If one of your pending tasks is hiring a janitorial service, you will need a quick lesson on making the right choice. There is a huge diversity of cleaning services. Some do residential. Some do commercial. Some do industrial, and some do specialty jobs like medical offices and restaurants. One of the other factors is that some are small services with a few accounts and others are large services with hundreds of accounts. It is not as easy as picking up the Yellow pages and selecting an attractive ad.
Frankly, there are good and bad janitorial services in big and small firms. Larger firms must maintain a large pool of business replacing one they lose with another account. To accomplish this, they often have sales people or account managers. In some cases, you cleaning concerns seem less valuable to a company mostly interested in account acquisition. The smaller firm can deliver a quality of service like the larger firms, but is more vulnerable to economic issues. In the business, there is always new companies starting and other companies closing their doors. Therefore, one of the considerations is the kind of commitment the service gives to your building.
Large companies often have a sales force or account managers. This adds to the cost because larger companies have overhead to maintain the operation of a firm that may have 50-100 accounts. The challenge of the large firm is to stay in touch with the people on the job. One lost deal is not as dramatic to a big firm as it is to the smaller service because the sales force will replace that business. Large firms must look at the big picture in gross business which can leave the client feeling disconnected from issues that concern them.
The debate over small versus large janitorial services will never be resolved. Big cleaning services have more to offer, and small cleaning services will often be more price competitive while promising to bring superior cleaning effort. Large or small, quality is the prime issue, and it is one of the hardest issues to discover as you look over the proposals that you will receive. Advertising, by the way, is not about telling the truth, but impressing the customer with their promise.
The classic way of choosing a janitorial service is to prepare an RFP (Request for Proposal) or collect a variety of quotes for the job. The RFP is a prepared report that details the job, expectations, and requirements so that everyone is bidding on a equal footing. Quotes generally ask the service to do the job using standard processes. Both methods collect final pricing to determine who will be considered for the contract. Unfortunately, this reduces the task to the “low bid” mentality that frankly sends the wrong signal to the competing firms. Most people aren’t looking for cut-rate service, but the best service for the money.
It’s time to change the process. Although price will always be a part of the consideration, it is important that you discover the quality and reliability of the cleaning service that you hire. To help you understand this better, I have prepared a ten page report called “How to Hire a Janitorial Service.” It includes a sample RFP and offers some needful advice on a subject that few people really understand. You’ll find this report at www.GreenJanitor.net.
The issue of the hour is whether individuals and corporations are “Going Green.” You are going to see a tidal wave of demands for companies in incorporate Green programs in their operation, and it should not surprise you to discover that the janitorial service is a very big factor in the Green status of your company. Some services pretend to be Green, but I show you how to find a bona fide Green Janitorial service at www.greenjanitor.net. Make no mistake. If your company isn’t taking steps to Go Greem, it is going to impact you in a big way very soon.