Task Force Entrepreneur
Task Force Entrepreneur (TFE) is a podcast for entrepreneurs interested in the service industry. It began as a way to document the creation of a new service-oriented business, and aims to provide a no-fluff narrative on all things entrepreneur!
Task Force Entrepreneur
Bad Reviews..and More Bad Reviews.
One of the cornerstones of my cleaning company's business - has been higher quality than our competitors. But what happens when we don't live up to that standard? In this show, I discuss a day that seemingly would never end - when we had multiple bad reviews, and I almost shut the business down. It was a rough day. Originally aired Oct 2, 2023.
Hey everybody, mike here and welcome to Task Force Entrepreneur. The podcast I started went from being a tech engineer to starting a house cleaning business. Yep, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I hope you enjoy the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1:In today's show I'm going to talk to you about some really rough times that we fell on and I actually thought about quitting the business. I mean, it actually started entering my mind and I'm going to explain what happened and where we're at now. The first thing I'll say is so let me tell you guys about this day we had on that day. I think we had three cleanings scheduled for that one day. This was over a weekend.
Speaker 1:The one cleaning a lady wanted she had just had new tile floors installed. Very large home, very nice area, very, very nice lady, very nice customer, really enjoyed talking to her and discussing what she needed. I actually thought it would be a really good reoccurring customer. Actually, now that I think about it, at the first time she called she actually signed up for monthly service from us before we even went out there. So I thought that was perfect and I was really excited about it. The only bad thing was her property was quite a bit outside of our normal service area, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to expand a little bit in that direction, which is something I've thought about doing anyway. I thought it just made sense.
Speaker 1:We had her, we had that same day, we also had one of our regular bi-weekly cleanings, and then we also had a new bi-weekly cleaning that we had not cleaned yet. That was the first day, so essentially two out of three cleanings that day were our first time cleaning for that customer, so we didn't have enough people to do both. So our other cleaner went to do the regular bi-weekly and then also the new bi-weekly, and then I went to the house. That was quite a bit outside of our area. They had just had new tiles installed and they complained of a lot of dust in their house. Well, actually, in their words there wasn't a lot of dust, but that was really what it turned out to be, and I'll discuss that in a minute.
Speaker 1:So I thought that one would be the hardest, so I took that one for myself and, by the way, I should add to this, I've been in the process of trying to hire somebody so that I didn't have to go out there. But you know, when the job comes and you've got to get it done, then all hands on deck right. So I showed up and did it. So I cleaned that house. It took me five hours. It was incredibly dusty. It was a completely emptied out house.
Speaker 1:I think they had just bought it, they installed new tile and they wanted it cleaned up. And I should have known kind of a red flag was the lady kept telling me that oh, it's mostly just the floors, not really, you know, the rest of it's not so bad. And there was so much dust in this house that I mean you could wipe something and then come back in 10 minutes and it was filthy again. So it was really bad, yeah, so anyway, long story short, I cleaned the house, I mopped the floors. I ended up mopping them three times because they were just filthy and the water was, you know, completely nasty. I actually changed it like 10 times at least, maybe 15, and just kept mopping and mopping in the same spot or same spots, you know, to get all the dirt up and anyway. So you know, didn't think much of it, right, left went to meet our other cleaner, at our other new customer, just to help them out.
Speaker 1:And that house was interesting. They had a house full of antiques. I mean all of antiques, antiques everywhere. It's like a museum. Very, very nice people, very nice home, you know, very nice antiques. But it does present some unique challenges, you know, when cleaning right, because you don't want to break anything, you don't want to damage anything, that sort of thing. So we cleaned that house again. Nothing eventful or nothing eventful, it just, you know, we did our job and we left.
Speaker 1:Then all hell broke loose. I got a call from the first lady who had the new tile installed, telling me that whoever cleaned her home did a horrible job, that they didn't even clean the floors. And you know we had this conversation. It lasted for a little bit. I understood what she was saying. There was some cleaning, there were some streaks in the floors and there was a couple in some photos she showed me and you know. So then I naturally said, well, did they do anything good? And she said, well, I don't care about anything else.
Speaker 1:And, long story short, I said that I would heavily discount the cleaning and since you know she wasn't happy with the floors, so in the time, from me hanging up with her and telling her that I was going to take a very big discount off of her cleaning. She went and left us a two star review and her review said something like the people I spoke to were nice, but the cleaners were awful. They didn't do anything, which is hilarious, because I was the cleaner and that house was filthy and I had used every rag that we brought with us or that I brought with us, and they were all filthy. I mean, the house is definitely in a much better condition, right, to be fair, yes, the floors had streaks in them. That was my fault and, to be honest, it's kind of funny because seeing what had happened there caused me to reevaluate some of the ways we were doing things, and I'll talk about that in a little bit. But long story short, she was very unhappy, left us a horrible review, canceled her ongoing service and then I thought okay, it happens. I thought at first that I was like she's just being unreasonable and I still think that. But there was some validity to her complaint. Right, there was some streaks on her floors, but I don't know. If it was me, to be honest, I would have let it slide, because the rest of the house was flawless, but it is what it is, so fast forward, right? So we leave the antique's house, right.
