Thursday, October 28, 2004

Zen of Handling Complaints

I have a customer who has been complaining, minor issues, but complaining none-the-less. We take a dim view of complaints here at www.lk-clean.com

Anyhow, went out to the site after each call and tried to work with the cleaning staff to resolve these issues and set in motion preventive measures to stop future occurences. This resulted in us having to hire new staff for several positions due to employment interruptions. ( Old stafff would not bend to my will, so I interrupted their employment with me)

As my wife and I were training new hires, I set mine up on trashing and dusting and I took the vacuum out into the hallway. Which appears to be 5 miles long at 11pm at night. So I plugged in the back pack and entered the Zen Zone........................

I realized while I was cleaning that my approach to this entire situation was wrong from the start. Instead of apologizing and placating the customer and assuring them that I would correct deficiencies. I should have jumped on this as an opportunity.

The very first night in the building, after the very first call, I should have created a list of everything I saw that was wrong. Everything, not just what we are responsible for but EVERYTHING. Then I should have come back to the customer the next day, pointed out that I corrected the issues they mentioned, then show them the other Cleaning issues that I found and how I was going to correc those as well.
Then with the customer now in a positive mood because I proved myself to be my own policeman, I could sell/pitch the other services that I observed.

I am going to take my list with me tomorrow and go see the customer........ Will post back on how it goes. Questions? Feel free to email me at ken@lk-clean.com

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