How Mass Advertising Can Lower Quality

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Have you ever been to a fast growing franchise restaurant and felt like the person helping you either doesn’t know what they are doing or just doesn’t care?  Of course you have, we all have.  Unfortunately this isn’t exclusive to the fast food industry.  It can happen in any industry when a company grows “too fast”.

The dream of just about any business owner is to have their company skyrocket to the top.  They look for gimmicks, advertising schemes, and even mudslinging to make this happen.  Some industries like law firms and investment companies have readymade employees to purchase from the well-stocked shelves of universities.  Industries that require on the job training don’t have that privilege.  Industries like carpet cleaning require mentor training, or apprentice training.  Reading a training manual only gets you so far.  Professionals need to pass their expertise down in person.

Mass advertising and gimmicks can lead to very rapid growth, especially when the new fad is creaming the market.  Going from 1 van to 10 or more vans in a couple years is wonderful in theory.  However, it takes at least 10 people to run 10 vans.  20 if the recommended 2 employees per crew are used.  In theory there would need to be 10 experts to train these 10 crew chiefs for several months.  One expert just can’t get that done properly.  In fact the rapid growth most likely takes that person out of the equation entirely as the responsibilities of the administration grow just as fast.  When does this training happen?

In a slow but steady growth model, driven through referrals, there is time for assistants to train under experts for 6 months or more.  Not only learning the basics, but also becoming very comfortable with all the variables they might run into in the field.  Mass advertising and excessively rapid growth would make this very difficult to do properly.

Thorough Rinsing Reduces Redo’s

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Reputable carpet cleaning companies agree to return to their jobs any time a customer is unsure of the results of the work done.  The most reputable companies call every job a week after cleaning to make sure they are happy and offer what we call a “redo” to make sure the client stays a satisfied and loyal client.

As important as redo’s are, they also cost money to complete.  This is time and expense being used without extra compensation from the client.  For this reason and more, it is important to do the job right the first time.

Carpet cleaning, like many things in life is largely about balance.  In this case it’s about the balance of PH. levels.  The process starts with pre-spray and spot cleaning agents and finishes with a rinse to balance the Ph. out.  All professional carpet cleaners, no matter who they are, start off with an alkaline or acid pre-spray.  The next step is to rinse it out with a rinse that is opposite the pre-spray on the Ph. scale.  Spot cleaning agents vary in specifics, however, unless it is a leave in treatment, they all have one thing in common.  Cleaning agents need to be rinsed out as much as possible.  Cleaning agents that are not rinsed thoroughly can attract dirt back to the spot or spill.  This makes the spot or spill look like it has resurfaced and come back after the cleaning is done.

The best way to thoroughly rinse the carpet is to make sure you have the most powerful direct drive carpet cleaning truck mount available.  Second, make sure you are using a rinse that is opposite the Ph. of your pre-spray.  Third, simply do extra rinse strokes any time you clean over an area you spot treated.  The whole room doesn’t have to be done this way, just the spot where you used a spot treatment.  Fourth, you do extra vacuum strokes where you did extra rinse strokes.  Extra rinse means slightly higher moisture levels and requires “balance” when it comes do drying the carpet as well.

By maintaining balance in the carpet of both Ph. levels and moisture, the chances of a spot or spill appearing to return on you are nearly eliminated and so are your redo’s.  Out of the last 1814 jobs, my crews only had to return to 23 of them.  All 23 are still very happy clients.  This is one of the methods they practice at every job to make sure they keep their routes redo free and full of loyal, paying, repeat customers here in the Twin Cities.

Two Man Crews Vs. One Man Crews

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In the carpet cleaning industry, you often hear of one man crews being better than one two man crews.  In truly selfish terms, the employer can make a lot more money with one man crews.  The cost to the employer is less with one man crews.  Also, they spend longer in the presence of the customer and build more of a rapport which helps in increasing on site sales or “up-selling”.

The flaw in this strategy is that it only benefits the company and in no way benefits the client.  The customer may believe that the extra time spent by one person means better quality.  However, between setting up the job, pre-spraying, cleaning, setting down the wand to pull the hose or go get the spot treatments, easily two thirds of the time is spent doing what the assistant would do while the crew chief keeps the wand moving.  The truth is this is all wasted time that the customer could be using to live their busy lives.

Two man crews are efficient.  It is easier for a crew chief to ask his assistant to go to the truck to get something, than to set the wand down and go get it himself.  This can lead to steps being skipped for the sake of time or fatigue.

One other important factor that I have found is accountability.  Two man teams rely on each other.  One person can’t sacrifice quality without it affecting the other worker.  It’s much easier to decide to slack off for one day or one job without personal accountability to another crew member.

Loneliness can also lead to depression.  There is no one to help spur the other team member on.  Honestly, cost to the employer and increased sales are the only benefits to having one man crews.  Solo routes will always be necessary in any carpet cleaning company.  That being said, for the sake of the customer, solo routes should be the exception, not the rule.

