Your First Time? Avoid These Common Pitfalls

Why take risks, ask the experts!

Some Tips!

Here’s a short guide of what to avoid if you’re retaining an office cleaning company for the first time.

As a rule of thumb, in the majority of cases the seed of discontent is planted right from the first agreement and before even starting, so it’s certainly good practice to make the effort to get it right from the outset.

The three most common mistakes made by building / office managers when appointing cleaners are:

1. Assuming all cleaning businesses are the same
2. Inadequate assessment of the cleaners business specialties or focus
3. Not asking for a quote or accepting a ballpark generalised quote

Assuming all cleaning businesses are the same

In an ideal world one would expect any supplier to have the necessary skill or expertise before putting themselves forward as professionals in the field but it is an unfortunate fact of life that this is not always the case.

At a glance cleaning may appear to be an exercise requiring relative unskilled manual labour and therein lays the pitfall because there is more to it than meets the eye.

In addition to manual cleaning tasks, office cleaning requirements add speed and thoroughness into the equation along with a menu of Standards and service to ensure reliable and consistent quality within a specified schedule.

Your research when sourcing a cleaning company should entail a close look at the entire package offered, not just the cleaning service itself.

Inadequate assessment of the cleaners’ business specialties or focus

Residential cleaning is quite different to office cleaning for many reasons, some included in this article and others that you can see in our other articles and on our website.

Commercial cleaning is a general term used to embrace cleaning that is done for business as opposed to domestic cleaning and some companies promote themselves using this general term so that they have a shot at a wider variety of clients.

Your search for office cleaners should be confined to ‘office cleaning companies’ so that you can find a cleaning company that has specific experience and established track record of cleaning spaces comparable to yours.

Not asking for a quote or accepting a ballpark generalised quote

Whilst it may seem obvious to some, a surprising number of companies experience difficulties with cleaners because they etained them and entered into a term agreement without a firm quote or a quote short of details.

It’s self evident that this opens the door to later budgeting problems but correct and detailed quotes are equally important in managing cleaners and standard of work.

Insisting on a written detailed quote will enable you to compare cleaning companies effectively and avoid getting swayed by price alone and will give you a benchmark to use in the ongoing monitoring of cleaner performance.

Ready to solve your cleaning problems for once and for all?

Contact us today for a free quote