Do you guys clean your storefront accounts a day or two before a big storm hits?
The customers want me to come back after the storm. If the storm hits on a Wednesday it will be impossible to do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays accounts on Thursday and Friday. We’re getting hit EVERY week. What do you do?
PS
If I clean them they say “What are you doing there’s a storm coming?”
If I wait and don’t get back to them for a week or two they say “Where’ve you been?”
What can I say or do? They’ve got me coming or going.
call the store owners and ask them what they want you to do. Let them know that if they decide to not have you clean the windows before a storm that it may be a week or so until you can get back to them. Leave it in their hands. At the rate we’ve been getting hit with snow you may not get to them until APRIL!!!
Boy oh Boy Mike,
You Nor-Eastener are sure having a tough time this year, I never had to live through that much weather and the little harsh weather we get here in the Pac/Nor-West just stops all the driving so getting to a job is life threatening (cities are not set for proper road clearing, tons of steep hills) !
The rain here is not that much of a problem unless it’s at a 90degreer but ice and snow really sucks. I really don’t know how you ice-men survive…You all must have real ice as part of your junk.
We had rain after rain after rain this last fall in so cal
see what you can do to have a type of system, something’s that’s consistent and will train your customers
once trained they’ll know the deal
at what do YOU call it day? if you can’t do 3/4 of your day? 1/2?, 1/4?
temp
wind
storm coming in, but how many days in advance?
is a storm track, with one after the other? or just a chance of snow?
how much of a chance? 30%? 60%?, 100%?
work with it on paper, then try it and adjust as necessary, until smoothed out.
then when a customer says why are you here - you have the specifics, “just a 30% chance, I only stop when . . .if your windows are affected, . . .”
If I have 3 work days of the week, say w-th-fr with 60+% of rain coming, I just rescheduled the whole week. bad on the checkbook, but better than running around getting turned away on homes.
Another option - Charge by the month, not by the clean, like some lawn and pool guys have figured out
auto billing, by the month with all your clauses in the agreement about weather or whatever.
I think you’re right Dange. We have had some nice weather and I’m all caught up on the windows that I skipped because it was going to snow. They all looked about as dirty as usual. I give a no spots if it rains guarantee and they would have been fine. The only ones that got crap on them were the ones with glass below knee level, because they got hit with salt when they salted the side walks. Next time I’ll keep working until the storm hits and remind them all to please call if they need a redo. I would have gotten maybe five calls out of 6 days of work skipped. Live and learn.
Chris,
We have a bit of snow and I’d be out there cleaning if I had a busy week. I got all caught up last week so this week could be done in three days.
Ditto here. I really like to keep my routes on the days they are set for, but this time of year I do have quite a bit of latitude.
Looks like our snow is done here. Got 6-7".
For monthly or quarterly jobs, I’ve been of the opinion that if you’re cleaning before or during the snow that the windows will be cleaner longer than if you’re cleaning during the melt. We have the chinook winds out here in the Rockies and the wind blows and melts everything and the windows all look pretty bad after, so I never clean during the first day or too of the thaw.
I make an exception of cleaning regardiess of the weather for customers who have us come every two weeks or weekly, then we show up no matter what because they are interested in maintaining a certain level of cleanliness and are used to seeing us show up.
Big storm hitting us right now. I open up storefront and see this thread
Day’s like tomorrow even know this is 1 of the 2 crucial days per month we have to do on time (twice a month cleanings) - I prefer my work truck and of course the safety of my employee to skip due to weather. I’ll evaluate Friday and possibly even reschedule the whole day to Monday.
If its a monthly account we can do it a couple days before or after it due if the weather is really bad. Weekly and bi-weekly as long as the roads are decent (not having my guys go out in a blizzard doubt anyone would) we due it on the day. So really an inch or two big whoop. 14 inches we can wait till the plows do their work.
