How do you all keep in touch with your customer list. Do you engage with them throughout the year and if so how do you keep them using your services?
We send out customer contracts February every year with dates and pricing they have one week to return it if they like those dates.
This works for both residential and Commercial customers for us. We obviously tweak the dates of some residential customers as it gets closer if they need to make changes usually nothing big.
most of our customers get cleaned two times a year, at second cleaning of the year we just remind them about the service contract that will be coming out
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I chat with them every month while I’m cleaning their windows 
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I thought the question was how I ‘enrage’ the customers. Had some good stories…
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On residential contracts, does it bind them to do those 2 cleanings a year? What happens if they break contract?
What is the advantage for them to sign your contract versus just call you as needed? Does it guarantee a spot on the schedule or like a discount?
I’ve been thinking about doing this so I’m curious.
Actually the term we use is “service agreement”
Because we’re a small business our schedule fills fast. Our customers know this, so we sell the agreement as being the way to lock their price and preferred dates. If they don’t preschedule we usually are 3 months out. I am very flexible, we very rarely get somebody to completely cancel, possibly a delay or reschedule for a particular day of the week. Most common, customers will stay with the dates because it’s the preferred date that they’ve always ask for in the past.
If they break the agreement not a big deal but rarely happens.
The advantage is big for us by utilizing our winter, slow time, to set 90% of our schedule. Allows us a general idea of workload for hiring.
Advantage to the customer is guarantees the price for the season and dates.
We had many customers who forget to schedule so they would call last minute, we can’t help them immediately usually. Customers like that they only need to contact us one time to schedule all service dates and we send them a reminder prior to each cleaning.
Commercial customers are sent dates for week of and then a week prior we contact them eith actual date.
This may work better for us because we have years of reoccurring customers so a startup may not be able to operate this way
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Sounds like the type of system to definitely strive for as a Start up. I’m out of the infancy stage but not with residential. I’m going to pitch this type of thing from now on for residential cleanings. Thanks.