Speaker 1:And this is at 7.30 at night on the weekend. I mean, I've literally been out cleaning and driving two cleanings for 12 hours and I get a call from those people complaining about their floors not being clean enough. And I did not clean those floors. Our other cleaner did. So I talked to them. They were much more reasonable. They basically said hey, if you'll come out next time and fix it, you know, and it doesn't happen again, we're good. And I said that's perfectly reasonable. Thank you for letting me know. You know they apologized for bringing it up. I reminded them that for the amount they're paying, they get to call and tell us what they think. Right, I actually do want the feedback. I just want the feedback in a constructive way. And they did. In my opinion, they handled it perfectly and we're going to fix that.
Speaker 1:So the problem was, after getting two customer complaints out of three cleanings in one day, I was like, well, what are we doing? Should I even be running a cleaning company? Because clearly I don't know what I'm doing? Because it's pretty straightforward Cleaning is not rocket science. But somehow along the way, we found a way to mess it up and even though I think the first lady was very unreasonable, like I said, she still had a valid point. At least Her floors did have streaks in them. And again, we could argue all day and I could tell you that there was only two streaks on a huge 2,700 square foot home, but it is true, they were still there. That was not the standard we were aiming for, so I really thought about quitting. At that point. I was like this is clearly not something I'm meant to do.
Speaker 1:And some time passed, kind of cooled off, I started thinking about something that Nick Huber, who runs the sweaty startup podcast. Nick, said something in one of his podcasts that really stuck with me, which was when you have a bad day, when you have a horrible situation whatever at work losing customer. I lost one customer there. I didn't lose both, but I lost one. He said you have to ask yourself is losing customers part of operating a business, even a successful business? Yeah, it is. Is dealing with customer complaints part of running a successful business? Yes, it is. So it's nothing out of the ordinary, it just happens. We had two in a day, so I was okay with that, so that kind of helped talk me off the ledge a little bit. But then I went into repair mode and I started asking myself what are we doing wrong on these floors? Because if one person complained, okay, but getting two complaints in a day, to me that's a systemic issue. That's something that we are doing consistently, but we're doing it wrong.
Speaker 1:So long story short, I won't bore you guys with the details. I actually ended up I decided I personally wanted to figure out how to better clean these floors within our standards. So I actually put out a message on Facebook for my neighborhood and I said hey, who wants their floors cleaned for free? I will come out there. I explained to them everything. I said I own a company, we're working on our process and I just need a floor to clean and I can't guarantee the results, but it's free, I can guarantee it'll be clean. So I had a neighbor reply, went out to his house, spent an hour mopping his floor and it turned out pretty good. And I repeated the process.
Speaker 1:We had another house. We did actually this past weekend and I was terrified. I'll be honest with you guys If this one had resulted in a bad review, I probably wouldn't be recording this show. I probably would have recorded a show about how I'm going to quit, because I just couldn't handle three bad reviews in a week while we're trying to build. So, long story short, this house was really dirty but we nailed it. We did everything we were supposed to do. The floors were flawless with our new process. So I definitely made a couple of tweaks to that process and the floors turned out great.
Speaker 1:We double checked the floors. That's something also that I didn't do previously Actually, we didn't do in either case. I actually spent the time to make sure they were dry, double check them. They looked great and we left and then crossed our fingers and prayed that we would get a good review. And we ended up getting a five star review from that homeowner shortly after. So we redeemed ourselves and I feel like now I kind of it's kind of crazy right, because I legitimately thought about quitting and days later, you know, after taking the feedback and thinking about how we can use that feedback to get better, we actually got better. I mean legitimately right. If we had the other house with the tile floor that was horribly dirty, if we did that again today, we would knock it out of the park. I don't want that customer to be honest because you know, if I tell you I'm going to give you a 50% discount for the inconvenience and then you go and leave a two star review, then I don't think you're a good fit for us as a customer. You know we would have been willing to make it right, we would have been willing to make sure we took care of that customer, of course. So the way she handled it is something that I fundamentally disagree with. So, that said, we're back on track, we're hiring and we're working on it, but I guess the lesson here is those bad times are going to happen, right?
Speaker 1:Seth Godin's book, the dip one of my favorite books of all time talks about you know how you have, you know the. You could have long dips, short dips, but it's basically the time where things aren't going well and they're difficult and you think about quitting. And this is definitely. This definitely was a very small dip and I feel confident, I work through it and I know there's going to be more and I think for everybody else, you just got to expect that and you know there's actually a quote it's one of my one of my favorite quotes that I think is most applicable to this situation.
Speaker 1:Henry Ford said it. It basically went something like when everything seems to be going against you. Remember that the plane takes off against the wind, not with it. So that to me, is very, very fitting right, because we're just scrubbing stuff at the end of the day and it seems simple, but the reality is we are still fighting against the wind, right, and it's going to take a little while till we can build up that momentum and have that reputation and that sort of thing. Hey, if you enjoyed the podcast, if you found it useful, if you learned a thing or two from my mistakes, do me a favor and leave me a review on this podcast. It would mean the world to me and help this podcast reach a larger audience. So, that said, I hope you have a great day. Thank you.