Rapid Re-Soiling After Carpet Cleaning: Professional Carpet Cleaners

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Professional carpet cleaners stopped using oil based soaps or “shampoo’s” decades ago.  Some less experienced carpet cleaners still have a problem with rapid re-soiling.  Why is this?  Proper training and equipment eliminates this problem for those companies that understand how it works.

  • State-of-the-art direct drive truck mounts are important to get the carpet dry enough after the job.
    • If the carpet is left wet for days then the carpet will lose its ability to resist rapid re-soiling.
    • Ph. balances must be equalized.
      • Companies that rinse with water will leave the Ph. level of the carpet too high after cleaning. This can feel residue-free, but will attract soil none the less.
      • Companies that grow too fast through advertising tend to have a turnover of only a few months.  Proper training takes many months of assisting to an expert carpet cleaner to ensure that Ph. ratios get balanced.

Carpet cleaning is a science, but it is also hard work.  Training is important as well as hiring the right workers and paying well enough to keep them motivated and in your employ.  “Shampoo” may not be a factor in professional carpet cleaning anymore, but work ethic and training always will be.

Commercial Steam Team In Your Home

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Did you know the Commercial Steam Team also cleans homes?  Many people don’t know this.  In fact if you don’t work at one of the many businesses they clean, you might not even know they exist.  The Commercial Steam Team has been cleaning for some of the dirtiest companies in the Twin Cities Area of Minnesota for years.  Also cleaning the homes of the employees and owners of these businesses.

Already the leader in commercial carpet cleaning, from greasy restaurants to oily trucking companies, no one has had more success on the toughest, dirtiest jobs around.  Without advertising, business has grown for the Commercial Steam Team through this tough economy while the rest of the industry is down significantly.  This is because of the unheard of quality provided by the well trained carpet cleaning professionals in our employment.

In the last 2 years, the Commercial Steam Team only had to return to 23 out of 1814 jobs (every one of those clients is still a very happy client).  This amazingly low call back rate is in spite of calling every single client a week after cleaning and offering to go back if they have any concerns at all.  This is unheard of professionalism in our industry, as residential companies are not held to the same standards as those of us who clean the carpets for fortune 500 companies.

Businesses often clean on a schedule, sometimes multiple times a year and they don’t want to have re-occurring headaches each time the carpet needs cleaning.  The Commercial Steam Team has perfected our carpet cleaning methods and hires only the very best clean cut people.  With profit sharing and generous bonuses for customer satisfaction, Commercial Steam Team employees have kept even the most hardnosed managers happy for years.  Now this same commercial strength equipment and professionalism is available for residential clients.

Mention this post for a 10 percent discount on your home’s carpet cleaning!

Rapid Re-Soiling After Carpet Cleaning: Janitorial Companies and Handymen

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Well intentioned as they are, janitorial companies are not professional carpet cleaners.  In my 13 years of carpet cleaning I have cleaned up after hundreds of janitorial companies who wanted to make a little extra money from their clients by cleaning their carpets.  This is a sound idea for them as a business model, however it often ends up with them disappointing their clients.  The main reason is rapid re-soiling. 

Unfortunately, janitorial companies typically cause the carpet to get dirty faster after they clean for their clients, meaning that they need to be cleaned more frequently.

Here’s why:

  1. Professional carpet cleaning equipment is very expensive, so they often try to use equipment they already have to do the job (Floor buffers)
    1. Floor buffers can unravel the carpet fibers and loosen the nap of the fibers leaving more room for soil to penetrate the surface of the carpet.
      1. Floor buffers do not remove as much soil or even their own cleaning agents from the carpet; rather they push it down into the carpet.
  2. Janitorial companies may rent equipment to do the job, and the more they spend on the rental equipment, the less profit they make on the job.
  3. Rental equipment is abused over time. As a result it takes so long to properly extract the moisture that few are willing to spend the long hours or days it takes to get enough water out of the carpet.
    1. Carpet left too wet can be sloshy and take days to dry.
    2. The longer a carpet is left wet after cleaning, the more time spills have to wick up through the carpet.
    3. Moisture in the carpet can begin to reduce the carpet’s ability to resist re-soiling if left wet for days.
    4. Moisture left too long encourges mold and mildew growth deep in the carpet.
    5. Training, specific to carpet cleaning.
      1. Janitorial companies rarely pay above minimum wage and as a result their employees are not motivated to learn and execute alternative job skills to the ones that they already do.  This is not the fault of the janitorial companies.  There is just too little profit margin in that industry to pay any better.
      2. It takes many months of working with an expert in the carpet cleaning field to learn the proper ways to mix the cleaning agents and to identify potential problems.
      3. It takes a carpet cleaning business owner years to perfect what he or she teaches their employees and for janitorial companies and handymen, there isn’t a seasoned carpet cleaning expert to pass this knowledge on.
      4. Professional carpet cleaners stopped using oil based soap or “Shampoo” decades ago.  Janitorial companies and handymen have taken longer to catch on.

