As cleaning companies get busier, struggling to better manage labour shortages, employee turnover, and scaling the business, efficient scheduling is more important than ever. Research shows that small businesses spend about 20 hours per week on manual administrative tasks, so improving operations and leveraging automation where you can, will cut down on that manpower and boost efficiency.
Leveraging tech to improve scheduling is an important tool for growing cleaning companies. From setting alerts and reminders to allocating teams, proper scheduling can maximize your margins, provide better balance for your staff, and offer an improved experience for your customers.
Start at the beginning
Creating “client cards” for your customers will allow you to access those jobs quicker and update the status, issue invoicing, or access contact information better. Once your customers have been organized, set schedule reminders, alerts for recurring services, and flag booking conflicts or overlapping appointments, so you don’t have to worry about missing something or double booking either your customers or your teams. As part of your setup, ensure that you set permissions and parameters for your system, only allowing approved access to scheduling and related features.
Some software even offers a “self-booking” feature, which can help save you admin time, but ensure that there are parameters like time limits, blackout dates, and service-type filtering so a client can’t accidentally book a post-construction clean when only a standard team is available.
Optimize fleet management
Whether you have a full fleet or not, maximizing labour allocation comes with route optimization. Use technology here to group locations together for maximized scheduling, allocate travel time to provide accurate and reasonable start times to clients, and look for software that can divide staff into specific zones for larger sites.
Along with helping with scheduling and labour cists, these features can also work towards you ESG goals by lowering emissions, reduce gas costs, and decrease vehicle wear and tear.
Enhance scheduling
Some software allows you to go beyond scheduling, with features like adding job notes like alarm codes, chemical restrictions, entry protocols, and more right into the event so that the cleaner heading to the job has all the info they need.
You may also be able to use your scheduling tools to allow employees to better manage their time with mobile availability for digital sign-ins, task signoffs, and instant notifications regarding last-minute shift modifications.
Commercial cleaners are managing so many tasks that simplifying your scheduling can reduce your headaches, improve efficiency, and save you money.
