Customer Survey for House Cleaning Clients

A customer survey for house cleaning clients is a great idea. It’s a chance to provide customer satisfaction. And you can do a customer survey before you even start the job. 

Today we Ask a House Cleaner about the best way to get a customer survey and feedback. Angela Brown, The House Cleaning Guru teaches in maid service training how to be a savvy cleaner and create a happy customer. 

Customer surveys are one way to clean my space and do a good job.

Today’s show sponsor is https://HouseCleaning360.com

#HouseCleaning360 a.k.a. HC360 or House Cleaning 360 is a business referral network for house cleaners and maids and housekeepers.

Listen: Customer Survey for House Cleaning Clients

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Question: Customer Survey for House Cleaning Clients

Customer surveys. What are they, and why do they matter? Why do we need them? We’re going to talk about that today.

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Answer: Customer Survey for House Cleaning Clients

Alrighty, now on to customer surveys. What is a customer survey? A customer survey is when you ask your customer a series of questions.

And the answers they give you let you know if you’re doing a good job or a bad job. And what you could improve on to provide better customer service.

Customer Survey Cards Left on Countertop

Now, when I first started my house cleaning business, I got all cool and everything. I printed up this little customer survey card, and I would leave it at my customer’s houses, and that was it.

I never saw them again, I never heard of them again, no one ever returned them. No quality feedback was received.

I’m like, “Well, that’s weird. Doesn’t make any sense, but okay.”

I have heard other house cleaners say that they have done computer surveys as well. These were not filled out and returned either. 

Phone Customer Survey

I then hired a third-party independent service that called my customers up on the phone. And they came back and said, “Here are the answers.”

They came back with these little answers that didn’t give me any feedback whatsoever.

I discovered that my customers were quiet people. They don’t like confrontation. They didn’t want to hurt my feelings

And so they were only saying things like, “Oh, yeah. She does a good job.”

But that didn’t give me any good information. And so I had to change what I was doing because the regular traditional customer survey was not working.

Survey From the Start

Here is how the customer surveys work.

There is only one time that you can ask a series of questions. And that is right in the beginning when you don’t know the customer. The customer has no emotional involvement to you.

When a customer calls you and they ask you, “Hey, can you come over to my house and bid a contract?”

There’s a series of questions right now that you can ask. And what you’re asking is not, “Did I do a good job,” but, “Did the previous house cleaner for you do a good job?”

Because they called you on the phone, something is amiss. Otherwise, the previous house cleaner wouldn’t have left or fired. 

Be a Detective

Now, you’re going to put on your little detective hat. You’re going to pull out your big magnifying glass. 

And you’re going to determine if this a high-maintenance customer. Maybe that’s the reason why the house cleaner left.

Or did the house cleaner get fired because they were a sloppy house cleaner?

You Will Never Be Able to Ask These Questions Again, so Ask Now! 

You can only ask these questions from the beginning. There will never be another appropriate time to ask them. They will not come back later and tell you the reasons why the previous house cleaner is gone. 

In the beginning, you go to do the walkthrough. 

And you’re going to ask a question like, “Hey, you called me. And so I’m sensing that the previous house cleaner didn’t work out. Can you share with me why that relationship did not work out?”

And they’ll go, “Yeah, my other house cleaner forgot this or forgot that. Or they skipped this, or they breezed through that.”

Use a Worksheet to Take Notes

They’re going to give you good information. And so if you have a worksheet and you’re walking through the house with them, you can make notes.

Those notes become your customer service plan for this customer. It’s amazing.

Use This Time to Find out Their Expectations

I always ask the same question on the initial walkthrough. I ask, “How will you know when your house is clean?”

And they say, “Oh, well, I would know because my house will smell clean.”

Well, you and I both know that clean does not have a scent, so they’re expecting the house to smell a certain way. What is that way? Does your house smell like Pine-Sol when you’re done? Does it smell like essential oils? Find out what is important to that customer. 

Clean = Pine-Sol

We had customers that associated the smell of clean with Pine-Sol. So we would clean the entire house with the regular chemicals. Or we would use chemical-free cleaning solutions. 

When we left, we would pour a cap full of Pine-Sol in the toilet. That way it would sit there in the toilet, the aroma would make the house smell “clean.”

To that customer, that is what the clean smell meant. And so if their house smelt like Pine-Sol, then to them, that meant their house was clean.

Clean = Combed Rug Tassels

There was another man who said had rug expectations.

He said, “I will know my house is clean because the rug will have combed tassels. They won’t just be laying there.”

Oh, okay, so we will vacuum, and then we will comb the fringe.

Clean = Upward Facing Blinds

Then there was another customer who was particular about the blinds.

She said, “I will know you have dusted the blinds when all the wooden blinds are facing in an upward direction.”

So this way she could walk in and look at all the blinds and see that they were clean.

If You Don’t Know, You Can’t Meet Expectations

Every customer has their own little weird quirks. But if you don’t ask this question, you’ll never know.

If you don’t know their quirks, the homeowner will come home after the house cleaner has left. And they will see their home, and they will say, “Well, my house cleaner didn’t do a good job. “

They didn’t do a good job because they forgot comb the tassels on your carpet. But everything else they did is spectacular. Or they forgot to twist the blinds backward.

The Little Things Go a Long Way

They’re little tiny things. But if you ask in the beginning, your customers will tell you what makes them happy. You will know what is important to them.

Now guess what? 

You meet their standard of excellence. The other house cleaner was most likely amazing. But because they didn’t know the right questions to ask, skipped a couple of important things. So they might have lost the job because of this. 

Clean Looks Different to Every Person

Your opinion of clean is different from your customer’s opinion. If you are not meeting their expectations, your opinions are different.

Your customer assumes that you don’t know what clean looks like. But it is different for every person. 

There’s no way you could know what this particular customer wants without asking them. So you have to ask, and then you have to jump through hoops to make sure that you do those things.

Keep a Running List

Now, for me, it was easier to just make a running list.

They want the carpet fringe combed. They want the blinds turned upward, or they want a cap full of Pine-Sol in their toilet. Whatever their idea of what clean looks like. 

For those customers, we would do these things so that everybody had a consistent pattern.

One woman said, “My bathroom is not clean unless you fold the toilet paper into a little triangle.” That’s an easy fix. We can do that.

All the requests from the customers are things that took about two seconds to do. So it wasn’t time-consuming at all, but to them, it showed we cared. That’s it. 

That’s all the customer survey is about, to say we care. You had a request, we paid attention, and a customer that knows and feels like you care is a customer for life.

Alrighty. That’s my two cents for today, and until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.

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Resources For This Episode

Measuring Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty, Third Edition: Survey Design, Use, and Statistical Analysis Methods – http://amzn.to/2Ar91tt

The Survey Playbook: How to create the perfect survey – http://amzn.to/2iEwM9t

SurveyMonkey For Beginners and Intermediate Users – http://amzn.to/2zpVmCP

Ask: The counterintuitive online formula to discover exactly what your customers want to buy…create a mass of raving fans…and take any business to the next level – http://amzn.to/2zFvwxB

The Art of Asking: Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers – http://amzn.to/2iCVve6

Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask – http://amzn.to/2ArOR2r

Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business, and Influence Others – http://amzn.to/2zrZYdt

Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone – http://amzn.to/2yfyFzR

House Cleaning Client Survey – http://bit.ly/2yg1cFq

Household Cleaning Survey – https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FP89NMY

Survey for House Cleaning Research – http://bit.ly/2Ato6e2

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