Are You Facebook Friends With Your Clients, Angela Brown, Savvy Cleaner

Are You Facebook Friends With Your Clients?

Are you Facebook friends with your clients?  Your first instinct may be to separate your private life from your work life.

But what kind of message does it send when you reject or accept a friend request from a customer? 

Is it a bad idea for a house cleaner to be friends with the homeowner on social media? Or can connecting with clients on Facebook be a good way to grow your cleaning business?

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Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

Are You Facebook Friends With Your Clients?

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Man Thinking with LaptopAre you Facebook friends with your clients?  There are house cleaners everywhere that want to block their clients from being their Facebook friends, almost like something bad is going to happen.

Most people want to keep their personal life separate from their professional life.  However, you need to be friendly to your customers and not become a part of their family and get enmeshed in their lives and have them treat you a different way. 

But as far as accepting their friendship requests and letting them be your friend on Facebook, here is an idea. So, think about it from every angle and then come up with your own solution. You way is not going to be right or wrong, but there’s a new way of looking at that question. And it’s a big enough question it should actually be looked at it from a couple of different angles.

Facebook Has a Fancy Algorithm

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Phone AlgorithmThe first thing is this. Facebook has a fancy algorithm. It is so fancy that it has become a billion-dollar industry, not a billion, but many billions of dollars of industry. And it is a publicly-traded company.  There are a whole bunch of people who are making money from Facebook working.

One of the ways Facebook works and it’s one of the most brilliant things ever seen, is it connects the dots. It goes and it finds people interested in what you do, and it brings them to you, and it tries to connect you.

It says, “Hey, do you know this person?” And then sometimes in your feed, it will say recommended friends. And it recommends friends to you. What happens when it recommends your clients to you and your client feels good about you?

It Will Recommend Your Clients as Friends

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Woman with Phone, Say Yes to the RequestThey say, “Oh yes, there’s my house cleaner. I would love to be their friend.” Because you’re such a good house cleaner and they have these great feelings about you. Then they send you a friend request and then you want to keep things personal on Facebook, not include your clients so you say no and you decline the request.

What happens is that sends a message back to your customer. They’re like, “I don’t understand. I invited this person into my home, around my family and my pets and all my personal items. And they cleaned my house so they kind of know that I’m a slob and they know the most intimate parts of my life. And I wanted to be their friend on Facebook, but they turned me down. Hmm. I wonder what they’re hiding.”

All it does is sends a message that I value my privacy and please don’t interfere. So they will respect that, and they won’t give out your phone number and won’t talk about you or recommend you. And they won’t give you any referrals because you’re a private person and you want to keep to yourself.

You Can Cost Yourself Referrals

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Surprised Woman with PhoneDo you see what just happened? What you did is you sent a message that said, “I’m private. I’m keeping to myself.” And they said, “Oh, Oh, okay. I won’t interfere.” And that’s one of the reasons house cleaners won’t get referrals from people is because they’ve have blocked them.

They don’t make it easy for them to recommend them.

You Have to Reciprocate Activities for Customers

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, ReciprocityThen the next thing is this. In any marketing program, or sales program, it doesn’t matter where you go, it doesn’t matter who the trainer is, they’re going to teach you how to reciprocate activities in your customers’ lives.

Let’s say that a customer says, “Hi, how are you?” You say, “I’m fine. How are you“.  If your mother is sick, they say, “How is your mother?” If their mother is sick, you say, “How is your mother?”  It’s reciprocity. But how do you do reciprocity If you’ve blocked the avenue that they are most comfortable with?

And most comfortable means that most of your customers are on Facebook. How do we know that? It’s because there are billions of people on Facebook,  Your customers are on Facebook and they all have families and friends.

Facebook Helps You Make Connections

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Little Boy Playing BaseballIf they become your friend on Facebook and their kid has a ball game, for example, when their kid goes to the ballgame, although this is their personal life, they’re going to say, “Oh, look at Johnny, he’s got a game today. I’m super excited“.  That’s going to hit your feed.

Instead of you going out of the way to try to follow up with customers and to try to create these connections, Facebook does it for you and it’s free. You don’t have to have a whole conversation, you don’t have to make it weird. You can still stay in your personal life, but now you’ve interacted with your customer’s life for a second.

So how does your customer feel about you now? “Hey, wait a minute. My house cleaner is rooting for my kid’s ballgame. I’m super excited about that.” Now they feel better about you. And then what happens when it becomes their birthday? “Oh, my goodness. Happy birthday. I’m so exciting.” You send a little picture of a birthday cake with candles and whatever. “Oh, that’s so nice.” And it gives them warm and fuzzies.

