Episode 29: How to Build the Best Phone Call System for Your Cleaning Business

Episode 29: How to Build the Best Phone Call System for Your Cleaning Business

Announcer:
Grow your cleaning business, make more money, have more time. This is the Profit Cleaners podcast with your host Brandon Condrey and Brandon Schoen.

Curt:
Okay. And from day one, what kind of phone call system did you, or would you set up if you were to do it again? Like, would you get a receptionist company to deal with him? What'd you get them all to yourself? Like you're dealing with, xleaners calling potentially new leads calling, like what other calls am I likely to expect?

Brandon Condrey:
Okay. So we did this two different ways. So in the beginning we used a voiceover IP system called grasshopper, which was quite inexpensive. I think it was, I dunno.

Curt:
Yeh I've used grasshopper before.

Brandon Condrey:
Okay. So, you know, so we did that. It was fine. We had quality issues where we were, where it just got all crackly on calls. And so we bailed to RingCentral, which is much more expensive. Service fusion has a call system built in. And what's nice about that. One is that it's a soft phone, so you're running it through a browser, but you have a headset connected to it. When someone calls in, it's already in the database, it'll bring up their customer profile right away. So, you know, who's calling and what they're probably calling about based on their history. So like if you clean them an hour ago and they're calling you right now, something bad probably happened. If you cleaned them a week ago and they're calling, they're probably calling to be like, when's my next appointment. I forgot. So you can force people towards text messages, with service fusions to get away from the calls with employees. In the beginning, we had to dedicate member that we would put in job postings, but it literally told them to go online and fill out this employment survey. And then we'll call you to schedule the interview. So I would not talk to potential employees until you want to bring them in. You don't have to answer the phone to like answer questions, like make a detailed job posting. They would answer 90% of the questions they're going to ask anyway. And then you can put a phone number in there, cause that makes people feel better. But then just leave a voicemail. It just says, Hey, we do all the employment stuff online, go to this website. It's also the job posting, but we've never used an answering service, like a receptionist company. So if you find a really good one, I don't know how I have no idea how much those costs. They might be great. But you have to train those people in your system because a lot of the times they're calling to ask, like, what do you guys use on the windows? Or will you use my cleaner? If I give you the cleaner and those systems and policies change, you got to update the receptionist people. So like we answered the phones ourselves in the beginning. And then as soon as we had the cashflow to do it, we hired the office manager who then took the phone calls.

Curt:
Okay. Do you remember at what point that was at roughly you hired admin?

Brandon Schoen:
Well, if we could have done it sooner, we would have done it sooner, obviously from right from the beginning actually.

Brandon Condrey:
But in retrospect it would have launched with it. If we could have afforded to do it at the time I was the pushback on this, I was like, I don't want someone like doing scheduling. Like scheduling is really complicated. No one can figure this out. And then once we finally, I came around to like, all right, let's do it. Oh man. When was that?

Brandon Schoen:
Well, it must have been like around a year end but man it was hard because we were doing everything and it was stressful. But like if we could have, I think gone back and hired the office manager right away and some type of VA in the background to do some of the more boring minutiae, daily tasks and stuff in the software, that would have been a huge help for sure, man.

Brandon Condrey:
That would definitely be the recommendation to you is like launch with a VA who can do the lead management stuff overnight in a different time zone. So you're not having to, it's just prepped for you the next day. And then if you can just hire an employee, that's going to help you manage the growth from the beginning. It can be remote because you're going to be keeping a car at your house. They just need to have an internet connection. And you're going to talk a lot every day, but if you can afford to do it or even on a tech basis, like Harrison, someone be like, this is like a three-month experiment. If it doesn't work out, I'll take over it. But for no reason, should it not work out and then just have them, then they're there with you. Like as the, as the changes happen, they're there and you don't have to train someone else on it. They're just in there.

Brandon Schoen:
And that's, what's really cool about this business is it's like, it seems counterintuitive. Like it's a local business. So it's different from the four hour work week. Like internet lifestyle that you and I have known probably for a long time doing that. But it actually has a lot of similarities where like, once you set up those foundations, like literally Brandon, I wouldn't have to come into this office like during the week. And the only reason we'd have to is because open up for the teams to drive out. But they're out all day, literally body, our office manager could be working from her house, answering the phones. Like everybody could be doing stuff remote, which is cool. We just need people to get in and get the cars and go out for the day is really the biggest thing. But part of the reason also we have Claudia as our office managers, it's really nice having someone in house of the brand, answering the phones, because like you could outsource that, but yeah, it's just like, you can, people can tell. And there's just a different experience when it's not somebody representing the company, answering the phone and they're asking all these questions or like, they don't quite answer it the right way or they don't quite close on. Like they could have because they just don't know the brand. Like they don't know exactly what we do. And so if you get someone trying to get someone that's bubbly and warm and fun on the phone, someone that like customers will like talking to and yeah, that's our Claudia and she's awesome. And she's made a lot of the work so much easier. Like a lot of the stuff I can't handle or Brandon can't handle or customer stuff like we're not as good at. She's awesome. So I think that'd be a huge one for sure. On the front end.

