Tips To Hire The Best House Cleaning Services
Busy all day- sounds familiar . With your busy schedule, it becomes quite difficult to maintain your house . You need to hire a house cleaning service for making your house to look great. This will make people appreciate your beautiful house and make you quite a talk in the town!!
House Cleaning can be quite a tiring activity and definitely not something that you would want to do in your spare time . It makes sense to employ professional cleaning services for doing these activities. Now in India with the abundance of domestic maids I does not make sense to hire a daily cleaning service agency. It makes sense to hire an agency which can come once in a quarter to six months and spruce up the house. This is commonly known as Deep Cleaning or as annual spring cleaning.
Now the important thing to ask is, how does one choose which cleaning company to hire? You need to ask a few questions before you decide
Will A Professional Cleaning Service Company Help?
In India , you have a lot of casual labour, and you might be tempted to say ” they are cheaper and we can get something out of them”. Yes you should keep this person if he is good – who would not want someone good and cheap!!. However a word of caution most times these things don’t go well. The person may not be consistent in his quality or it may take a lot of time to train him in all the nuances of cleaning. You end up more time supervising and your spare time goes for a toss. Add to it the mental stress in an already stressful environment.
A professional cleaning company eliminates a lot this stress. Cleaners are generally equipped with the right machinery, chemicals, tools and tackles and often do not require continuous supervision. They make be more expensive but compensate for the quality of work and smooth process of cleaning. It is highly efficient and it just gets your work done!!. So here are a few things you need to look at before hiring a home cleaning service.
1. Referrals From Friends, Neighbors And Family- Gold Standard
When you have a plethora of options you cannot rely on what is written in the website or marketing flyers. Anyone can write anything ,anyone can advertise anything and generally it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. What can work is the fact that someone in your circle like friends, family and even neighbors have used that particular service.
A favorable word from your inner circle means a lot more than all the words that marketers can spin around. This should be your first port of call when you check with house cleaning services as it is a personalized service and if someone vouches for that service you have a very company to give work to.Very often in a market where there are lots and lots of unorganized players , going against word of mouth recommendations is not a wise things to do.
Another option is to be part of online forums such as Moms of Bangalore on Facebook. Here if you ask for queries for Cleaning services in Bangalore there is a high chance that the forum will recommend a tried and tested cleaning service agency. Clean Fanatic has been repeatedly recommended in these forums. It is also very highly rated in the reviews both on Google as well as Facebook.
2. Online Reviews- Avoid Extremes
Online reviews are a good proxy for the work done by a company. It is a good practice to check the reviews and often read out the details of the reviews. Too many bad reviews are a definite no go. There must be something seriously wrong with the company.
Genuine reviewers will write a bit of their experience, sometime upload a few photos of the work done. Genuine reviewers also tend to have more reviews as compared to paid or fake reviewers.
Sometimes reviews are used to vent out frustration, create disrepute for the company or to blow things out of proportions. Watch out for how the company responds to there reviews and it would say a lot about the service standards of the company. No one is perfect but if there is an attempt to rem-edify the situation you know you are in good hands
Another way to check is if the reviews are consistent across mediums such as Facebook and Google. High positive reviews in both these platforms means the home cleaning service is doing a consistent job and not rigging up reviews.
The key here is to find out a company which has consistent good reviews across mediums.
3. Full Stack Cleaning Service Company Vs Outsourcing Platforms
Understand whom are you hiring. Are you hiring a company which has employees or are they a platform which will then outsource the work to a group of people and charge them a commission. Now tech enable platforms outsource the work to a group of individuals .When a job is outsourced then there is little or no investment by the platform or outsourcing company. Neither are their proper standard operating procedures nor are there standard machinery and chemicals . I hope you do understand that managing consistency across different individuals, houses and companies is very complex. There will be slip ups in quality and that often reflects in the rating of these online platforms ( Check neutral rating on Google).
As a business which has spend over 8 years on the field , we do realize that high quality cannot be provided if you are outsourcing the work. There has to be a real ownership.
4. Experience Of Home Cleaning Service
How long has the company been in business? Have you been able to talk or hear about the people in charge. While Business accreditation are far and few in the Indian context but it is best to have a check in the media, in a few videos etc about how has the company performed . To put things in context do check if the company has reopened in a different name after having closed down due to bad reputation..
5. Damages
Check on if there is a policy to deal with damages. While damages are accidental is there something the company provides for, Does it help fix the damage . Insurance for these services in India are a broken record .It is often left between the cleaning service company and the customer to sort out in case there are any damages.
6. Offerings Of The Cleaning Service
To what details are the companies going in to offer their home cleaning service in Bangalore. Do they have a checklist that they could offer you. Is there a possibility to get something customized? It is best to check what would be the duration of the service and what are the requirements from the customer end. In the context of cleaning service in Bangalore, it is better to check the tentative time of arrival and estimated time for lunch breaks also!!.
Professional Cleaning companies would be happy to share details of list of items which are to be cleaned. They will be upfront to inform on the extra charges to be asked for ,if there is deviation from the scope of work. It is best to clarify what are the expectations and also to hear out the experienced cleaning companies about what they can promise . Some cleaning companies may be very flexible when they take the order but then once they start executing a lot of exclusions come in. This creates inconvenience for the customer, crew as well as the companies all around.
7. Machinery And Cleaning Supplies
Check with the cleaning company what is the kind of machinery being used. It is also important to check what kind of cleaning material is being used for the cleaning. This ideally should be present in the checklist and customers should insist on it. The checklist should consist of the areas to be cleaned, the chemicals used and the machinery to be used.
A few probing questions should also be as asked by the customer . Such as about the type of chemicals used .Can they cause any damage to the floor or exposed surfaces. It is best to ascertain if the machines and supplies are cleaned and insist that the crews take care of these hygiene factors. Each house has a slightly different requirement and hence the home cleaning service company should be stocked to meet minor deviations. For example it would be nice to ask what chemicals are used for bathroom cleaning services as part of the overall cleaning service. Or for that ask for the process for the sofa cleaning service.
Is there a person in charge of the operations?. A single point of contact like a supervisor helps to coordinate and makes the process smooth.
So how we help in this?
At Clean Fanatics, we have our material stocked in our cleaning vans to take care of these deviations. We are also equipped with the right tools and tackles to manage cleaning in a few inaccessible areas. For example a telescopic ladder is used by us to reach tall windows from outside.
8. Cancellations
It is best to check with the house cleaning service if they have a policy for cancellations. Unfortunately last minute cancellations are tough on the company.
As transportation and manpower wages are paid for cancellations of this sort leads to losses. At Clean Fanatics, we request for a small cancellation fee if there are last moment cancellations. As a good practice we keep reminding the customers through WhatsApp and SMS that they have a call scheduled. This helps reduce last moment cancellations to a minimum. Customers should send a reply once they receive the confirmation message, This reduces the confusion