because they allow people to have the knowledge they need to succeed at their jobs. At The Wilburn Company, we provide foundational education to equip our employees for the specifics of their role, then ensure they get ongoing education to level-up their skills and thrive.
This is a win-win for everyone – our employees are able to grow, and our clients benefit from our increased levels of service.
At the end of the day, commercial cleaning is a service business – and that means that it’s a people business before anything else. So, ask your potential partner how they treat their people.
Looking for a cleaning company that checks all of the boxes?
Get in touch with us.
We work hard to provide premier commercial cleaning services that exceed expectations in all of the above areas. If you’re ready to work with a cleaning provider that you can trust as a partner, we’d love to start a conversation around your needs.