Brandon Condrey:
That's also one that we pay really well. So in the beginning we're like, Hey, we can't afford to pay you $75,000 a year. That you're worth. But if you stick with us and look where we're going, and we show them the projection. So like we showed her the spreadsheet that you're building right now, we showed her. This is where we're hoping to be in like five years that got her excited and like, okay, like in a couple of years, this is what your salary is going to be budgeted that, so right now she's on track to be at six figures in like three years. And we want her to be there cause she's totally worth it. She's our right-hand man. She's doing everything that we don't want to do.

Curt:
Okay. Does she take incoming sales calls? Like if I go to your site and I see phone number, where does that go?

Brandon Condrey:
So that goes to her. And all she's going to do is tell them, Hey, we do all the estimates online. You can pick a time that works for you, like go to on our website. There's a thing that says claim your weekend. And they click that and that puts them into the funnel for Calendly. And so they just pick their own appointment. So Claudia is there to answer basic questions because a lot of people are just super trepidatious and they just want to know what the price is. And it's like, your estimator will explain the price to you. And if they keep pushing level, we've told her to do is just say like, Hey, it could be as little as $99 per clean, but your estimator is going to help you figure that out by asking you a set of specific questions during the call. And so really she's just there to answer basic questions about processes. Like you'll have people asking like, are your people legal to work in the U S and you're like, yes, we do criminal background checks and verify all this stuff, blah, blah, blah. So she's just answering questions. And the idea is to just push them forward, scheduling an appointment.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And she'll actually even cause the worst thing is someone calls and they're like, they really want a book, but you're like, no, just book it online. And like they never book and they go away forever. So, so what we'll train her to do is go through the form with just, she'll just pull up the page, the form and say, what's your name? And I'll plug it in for you. And, and that way, an older person or someone that doesn't, they're just distracted or don't have time, or can't even figure that out. Like we'll get them in there and get them. She'll walk them through and schedule them right there. So she's not really doing too much sales, but she's good enough that she, every once in a while, for sure, every week now it's like, I just closed another one today. Like she'll have people call in and she's good enough. And she knows the product well enough. And she's great on the phone. People got a great voice and stuff. So yeah, she does close clients from time to time, but we try to push people towards the estimator because during that process, you really are explaining the value of what we do. And not just every other cleaning company. Like we go above and beyond. We have a higher quality, this processes, procedures, color-coded all these things that by the time we get to the end of the estimate, they're like, Whoa, well, I didn't know it's going to be that much. But now that you've explained it, like they don't really have much pushback. And they're like, when can I sign up? Because you've explained the value.

Brandon Condrey:
And so that's in the course too, but I mean, you don't want to tell them the price upfront. You want to look at all this stuff that we're going to do. It's not your average cleaning company. Here's the price at the end. And that's your brain is configured now for justifying, Oh, I get that. It's more expensive than my neighbor. Who's got a housekeeper, but it's because you guys dust the ceiling fan and do all this crazy stuff that they don't do. If you give in to the people that are like, look, how much is it to clean a 1500 square foot house? Like all the people that you talk to today, without them actually explaining stuff to you, they'll be like $200. That's insane. My neighbor has got a cleaning company and they charge them 75 bucks. And so like now they're uphill. It's an uphill battle to explain to them like why we're doing it. So you just do it in reverse.

Brandon Schoen:
Hey guys, I wanted to take a quick break to let you know a little bit more about our course, the 10X toolkit we've put together so many amazing resources to help cleaning businesses like yours, learn how to get more recurring clients on the schedule. The systems we teach you in this course are the exact same systems we've used to grow our cleaning business to seven figures in just three years. In fact, in one year we were able to accomplish the growth that our mentor in Denver had in 10 years. So it's definitely a shortcut guys to success. Model after that success, everything from finding the perfect clients to learning how to keep your schedule filled, we cover everything you need to 10 extra business and without wasting your time and money to learn more about this incredible course, head over to Profitcleaners.com/courses that's Profitcleaners.com/courses.

Curt:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was just thinking like, I would never have even got a quote from you guys by the sounds of it. But everyone was like, Oh yeah, here it is. So one way to stand that.

