Clients who work from home.
How do you deal with clients who work from home when you're cleaning houses?
We're going to talk about that today.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now today's show sponsor is HouseCleaning360.com
If you are leaving and you need to go on vacation and you have a pet,
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All right, back to today's show.
Today's show is awesome in the sense that this is from a homeowner, and a couple of
days ago, we did an episode on can you leave already, and it was based on house cleaners
who want the clients to leave and be gone when they come to clean the house.
There was a client who wrote in and gave us the other side to this story.
Now I need to preface this by saying that
there is not only one way to run a house cleaning business.
There are multiple ways, and on this show we get to explore the multiple ways.
So my way is not the only right way, and there are a variety of different approaches
that are out there.
Here is a different approach and I wanted for us to honor this particular client and
respect their wishes and share with you what they're going through
from the customer's perspective.
So I'm going to actually read this to you.
She says, "As a homeowner looking for a regular house clearer, I feel like those of us who
work from home or choose to stay at home when a service person is in our home,
or in my case, have no choice but to stay at home when a contractor
or service provider is in our home.
I feel that we get a bad rap for wanting to remain in our homes.
Obviously, we only hear about the problem customers and clients, but this isn't the
first time the subject has been brought up on this channel.
"However, someone like myself who cannot leave due to medical reasons and is innately introverted,
I retreat to our garage or our front porch, weather permitting, to let whomever it is
do whatever it is they have to do.
So I let them in, and I inform them of any of the updates that they should be aware of,
and I let them know where to find me when they're done, and that's typically the extent
of the conversation initiated by me.
"Unfortunately, I've found that if I remain in the main part of the house, I am typically
the one that is bombarded with questions and conversation starters.
I prefer to lose myself in my work or just leave the person alone to do their work,
which is why I generally try to leave as much as I can when possible.
"So it goes both ways, but I would be over the moon if I had a house cleaner that came
to do a walkthrough and advised and did what you said.
I would for sure reassure them that I'm actually an introvert and I prefer to keep to myself,
and I would not be insulted or even slightly upset if they barely spoke to me by letting
me know that they were here."
All right, that is an awesome response to our video the other day.
And the answer is yes, there is a huge problem in the industry with house cleaners initiating
the chatting that happens.
A lot of times they don't even know that.
That's one of the reasons they want the homeowner to be gone is because they don't know how
to turn off the mouth.
Okay, so let's go back to the neurosis of house cleaners.
House cleaning is a solo job.
Even if you're working with a teammate, you're not talking the whole time.
You need to be working the whole time.
So instead of chatting and having fun and it being a social environment because we're
creatures of humanity and we want social interaction, you're working by yourself.
So every once in a while, you want to come back up above water
and you just want to see who's there.
You want to see what's there.
So when you see other humans, there's this innate need to connect.
Now, it goes back to sitting on an airplane.
If you've ever gone on an airplane ride, suddenly there's this person sitting right next to you.
If you're flying cross country, you're going to go 2,500 miles
with this person right next to you.
So somehow, in the back of our minds, we feel like we owe this person a conversation.
The reality is you don't.
You're never going to see them again, and all of your seatmates and all of the people
six and seven rows behind you would appreciate it if in fact you didn't talk.
They want you to be quiet so that they can read.
They've got their iPads with them, they've got work that they're doing.
Everybody brought their own to do tasks on the airplane or they're going to sleep.
So you're chitchatting because you feel obligated that you owe these people conversation is
kind of a misguided approach just because they're in your personal space.
All right, so let's transfer that over to house cleaning.
Just because you're in someone's home and you're in their personal space doesn't mean
you owe them a conversation.
They have paid you to clean their house.
They have not paid you for a conversation.
Now the reality is that there are lots of business owners that work out of their house.
So if they're at their house, guess what?
They need to be working too.
It is only fair that they are able to stay in their house because guess what?
That's where they live.
For a lot of people, that's where they work.
For you to expect them to leave, that's kind of farfetched.
There are reasons we want them to leave, and the reasons are so that there's no chatting
and hovering and micromanaging and getting underfoot while we're trying to clean.
All of those make sense, but if they know that you're coming on Tuesday from 8:00 a.m.
until noon, or whatever the window is that you've allocated, they can figure out a way
that hey, I'm going to go up in the upstairs bedroom, and I'm going to be there for two
hours, then I'm coming downstairs, and you can do the downstairs first and then the upstairs
or vice versa, so that they are not in your way.
They can go in the other room.
There are people that work out of their homes.
They are smart enough to figure out a way to relocate themselves
so they are not under your foot.
Now in my personal business, there are gobs of times when there were business owners,
so I would ask them every time when I arrived because they're there, they're there at their
house, I would ask them, "Do you have any conference calls today?
Is there any particular time that you don't want the vacuum running?"
And they would say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've got a conference call from 10:00 until 12:00 or something."
Okay, great.
I will do all of the flooring stuff first, and you work around that so that they don't
have to leave because if that is their quiet hub ... You can be upstairs without running
a vacuum or something and still let them do their business because here's a trick.
If they don't do their business, they don't get paid, and they can't pay you.
So they need to be able to do what they do in order that you get paid as well.
So there are house cleaners that prefer not to have people home, but there are certain
circumstances that you can't avoid.
For example, if there are seniors ... Seniors are retired.
They don't have a job to go to.
They don't have anywhere else to go.
So unless it's a special occasion and they're going to meet friends or something,
they don't have anywhere to go.
So you need to work that into your conversation and just say, "Hey, I'm coming in the living
room in just a couple minutes.
Do you have everything you need so that you can relocate to another room so that I don't
get in your way?"
You can pose it like it's your responsibility.
Like, "Hey, I'm coming in there to do that room next."
Give them a little bit of notice.
Give them a little bit of heads up.
"I don't want to be in your way."
What you're really saying is I don't want you to be in my way, but you're saying it
in a nicer way.
"I don't want to be in your way.
Is there anything you need before I head in there?"
They may go, "Yeah, let me get my tissues.
Let me get my stretch bands.
Let me get this, that, and the other and the dog," and they'll get up and they'll leave.
But if you figure out a way to work with the customers who are actually staying in their
houses, you will all get along a whole lot better.
It is important from day one, whether you're the house cleaner or you are the homeowner
to set a no-chatting policy because again, you're not friends.
This is a business relationship.
You are friendly, but you are not friends.
If in fact, you are friends, then you need to take it outside the job.
We don't work while we socialize.
That's not what we're doing here.
We're just working.
They're paying you for a service, you're providing a service.
That is the transaction.
So if there's more to that, go out for lunch.
Pick a day when you're not being paid and you're not on the clock and you're not billing
by the hour or the job.
Go out and have a cup of coffee, go out for lunch, chitchat,
go walking together in the morning.
I don't care what it is you do, but don't do it on company time because ...
here's the big thing, it's not scalable.
So as you hire employees, and you bring employees into your business,
they do exactly what they see you do.
If you've trained your customers that it's okay to chat, then when your employees take
on with the client, and they replace you, those customers will still chat with your
employees, and you're paying for the employee's time.
It's not scalable.
So, train your customers right up front, explain in a really nice and loving way, that you
don't want people at home, but if they have to be at home, there's a no chatting policy.
Get in, get your job done, and go home.
Thank you so much for writing in and sharing this with us because it is important to know
the other side because yes, in fact there are lots of people who have nowhere else to go.
Alrighty, that's my two cents for today, and until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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