Picky people are hard to please. If you’ve ever had a picky manager, then you understand the sense of anxiety that comes along with handing over any “completed” task. Sure, you may have spent hours on your project, but picky people have a special knack for pointing out flaws you didn’t even know existed. And when it comes to giving feedback, they tend to be generous with how much they give.
As a commercial cleaning company, we have 18 years of experience cleaning millions of square feet. Do that much cleaning, and you’re bound to run into people who are picky about cleanliness – we certainly have.
It’s tempting to get frustrated by critical feedback, especially when it only ever comes from one tenant in a multi-tenant building full of otherwise happy customers. But here’s the thing: picky people can make you better at what you do. After all, if you can please a picky person, you can please anyone.
With that in mind, here’s how we handle that one picky tenant.
Listen to them.
There are a lot of nooks and crannies in a commercial building, which means that even highly trained janitors can miss a spot occasionally. Often, a picky tenant will have a pet peeve – a certain corner that doesn’t get dusted regularly, or a piece of paper that’s been under the file cabinet for the past two weeks.
The picky tenant will keep an eye on this spot, and keep an eye out for the janitor. The nature of janitorial service, though, means that most of the cleaning happens when the tenants aren’t there. That creates a communication gap between janitors and tenants. The janitor does a thorough job cleaning, but isn’t aware of the paper under the cabinet; the tenant never sees the janitor cleaning, and continues to focus on the paper that still hasn’t been cleaned out from under the cabinet. That’s when they speak up – and when they do, it’s important for the custodial company to listen.
At The Wilburn Company, when we hear that a tenant has voiced concern about cleanliness, we do our best to address it in-person. Most times, sending a supervisor in to walk through the facility with the tenant does the trick.
During the walk-through, we’ll have the tenant point out what they see that the custodial staff has missed. Bridging the communication gap like this allows us to pay special attention to the aspects of cleanliness that are most important to the picky tenant.
Quality assurance.
At The Wilburn Company, we pride ourselves on the standards of our quality assurance during our cleaning process. Quality assurance is how we make sure we’re doing the job right, and it’s never more important than when a tenant has voiced a concern.
While we regularly inspect our teams’ performances for QA, as soon as we’re aware that a tenant is concerned about their custodial services, we increase our rate of QA and make sure to perform a quality control check every night.
Our quality control inspectors go through the facility to make sure that the scope of work is being completed, with all of details accounted for. We do this for as long as it takes to make sure that the issue will not occur again.
Taking Responsibility.
Finally, when dealing with a picky tenant, it’s important to take responsibility for issues.
When faced with criticism, everyone’s first reaction is to make excuses. It’s understandable, and sometimes it’s even justified. As a janitorial company, though, it’s not the right thing to do. At the end of the day, the reason doesn’t matter. Only the results do.
Making an excuse for an issue suggests that it’s outside of your control – and if an issue is outside of your control, how can you guarantee that you’ll be able to fix it?
That’s why we take responsibility for every missed smudge and each crumpled paper that’s left under a cabinet, and it’s the reason we can guarantee that each issue will be resolved.
By listening to picky tenants, performing consistent quality control checks, and taking responsibility for any issues, we can make even the pickiest tenants happy. And making picky tenants happy helps us to improve as a commercial custodial company.
Want to keep your pickiest tenants happy? Get in touch with us. Call us at 410.789.3320 or contact us online to start using some of the best commercial cleaning services around the Maryland and Virginia area.