Finding an office cleaning company that can provide you with quality service at the right price may at times feel unattainable. The office cleaning marketplace is filled with different providers all claiming to be the best, and many of them don’t clearly price their services making them nearly impossible to compare. As if that wasn’t bad enough, if you choose the wrong company you are likely to get slapped with all kinds of upcharges and hidden fees without the benefit of professional, responsive office cleaning services. Finally, in order to get a meaningful and well-informed quote in an RFP (request for proposal), you need to have accurate information about the specifics of your facility and budget. Fortunately, there are ways of working with the janitorial marketplace to assure you start with a qualified, capable pool of choices and narrow down from their to pick a cleaning partner that shines.
A good partnership with your prospective office cleaning service starts with a good RFP and accurate information. So what information should you be looking to provide to get the best possible service? First, you are going to need to give them accurate numbers on square footage broken down by flooring type. A common mistake is not to have information on floor type, because each flooring type has different care requirements that can significantly change your price point. Similarly, you should provide a rough estimate of the number of people in your facility so your cleaning company has an idea of how building traffic will impact cleaning requirements. This also helps give them an idea of the amount of consumables that your facility needs. That is to say, how much toilet paper, paper towels and trash bags are needed to keep your facility stocked.
A huge red flag we often see Facility Managers inadvertently overlook is companies that provide a quote without doing a site visit. A site visit is crucial to helping identify what your facility needs and how well your prospective cleaning company can fill those needs. On top of that, a site inspection can help you develop a Smart Cleaning plan, that is to say, cleaning more with less by identifying how often things need to be serviced and what is critical to your cleaning plan and what is not. Finally, a site inspection is the best time to get to know your Michigan office cleaning company and vice versa. Having a personal relationship with your office cleaning service provider will make it easier to communicate and to build a lasting mutually beneficial partnership.
You may have had negative cleaning company experiences in the past, but you can use them to your advantage. Communicate to your prospective janitorial services provider what works for you and what doesn’t. The most experienced and professional companies will listen to your pain points and work to come up with solutions to make sure that they don’t make the same mistakes. If you had a problem with you previous company constantly switching out their employees impacting your quality of service, communicate this to your future partner. If your prospective Detroit office cleaning knows what they need to focus on, you will get services more tailored to your specific needs.
There is no shortage of facilities that just don’t have the budget to get everything done that that they would like. It is an all too common in this industry. Of course, cleaning solutions are never going to be perfectly budget friendly and it can be a challenge for even the most experienced office cleaning company to create a manageable budget without losing money. But with some finesse and communication, it can be done. With a complete site inspection and thorough analysis of what needs to be done and what does not, a cleaning plan can be made that gives you the services that are critical to the function of your office building without taking you to the cleaners so to speak. In a perfect world, we’d all love an unlimited budget we could spend on our lengthy to do lists without having to worry. Unfortunately, life rarely makes things easy. But with the right cleaning company, you can at least make sure that your facility is getting the cleaning and maintenance it needs even with a tight budget. By taking advantage of industry innovation and tapping into the immense amount of experience your office cleaners have, it is possible to trim out unimportant work without affecting the overall perception of service.
The most common piece of relationship advice is never more true than in the cleaning industry, communication is key. Let's look at a simple example, office vacuuming. If you tell your building occupants that service is every Wednesday and Friday, you probably won’t receive angry calls about the lack of service on Tuesday. In the same way, letting your cleaning company know that on Monday it is easiest to clean because of a meeting or some other event, they can be more efficient and responsive to your specific needs With specifics like this, you can cut down on the work done to save money without actually reducing the quality of the service. As a Facility Manager, consulting with your tenants and cleaning company can help you get the most out of what you are paying for.
If you are having problems with office cleaning or levels of service, your budget ‘optimizations’ might not be cutting it or your current budget may simply not be able to support your facility. To get the most out of a tight budget, you need to talk with your office cleaner and set realistic expectations. Smart Cleaning isn’t some miracle solution that you can fix any budget with. The trick to Smart Cleaning is making tactical decisions to minimize resource usage while maximizing the benefit of using them. A commercial cleaning company does exist that you can work with to get the most bang for your buck. But understanding what is and is not feasible on your budget is important when trying to build a workable plan to keep your offices in tip top shape.
So we know that clear pricing is critical. We also understand that Smart Cleaning is by no means easy, it requires extensive experience and a lot of innovation to construct a solid cleaning plan on a reduced budget. Not every office cleaning company has what it takes to help you keep your facility looking its best well within budget. A good place to start looking, however, is with the ISSA’s CIMS and CIMS-GB certification. Tools like CIMS certification give you good information to make sound choices regarding your office cleaning services. The ISSA (International Sanitary Supply Association) provides a rigorous, high-level certification that a company performs at the highest level in the industry, repeatedly demonstrating cleaning excellence and a commitment to their customers. Any medical office cleaning company or office cleaning service that can meet and exceed these rigorous, varied and stringent benchmarks will be infinitely more likely to be able to properly service your facility on a tight budget.