Brandon Condrey:
If you'd called in, like Claudia would have pushed back and then she would have said, it could be as little as a hundred dollars. It just depends on your specific situation. That's why you need to talk to this sales guy. And then we have, I've explained it to some people they're like, look, can you just give me a ballpark in case where like way out of my budget, and this is just a waste of everybody's time. I'm like, fair enough. Your house is 2,500 square feet. It will be roughly. And I'll usually go over what it is. So like if it's two 16 in our like little algorithm, I'll tell them it's two 50. But during the estimate, like it might be completely different. And so I say like, Oh man, I only have like 80 bucks to work with. Like, all right, cool. It's just not going to work. So we did save ourselves some time, but then when you go out there, do the estimate, they ask questions, you justify why you're awesome. And then in the end you're like, actually it's going to be two 16 and a two 50. Then they're like, Oh, Hey, it's like cheaper than it was before. That's great.

Brandon Schoen:
And that's really what people are paying for is they're paying for that reliability that you're going to show up. When you say you're going to show up, unlike a lot of these like mom and pop cleaners, that'll just haphazardly show up when they want to show up and spill oil in your driveway and use bleach everywhere. And like all these things that are variables that are inconsistent with the brand, like, whereas we can, we can be really consistent and reliable in a lot more ways. That's also what they're paying for is that trust and the products we're using that are green and the reliability of saying we're going to show up and we're going to show up and actually doing it. And then having the same people come in for the most part every time. So there's just like all these things we build in that make people feel better about using our product or services. Yeah. They could go down the street and it could be half the price from Joe blow or whoever the whoever's doing it. But we have a lot of reasons why to say, stay away from that because this is what's going to happen. This is what it inevitably always happens. And if you work with us, here's the experience you're going to have. And then people are like, yeah, I'll pay a little bit more for that.

Curt:
So Nice. Okay. And that's all, like you said in the course when there's like sales calls and stuff like that. Yeah.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. We've got a whole training or Brandon and Matt going through that and then individual actually like customer, we're still uploading some of them, but we're adding like stuff to the course all the time. And so if it's not in there yet, just ask us and we'll put it in there. But yeah, we have individual sales calls now on the zoom, we're working on doing an in-person one too, just to show you in case you ever want to do an in-person estimate, just it's, it's very similar, but you're just, instead of being on zoom, walking around, you're just walking around with them. And it's the same concepts though.

Curt:
Do you guys have a robust or otherwise customer retention program? Like, do you do anything to stay in touch with people? Do you always try and like rebook right away?

Brandon Condrey:
All the time. So when they booked, they're already committed. So like when you said bi-weekly, you're in the system, it's every other Tuesday at 10 30 and it's just in perpetuity until you tell us otherwise. So we're not calling them after every thing we do have people that will get the initial and try to say like, I just want to try you out. And then, so those are kind of in the get Mark, Tim task manager for follow-ups and then we'll call them and say, Hey, did you like it? Do you want to book? For retention normally it's just about going above and beyond on whatever their issue was. So we very rarely have people call Up and say like, you guys suck, I'm canceling. So what the normally do is complain. So they'll just say like, Oh man, they missed all this stuff. And we're like, Oh, we're really sorry about that. Can we send them back out to do a full reclean for free? Like we'll just come back out when there's a schedule hole and just do it all again. And then this time everything's addressed to me, if you're really happy. Cause they got two clean week instead of one. So reclean is like a given we're really upfront. If we break stuff like it's going to happen, you're going to break shit. So we have a little, all of the teams carry a little like foreign letter in their cars. And so when they damage something, if it's small, they'll leave this little note under the thing that says, Hey, we're really sorry. What's really important. As you try to reach out to the customer before they get home and see the note. So even though we left them a note, you call them and we're like, Hey, we're really sorry. We broke a salt shaker or whatever, nine times out of 10, when you tell them before they come home and notice it, they're like, ah, that's no big deal. I've had it for 10 years. Like don't even worry about it, but they come home and find it and you didn't tell them they're pissed. Like if they, if you didn't leave the note and you didn't call them, like your cleaners broke this and then they just start going around and looking for steaks. They'll just walk around, looking for like this rugs crooked and you didn't vacuum my couch. And we probably did all those things. Like we did vacuum the couch, but now they're just, their brain is just mad. So they're just looking at every possible problem. And then when they're really adamant, we're going to cancel. What we usually do is say, Hey, we're really sorry to see you go. We're going to give you what we want to do is like the next clean that you're scheduled for. We want to do that for free while you look for your other cleaning company. And normally when we come out and do that free clean they're like, all right, I guess the thing that I was upset about last time, isn't going to happen every time. So I'll just stay with you. Cause it's less of a pain in the ass. Then once you've got their trust, like we're not going to steal your stuff or break big things except for those stainless steel appliances. And that one time, once you have that trust, that's hard to, it's hard for them to give that up. So like, if they're just going to quit you and go to Mary maids, like you don't know who's hired at Mary maids it's going to come in and do that. Like, what if it's a dude with a bunch of neck tattoos or something like, that's a specific complaint that I've gotten from customer. He asked me, he's like, do your employees have tattoos? Like up here? I was like, we don't have a policy on tattoos, but I tell you that right now, none of them have neck tattoos. He was very happy about that. For whatever reason. He was an older gentleman and he was very upset with his previous cleaner who had neck tattoos. So the retention is just free stuff is basically what it is.