The bottom line is that when carpets need to be cleaned, especially in a commercial environment, a commercial carpet cleaning expert is necessary.  Janitorial companies and handymen can be wonderful at what they do but they are not professional carpet cleaners any more than plumbers, electricians, and ballet dancers are.  Ph. levels need to be balanced to prevent rapid re-soiling and equipment and personnel are key in making that happen.

Employee Turnover In The Carpet Cleaning Industry

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Employee turnover in the carpet cleaning industry is a very large problem.  In search of profits employees are often undervalued and under paid.  Expedited growth in a company due to things like mass advertising can also cause employee turnover as well as mass hiring which poses the same problems.  Carpet cleaning isn’t the hardest of all professions but it is manual labor and does require stamina and motivation to do a great job every time.  Employees require training and an apprenticeship of sorts in order to become experts in the field. 

Hiring and maintaining the best employees is crucial in this professional industry.

When someone hires a carpet cleaner they expect to have someone capable and experienced show up.  If that cleaner has only been working for a few weeks, many problems could occur.  Spill diagnosis, problem identification, mixing ratios, equipment repair and maintenance, even patience and wisdom come with experience.  The longer an employee is around, the longer he/she will feel vested in the company and want to do the best job possible.  I highly recommend profit sharing at the end of the year.  This boosts morale, especially since it lands in a crucial month in the slow part of winter. 

Also we can’t forget the obvious, pay employees a fair wage.  Don’t try to squeeze every dime out of them.  Make sure they can go home proud of themselves so their wife and kids will look up to them.  Carpet cleaners work hard and deserve fair compensation. 

Another big problem with some of the larger carpet cleaning franchises is that they charge their employees for the cleaning agents and equipment they use.  Any time an employee has to decide whether or not to use something that will help them do the best job possible, it is a hit to the pride.  They either give up the money or the quality but they can’t have both. In either case the quality of the job suffers.  Making someone pay for something the employer should pay for also makes people feel they are being taken advantage of.

My company, the Commercial Steam Team, has had almost no employee turnover since we started the company in 2003.  That’s because we believe in our staff, support them, and  treat them like family, not like tools to use and discard. In fact only one employee has ever left the company and the reason he did was to finish law school.  I am proud of how we have run our company and will continue to do so.

Rapid Re-Soiling After Carpet Cleaning: Do It Yourself

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When you pull out your couch to get that tennis ball your dog knocked underneath it in a rousing game of repetitive catch.  You suddenly notice that the carpet underneath the couch looks completely different than the carpet in front of it.  A few months go by and either your conscience or your partner begins nagging you to do something about it.  “Don’t worry sweetheart, I will rent a rug doctor.”  Famous last words.  If it was that easy then everyone would do it.

This is one of the leading causes of rapid re-soiling in carpets today.  The three reasons being;

  • Operator error.
    • No one should be expected to know what they are doing when trying to do a professional job on their first try.
    • It takes days to do the best job possible with a rental unit.  Many people don’t realize this until they are in the middle of the job and rush through it after that (understandable).
    • Equipment power.
      • Rental equipment is limited by the electrical power source available and can’t risk tripping circuit breakers in the homes and apartments it is used in.
      • Rental equipment is designed with more emphasis on its durability than its effectiveness. After all if it broke every time it was rented, it would eat up all the profit. Meaning that it’s going to be underpowered.
      • When more than 5 percent of the moisture is left in the carpet, it takes a long time to dry and will affect the carpets resistance to re-soiling.
      • People tend to beat up rental units. After all, they don’t own them, and most people tend not to respect other people’s property. This means the equipment’s performance will likely be sub-par, something that a rental company is not as likely to be concerned about as long as it is still rentable.
      • Available cleaning agents.
        • Professional carpet cleaners stopped using “shampoo” or oil based products decades ago. The rental units often still use these.
        • Rental units often rinse with regular water which is not capable of balancing the Ph. levels of the cleaning agents that were used, even if they were not oil based.

The truth is that most people who attempt to clean their own carpets do not ever attempt it again.  Or they get stuck in an endless cycle of cleanings that become more and more frequent over time as the residue builds up in the carpet.  Most professional carpet cleaners know (and those that don’t, should) not to use oil based products or “shampoo’s”.  Few suppliers even carry those products anymore.  Also professional carpet cleaners are the only carpet cleaners that know the proper mixing ratios, have the expensive direct drive truck mount equipment to do the job (this varies from company to company).  Truck mounted  units are not limited by circuit breakers and some even run directly off of the V8 engine.

In summary, DIY carpet cleaning is a buyer-beware sort of thing. If you’re serious about cleaning your carpet, you should hire a serious professional to do so. Have a great day!