Case Study - 'Chris gave me real clarity'

Case Study - Fridays Cleaning Services

Caroline Sampson owned a household and office cleaning business with around 20 cleaners on her books, but the business was struggling to grow. The cleaners wanted work 4 or 5 hours per day (during school hours) over 4 or 5 days a week and the business needed the revenue, but demand was always strongest for cleans on Thursday & Friday, or on a Monday after the weekend.

Caroline was swamped with work carrying out all the client marketing/sales and cleaner recruiting; she was also doing most of the admin – monthly invoices, payment collections, bookings, banking, and all the client/cleaner scheduling. To make matters worse, margins were modest, clients paid late, and a small group of clients would regularly complain even though Caroline would personally follow-up complaints to find very little if anything wrong with the service agreed and provided.

Caroline needed help to find a way to improve margins, reduce the cost and time of client and staff recruitment and reduce the level of complaints. We spent time discussing these problems and I asked lots of questions about her clients, staff, processes, procedures and numbers. Together we brainstormed these issues and came up with a series of proposed solutions.

I was confident these proposals would work even though Caroline was somewhat nervous about losing clients. I reassured her and reminded her of our ‘double guarantee’. I was delighted when Caz embraced and implemented all these ideas with real drive and growing enthusiasm.

The first solution was to promote two of the cleaners to supervisor level, whose role was to check on the other cleaners to ensure they were meeting the business’s high standards. They had a smaller number of cleaning appointments with time between to check on their ‘teams’.

These supervisors also filled in when cleaners called in sick to avoid loss of business and cancellations. Their role was quickly expanded to include scheduling and training of new cleaners. This worked well, and reduced the level of complaints and improved standards overall while virtually eliminating the number of ‘missed’ cleans.

Recruitment and retention of cleaners was a big problem that took up much of Caz’s time. So we introduced a ‘cleaner recruitment bonus’ scheme. The idea was that if a team member introduced a new cleaner who stayed with the business for a minimum of 6 months, then both ‘introducer’ & new cleaner would get a bonus after 6 months.

This meant Caz no longer had to spend hours recruiting & interviewing candidate cleaners as the employees did all that when introducing a new cleaner, who was often a trusted and reliable friend. Staff turnover dropped markedly, quality improved steadily and staff harmony was much better.

The third major set of problems were margins, revenue, collections and weekend demand. The solution here was radical but it solved all these problems. We increased the hourly ‘cleaning fee’ on Thursday, Friday & Monday by ~17%. Those that could not or would not pay the increase would have their cleaning done on the Tuesday or Wednesday.

Everyone was asked to pay by Direct Debit from the following month. All direct debit payers would get priority for scheduling and their clean was guaranteed to happen. Anyone 2 weeks in arrears would not get priority cleaning and anyone a month in arrears would be placed on ‘stop’.

Virtually all clients stayed and complied with the new terms paying by direct debit. The clients who ‘cancelled’ were almost without exception the ‘unjustified complainers’. Gross margin grew by 40% (￡5 to ￡7/hr); and by levelling out demand, the business was able to carry out more ‘cleans’ with the same staff, increasing revenue by 30% (15% on average price & 15% on ‘cleaning hours’).

The biggest benefit was that Caz was able to focus on marketing, sales, branding and expansion. Over the next 2 years the business expanded to 60 cleaners with offices in 3 towns and revenue trebled. Shortly after this, Caz was approached by a franchisor who has now bought the business to turn it into a franchise opportunity.

“Fantastic and so supportive”

“I joined Chris and the EC Coaching programme to basically help me to expand my business. I’d grown it to a certain point but I needed help to take it to the next level and get to where I wanted to be.

Joining was a real eye opener. Going through the figures and reviewing my business with Chris gave me real clarity on where I needed to focus my time and effort. Together, we found how I could save myself a great deal of time by working ‘smarter’ and delegating, so that I could concentrate on business development. The improvements were amazing! Chris and the whole team are fantastic and so supportive...”

Caroline Sampson – Fridays Cleaning Services