Brandon Schoen:
I think it comes down to customer service for sure, man, just anything you can do to serve the customer and make sure if they are pissed off, you go fix it and you apologize profusely and you make sure you take responsibility and you just own it and do them better. Right. And then while we did from the very beginning is we have a flower leave behind and we've, we're testing other things that we leave behind too. But it has a little card thing that we leave flowers. If you get flowers, most women, they get flowers are so happy. So like, even if they were pissed off, they're like, Oh, but I got flowers and I'm not as mad, but the may, maybe they don't leave as much of a crazy review or they just call Matt instead of being completely raging crazy and leaving reviews everywhere. But that seems to offset it. People like getting something like, so we want to test other stuff, but we've mainly been leaving mind the flowers. And then you can use that as a marketing piece to like vote for us for this or a shout on social media and get a free clean or so we use that as a marketing piece, but also as a retention piece to like kind of like a subscription box, like they look forward to every time they get the house cleaned, they're like, I'm going to get my little present. Maybe it's chocolates, maybe it's cookies, maybe it's flowers, but you can play around with that, but we're going to test that more. But yeah, it helps out, I think just leave people with that positive feeling. Even if they had something negative happened, they're like, Oh, but I got my flowers and I'm not as mad. So, so that's nice.

Curt:
I mean, I've got like nitty-gritty questions and stuff like that. But I think that covers like even more than I was hoping. I think the thing for me to want to dive into this is like, yes, I'll figure it all out. Yes. I'll buy a course, whatever. I just, I would love like watching through processes on the marketing funnel, the sales closing, the getting in, keeping employees funnel, the admin side of things. Like here's exactly what happens when someone calls in. Here's how you schedule your teams here is when you hire new teams, like all of that little stuff that will come up, that those are the things to me that will give me the biggest value. So I can be like, Oh, I can plan more. Because right now I'm looking at my projections going like, well, this doesn't seem like it's all that lucrative until like three or four years in, but then I don't even know when these things are supposed to happen. So yeah. All of these process things are most useful for me. If it ends up being the case that we can work together, do a coaching call once in a while. Or if I just buy all your courses, like whatever the case is for feedback from me, it's like, yeah, just process systematization and process.

Brandon Condrey:
Okay. So I think what we'll do is Brandon, I'll talk about this coaching thing. That'll work out with you. We'll give you some options on the numbers and see if it'll work out for you. And then I think what we'll do is we'll craft that as we go. So if you have specific questions, like we use this thing called loom all the time to record screen videos and stuff. And so like if you had a question on scheduling, like we would just have Claudia record one, like in real time, like this is how I do it and just send you the video. So you'd know what it looks like. So we'll try and address those specifically to you. Cause this will also help us kind of craft future offerings. So like we don't have like a course on the employee hiring. There's no pictures of the funnels right now. So like it's interesting that you're super concerned about that. And as I assume, other cleaning people will want to be as well. So like that's something that's, we'll add that for you. And then we'll use that to tweak it in the future. So it'll be a mutually beneficial thing. So let us talk together for a little while and figure out what we can do, especially on the cleaning processes stuff. That's, what's the thing with the guy in Denver, everything else like Service Fusion's all us sales and marketing is all us. So we can give you all that as long as we can work out a deal.

Curt:
Okay. That's yeah. I will rework my numbers a little bit and make sure things make sense in terms of what you guys have told me now. And then yeah. Whenever you guys want to reach back out, like I said, I think this is awesome for like a case study. As you guys get into the info product side of things, I'm just going to, yeah. I'll give you a great case study. I'll give you the best review, but let's like get a little bit of back and forth here. So that's around coming out of internet marketing wise and like, this is just, yeah, it's a great product. So yeah. Let me know when you can and I will just keep working my numbers until then.

Brandon Condrey:
Okay. Sounds good. Feel free to send me some Google sheets access to look at those spreadsheets. I love spreadsheets. I have to tell you where I think the numbers are off for maybe you've missed estimated something. We tend to be pretty conservative on numbers and I can show you what ours look like as well so.

Curt:
That will be okay. Is there a better email for you guys? Is it just hello @ or?

Brandon Condrey:
I think that's good for now. Brandon kind of monitors that one.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah we check that pretty frequently. At some point we can give you our work emails here at the office, but we're checking all of them. So yeah, just reach out on that one. Hello@ProfitCleaners yeah, man. We'll get that framework going for you and see how we can work together. And I'm excited, man. I'm glad we could hop on today.

Curt:
Yeah, this is just unbelievable value on any, so let me know whatever testimonial you want and we'll go there. But I also let me know if and when I should buy the course just once you guys have worked.

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