Advice on how to select a vacuum for a professional cleaning service

I have been in Orlando at the ARCSI Executive Leadership Conference.  One of the vendors there, CleanMax, had a great variety of vacuums and I thought it would be a good chance to shoot a short video explaining some features and things to consider when buying a vacuum for a professional cleaning service. It also ties nicely into my work as part of the Institute for Service Excellence.  We have a whole chapter of our book and 90 minutes of the Home Cleaning Technician class dedicated to tools and equipment and this will give you a preview of some of the information we share in the class.

Trying to cram a lot of education into two days

Well it is Saturday so I am working.  Today is a little different because I am still in Charleston and today I am in a meeting with 3 other cleaning business owners.  For the last two days we did a run through of the Home Cleaning Certification class.  For the next several days we are tweaking the material then on Tuesday we are teaching the class again to some actual employees from our companies to see if what works for the owners also works for the techs.  For those of you that may not know, The Clean Trust (Formerly IICRC) has created a home cleaning certification program and I partners with 3 other cleaning companies in creating a training school for this program.  (www.isetoday.com)   In February we are teaching the class in public for the first time and it is really important we work all the bugs out so this first class is just blown away by the content.

 This is really hard work and not to different from what most of us face day to day in our companies.  Cleaning involves a lot of science, customer service skills, and some art all mixed into one.   Trying to train someone on this is both one of the most critical things we do and the hardest.  Generally we do not get people that did well in school as employees so trying to do a traditional class room experience followed by 160 question like we are doing is a challenge.  We need to make sure we address needs of adult learners and different learning styles. 

However the win can be so huge.  Let me give you a real example from what I read in Linked In groups today.  A cleaner posted she had a client with a marble shower.  She has a lot of soap scum build up.  She is not sure what to do because she does not want to damage the marble.  Her decision was to call a professional stone care company and pass it to them.  I am hoping that after taking a training class like ours the tech will understand a few principles.

      1.  The marble her shower is made out of and the soap scum both contain the same basic ingredient, calcium carbonate.   Acid is an effective way to remove calcium carbonate but it does not know the difference between soap scum and the shower stone.
      2.  Acid strength is measured on the pH scale and different cleaning products contain acids of different strengths but this can be determined by reading the MSDS sheets.
      3.  The only 100% sure way to fix this problem is probably to diamond grind and polish the marble, a very expensive proposition.
      4.  Anything we tell a client up front is an education.  Anything after the fact is an excuse. 

So this is how I would want a fully educated tech to handle this.  “Mrs. Smith.  Soap scum is made up of dissolved minerals mostly calcium carbonate which are deposited on the walls of the shower then the water evaporates.  Unfortunately, your shower tile is marble which is also made from the same basic minerals.   I can remove the soap scum but there is a good chance that the acid will damage the tile as well.  To minimize this risk I am going to start with a relatively weak acid and work up slowly until the soap scum is removed.  If I do this and damage the stone, the marble will have to be diamond polished to repair it.  Right now the other alternative is to just skip trying to clean it and go straight to diamond polishing.  Mrs. Smith, would you like me to attempt to remove the soap scum knowing the risk to the tile?”   If yes have her sign something that she understands the risk.  Regardless of her decision, I would talk to her about how to maintain the shower going forward so this does not happen again. 

So that sounds all good but for this to work I need my cleaner to understand how to identify the tile in the shower as well as the soap scum that is causing the white film.  She needs to understand how to remove soap scum and that the solution to soap scum causes damage to the tile.  She needs to know the pH of cleaners and understand how to rank them in order of strength.  Finally she has to be able to communicate all of this to her client.  This is a really big challenge and this is just for one example.  We need to cover every surface and material in the home.  This is why it is so hard to be a truly great home cleaning company.  This is an incredible amount of training we need to provide and at the same time we are under huge pressure to keep our prices as low as possible because the perception is “anyone can clean a home.”

This is both our challenge and our opportunity with the HCT program.  By teaming up with The Clean Trust we can educate consumers on how important it is to find a trained cleaner for their homes and we have given them a means to find one through the certification program.  However the challenge is actually delivering the training in 2 days in such a way that they can pass 160 question test and then take and use that knowledge in their day to day work.   I am very excited about this work because if we can make it work it is a true game changer for our industry.  In addition, everything I am learning on how to teach these classes I am applying back to my own training programs.  I wish I had all the answers on this one but I do not yet.  All I can do is promise we are working very hard to figure it out.

My company - background

I have realized by some of the questions sent to me that I may need to give you some background on my company, or rather companies. I spent 12 years at Procter & Gamble so I am a strong believer in different brands with different management for different customers. At P&G many brands like Tide, Cheer, Gain, and Deft are all owned by the same company but each brand has a team assigned to it and they are rewarded for the results of their brands. I have sort of done the same thing here.

My Maid Service is my biggest company and the parent company. Back to my P&G example, this is my Tide. My Maid Service has been in business for 14 years but I bought it in November 2007 so we are going on 4.5 years now. My Maid Service is 100% owned by my brother and I and we are not a franchise. We have tripled the company in the last 4 years. http://www.mymaidservice.net/ is the Cincinnati website. 3 years ago my brother, Shawn, opened My Maid Service Dallas. His office is now almost as large as the Cincinnati office and he will probably pass us this year in terms of revenue from maid service clients (he has no commercial division yet). http://www.mymaidservice.com/ is the Dallas website. Both offices use solo cleaners, paid on commission, driving their personal vehicles. I have a General Manager in charge of My Maid Service Cincinnati named Rachel. Shawn runs the Dallas himself.

ACS Cleaning Services is my commercial cleaning company and it only operates in Cincinnati right now. I also bought ACS but less than 2 years ago and we have grown the business to be 4 times larger than when we bought it. David is the General Manager for ACS Cleaning Services. ACS is not as high margin as My Maid Service but it is the fastest growing part right now. Back to my P&G Example, ACS Cleaning is my Gain. http://www.acscleaningcinci.com/ It is going to be an interesting year for ACS. In Commercial Cleaning you kind of work your way up the food chain from smaller accounts to mid teir and then finally the big ones.  In the last 2 months we have been invited to big on two very large projects.  I am both excited and terrified to win these.

I will be launching a new company in June to do chemical free cleaning. Carole is the general manager for this company and she is doing all the work to launch it and she is running some test teams to work out the systems and to test the marketing and pricing. This will be a premium priced company. We expect it to be smaller than My Maid Service but with better margins. This company will use company cars, teams, and the employees will be paid hourly. In my P&G example, this is my Dreft. A smaller brand that will never be huge but can earn very nice margins.

I meet with all my general managers once a week to talk about their key measures, progress on projects, and where they may need help.

Finally I am a partner with 3 other cleaning service owners of the Institute for Service Excellence. This is a school for other cleaning companies and it is the first school certified by the Clean Trust to teach the new Home Cleaning Technician program. This school will be the topic of other articles in the future but I want to be up front that I own part of it since most of what I will be doing and writing on next week will be related to the school. The website for the school is http://www.isetoday.com/ There is no P&G example for this one.