There are Lots of Opportunities to Send Your Customers Warm and Fuzzies

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Smiling Woman with PhoneThere are lots of opportunities through being Facebook friends to send your customers warm and fuzzies without getting involved, without spending a lot of money and without trying to do things that are weird to help get yourself involved in the customer’s life.  When you block the customer from being your Facebook friend, what you’re doing is you’re sending a series of messages.

Your Customers Can Also Give to You

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Dancers on StageNow what’s interesting is it comes back the other way. And I know that when I first got on Facebook, I was running a house cleaning company and I was still trying to make it successful. I hadn’t managed my money well.

And a buddy of mine was in theater production and the tickets were like $150. And that was a lot of money if I were to take my spouse and go to this production, I didn’t have it to give. That buddy of mine asked me, “Are you coming?” And I said, “Oh, I’d love to come. And I just … I’m not going to be able to make it this time.” There was an after-party, a backstage after party that I was also invited to. It was this particular night that I was to go if I was going to go.

Anyway, my customer knew that we were friends. And so, they contacted my friend and said, “I know Angela’s birthday is coming up. Is there anything special that I could do for her that she won’t do for herself?” And my buddy said, “There’s a theater production and for some reason, she’s not going, she wanted to go, but for some reason, can’t make it.”

When I get to the customer’s house, the next time the customer says, “Hey, great job for the cleaning, whatever, here’s your payment. Oh, by the way, this is for your birthday.” And I opened it up and there are tickets for me and my husband for the theater. And I was like, Oh my goodness. This is a huge tip.  But all they had to do is ask one friend, “What could I do that’s something a little bit special?”

Your Customers are Smart People

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Man TextingThe customers that hire you, they’ve made wise choices in their lives. They’re homeowners. They have families. They have money to hire a house cleaner and they know the value of hiring a house cleaner. These are not buffoons. These are people that want to help you succeed.

They want to help you succeed. And if you are friends with them on Facebook they can kind of follow your journey.  What are the odds that they’re going to reach out if you ever send an SOS like, prayers, if nothing else, they can send their prayers.

If you need a hug, here’s a hug. If you need somebody to talk to, maybe they are somebody you can talk to. But customers have reached out in different ways and oftentimes even anonymously where they know you.

Customers Know When You’re Going Through a Hard Time

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Coat Drive BoxThey know you’re going through a hard time, even if you didn’t say anything. I know it’s gone the other way for us too. There are times where you clean houses for someone and you know that they’re working on something special. I know that one Christmas, one of our clients was doing a coat drive for their church.

And they were asking everyone, “Hey, do you have any coats“? Well, as we cleaned out our closets, we found lots of coats that, because we lived in a different area that was colder in the wintertime. Then we had customers of ours, that had coats, they moved from Michigan or Boston or wherever. They had these big winter coats. And in North Carolina, you don’t need those coats. And so, we went to our customers and said, “Hey, one of our other customers is doing a coat drive. Are there any extra coats that you have that you’d like to donate?”

And because we were friends on Facebook, and were able to make some connections, because there were some things that were going on and we could see that they were having this running tally of how many coats they’ve collected.  We were able to help donate to that program.

There are Ways to Work Together With Clients

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Family on PorchThere are ways that you can work together. And so, what are the reasons that you would not want to connect with your customers on Facebook?

And if it’s because you’re rowdy on Facebook and you say things that are offensive, or you go off the rails with your rants or whatever, maybe you need to tone that stuff down on social media anyway, because even if you don’t befriend those people on Facebook, they’re going to find you.

They’re going to find you; the algorithms are smart enough now. They will find you on Instagram and Facebook and wherever you are. 

Welcome Your Customers Into Your Life

Facebook Friends With Your Customers, Happy Woman with PhoneTherefore, don’t avoid them, welcome them into your life because a lot of times, all you have to do is click a little thumbs up.  Just a little thumbs-up, praying hands, thinking about you, good luck with the game, yay, congratulations.

Facebook has made it so easy to have quick interactive connections with customers. As far as sales and marketing goes, say yes to your friend request on Facebook.000 Savvy Cleaner Spacer Bar 2020Resources

These good karma links connect you to Amazon.com and affiliated sites that offer products or services that relate to today’s show. 

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The 11 Laws of Likability: Relationship Networking . . . Because People Do Business with People They Like – https://amzn.to/2Xj3Cno 

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How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships – http://amzn.to/2xXlTJ3

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