Satisfaction Guarantee Fund, Angela Brown, Savvy Cleaner

Satisfaction Guarantee Fund

Should you have a satisfaction guarantee fund to motivate employees to work harder? Check out these tips on how to incentivize and inspire your team of house cleaners. 

Customer satisfaction depends on the quality of your cleaning service. Today, we’ll tell you how to make the most of a pay for performance program using a point reward system.

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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.

What is a Satisfaction Guarantee Fund?

Satisfaction Guarantee Fund, House Cleaner Cleaning FurnitureSatisfaction Guarantee Fund. What is that? This question was asked “I wanted to ask you a question based on one of your videos I watched last night, when you said something about, I think it’s the satisfaction guarantee fund. That sounds interesting. And I would like to know more about that. If you can answer the question for me, that’d be great. I’d appreciate it.”

Now, one of the things that we did in our business is because everybody likes to be recognized and everybody likes to work towards something. It’s the goal or the light at the end of the tunnel. What we did is we took 10% of the earnings that we received from the jobs and we put it into one great big fund. Now, our members are paid modestly, so they’re paid living wages, but they’re paid modestly. And then they have a chance to earn more. If we gave them more right upfront, there’s no incentive.

Give Your Employees Points for Incentives

Satisfaction Guarantee Fund, Woman with Clipboard, Personal ChecklistAnd so, everything that you do gets points. So, for you, you use a worksheet when you clean people’s houses and you check everything off. Your employees also have a checklist. It’s a personal progress report for the entire day. Everything that they do generates points.

So, for example, let’s say that you show up on time. You get points. If you’re dressed according to the standard of your business, which is the uniform, and the way that you’re supposed to be dressed, you get points.

If you show up to the customer’s house on time, you get points. So, if you do the things on the checklist that the job specifies, you get points.

Employees Can Gain and Lose Points

Satisfaction Guarantee Fund, Upset Man, Oh No I'm Going to Lose PointsIf you get a rating and review from the customer, you get more points.  If you go to the next customer’s house and you arrive on time, you get points. 

But, if you get a callback, you lose points. So what happens, is there’s this running tally throughout the week of how many points you can earn and things that you lose points for, like if you get in a cat fight with someone.

And by a catfight means if you’re bickering, if you’re ornery, if you’re mean, if you’re nasty, if you’re hard to get along with you, you lose points.

Checklists Keep Your Business Running Smoothly

Satisfaction Guarantee Fund, Two House CleanersIt’s the only way you can keep our business running smoothly. Everybody’s working towards points. And we’ve had people that are in the middle of some kind of a misfit, and they’re like, Oh, that’s going to cost me points. That’s how it works.

But we’re strict on the point system. Then what happens at the end of the month? We tally up the money that we have in that supply. Now, if we have to send somebody back, and this is where the question comes from.

If we send somebody back to clean a job, part of the money that we pay for somebody to go do a re-clean comes out of that satisfaction guarantee fund.  So, there’s going to be less money to go around.

Break Your Point System in Tiers

Satisfaction Guarantee Fund, Three House CleanersBreak it up in tiers. So, three and under, and this is based on the point system. If you are in the three and under tier, there’s one set of money. If you’re in the six and under tier, there’s another set of money. And if you’re in the 10 and under, which is seven, eight, nine, and 10, there’s another tier of money.

And you split the money in each of those tiers with the people that are there. So, you want to be in the highest tier so you get the most amount of money when we split the pot at the end of the month. 

But if we have to go back over and over and do re-cleans, not only do you lose points, but it drops you down to the bottom so that when there is money at the end of the month to split up, you don’t get as much.

Satisfaction Guarantee Funds Turn it to Pay for Performance

Satisfaction Guarantee Fund, Pay For PerformanceSo, it’s called pay for performance. There are a lot of different programs on the market. If you don’t have one, it’s highly recommended that you create one.

There is a program called Quality Driven, and it tracks the satisfaction of your customers. That way you can incentivize your employees properly. And its recommended that you include your employees as well as your independent contractors in some sort of a bonus or incentive package.

Now, the day that you join us, we sign you up as a member of Savvy Perks. It is our gift to you. It doesn’t cost us a lot of money, but it gives you discounts at 250,000 organizations, companies, children’s tuition for school, uniforms, all kinds of stuff.  So, you get that from day one. We want to incentivize you.

Small Businesses Aren’t Obligated to Offer Benefits

Satisfaction Guarantee Fund, House Cleaner Wiping FurnitureNow as small businesses, you are not obligated if you have 50 or under employees, you’re not obligated to offer a benefits package of any sort. And so, it sweetens the pot if you can offer something. It is our way of saying, “Hey, let’s all work towards the same goals.”

And it elevates everyone because everyone is struggling together to make sure that the company is exactly the way that it’s supposed to be. And then they are rewarded at the end of the month, instead of just doing a regular job and then there’s no reward. There’s no incentive. There are no goals. There’s nothing to look forward to.

You will find it’s much more invigorating for everyone. And it keeps everyone on the same page. If there’s something or some light at the end of the tunnel, that then pays them off money that they can then go buy something enjoyable, or they can just pay their bills with.000 Savvy Cleaner Spacer Bar 2020Resources

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