What is Concierge Cleaning? The Complete Guide
Dirty buildings reflect badly on the companies who operate from them, detract from the customer experience, and create health and hygiene risks for occupants. The need for ongoing cleaning is thus a constant aspect of building operations: each day that commercial buildings are used, dirt is created, rubbish accumulates in waste bins, washrooms become untidy, food is spilled on kitchen counters, and cleaners must clean.
Commercial cleaning is an essential service that relies upon labour, tools, and planned schedules as the backbone of service delivery. But as evolving customer needs and building usage patterns take hold alongside the rise of smart cleaning technologies, the concept of concierge-style cleaning has begun to gain traction.
What is a concierge service?
The term “concierge” is used across sectors to describe a tailored, on-demand, premium service that extends beyond the core offering to deliver on the end-to-end needs of a customer. For example, in hospitality, a concierge service will go further than just providing guests with a hotel room and facility amenities to also include sourcing and facilitating other experiences and activities that elevate the overall stay. These can frequently include booking reservations at top restaurants, arranging transport, and recommending and sourcing tours, visits to local attractions, and other travel experiences. On the whole, concierge service is about responsively delivering personalised, on-demand added services that are tailored to the specific needs of each customer and create a 360° experience.
What does concierge service look like in cleaning?
Within the cleaning and janitorial sector, the term “concierge-style cleaning” can take many forms and create opportunities for additional higher-margin revenue lines and improved customer satisfaction. Let’s take a look at a few applications of concierge cleaning.
On-demand cleaning: On-demand cleaning is defined by delivering services where end building users can request cleaner attendance, often through mounted feedback panels and/or central management platforms. This approach can be particularly helpful in ensuring that staff are equipped to tackle ad hoc issues and spillages, preparing boardrooms between customer meetings, and consistently maintaining the overall cleanliness of a floor or space. Connecting technology to process in this fashion enables teams to deliver a highly personalised cleaning service that promptly meets occupant needs when and where they arise.
Integrated service offerings:Typically, a central cleaning contract will specify core tasks and areas, such as cleaning floors, dusting and disinfecting, and cleaning washrooms and windows. But what about the other cleaning needs that may arise which can create additional occupant comfort? Taking a concierge-style approach to cleaning can allow for the introduction of a range of additional services that support the broader goal of many building owners and operators: delivering great tenant or guest experience. From dishwashing and emptying of dishwashers, day porter walkthroughs, plant watering, and chemical protective treatments, there are a range of options for add-on offerings that can elevate basic input specs into a concierge-style service.
Usage-based cleaning: Through the latest commercial cleaning technology, we can now capture the usage and cleaning needs of spaces in real time. Armed with deep knowledge of high- and low- usage, you can introduce unprecedented proactivity into cleaning programs. Guide cleaners to attend to spaces with high usage in order to get ahead of complaints and avoid a negative experience created by spaces not being cleaned until their scheduled time slot. By embracing and integrating occupancy insights into your cleaning programs, it is now possible to continuously inform and improve on-the-ground staff in a highly personalised way. One potent example of usage-based cleaning action: capturing and logging that a space has seen high usage, automating a task to be allocated to a cleaner, and alerting them to attend. In all, this approach ultimately achieves a far more tailored and responsive level of service delivery that can adapt in turn to each customer’s needs in real time.
Hybrid contracts:The concept of periodic cleaning is commonplace in the industry, such as once per quarter deep cleans of outside areas or routine steam cleans of fabrics and textiles. But in a world where hybrid office use is increasingly the norm, concierge cleaning can mean so much more. It starts with the ability to capture and understand customer needs and occupancy patterns over time – an area where smart technology is crucial to success. Armed with necessary data, cleaning managers can then adopt hybrid contracts that align resource allocation to buildings that have varied usage by day of week. Though hybrid working may seem like a barrier on its face, it presents a significant opportunity to capture and understand building use over time to enhance contract design and achieve highly personalised service agreements.
How to transition from traditional commercial cleaning to concierge-style cleaning
Transitioning from traditional commercial cleaning to concierge-style cleaning involves a strategic shift in service delivery, technology integration, and customer engagement. Here’s a step-by-step plan to help you make this transition smoothly and effectively:
1. Assess Current Cleaning Operations
Evaluate Existing Contracts: Review your current contracts to understand the scope and limitations of your existing services.
Identify Customer Needs: Optionally conduct surveys or interviews with clients to identify additional services they might value, and what they like and dislike about the service they currently receive.
2. Integrate Advanced Technology
Invest in Smart Cleaning Solutions: Implement IoT devices and software to monitor building usage and cleanliness levels in real time.
Adopt a Centralised Platform: Use a centralised platform for scheduling, task management, and communication to ensure seamless service delivery.
Infogrid Smart Cleaning Pro brings together proprietary hardware and advanced software to deliver a complete, end-to-end solution. Learn more and take our interactive product tour here.
3. Train Your Staff
Upskill Your Team: Provide training on new technologies and concierge-style service delivery to ensure staff are equipped to meet new service standards.
Emphasise Customer Service: Train staff in customer service best practices to enhance their ability to deliver personalised, on-demand services.
4. Develop Customised Service Packages
Create Tiered Service Levels: Design service packages that offer varying levels of concierge services, from basic to premium.
Include Add-On Services: Offer additional services such as plant care, desk tidying, dishwashing, and ad-hoc or on-demand cleaning requests to enhance customer satisfaction.
5. Implement On-Demand Cleaning
Enable On-Demand Requests: Use technology to allow building occupants to request cleaning services as needed. These may include installing wall-mounted feedback panels in areas like washrooms or integrating cleaning requests into your tenant management platform.
Ensure Rapid Response: Develop protocols and staff SLAs to ensure quick response times for on-demand cleaning requests.
6. Shift to Usage-Based Cleaning
Analyse Usage Data: Use data from smart devices to understand which areas of the building are used most frequently and require more attention.
Optimise Cleaning Schedules: Adjust cleaning schedules based on real-time usage data to ensure high-traffic areas are cleaned more frequently.
7. Offer Hybrid Contracts
Understand Occupancy Patterns: Use technology to track occupancy patterns and adjust cleaning contracts accordingly.
Customise Service Agreements: Develop hybrid contracts that align cleaning services with the building’s usage patterns, ensuring efficient resource allocation.
8. Communicate with Clients
Regular Updates: Keep clients informed about new service offerings and how they can benefit from concierge-style cleaning.
Gather Feedback: Continuously seek feedback from clients to refine and improve your services and track occupant satisfaction.
9. Monitor and Adjust
Track Performance Metrics: Use KPIs to monitor the effectiveness of concierge-style cleaning services. These may include response time, customer satisfaction, cleaning coverage, and cleaning time.
Adapt as Needed: Be prepared to make adjustments based on feedback and performance data to continually improve service delivery.
10. Promote Your New Services
Highlight Benefits: Emphasise the personalised, responsive, and premium nature of your new services to attract and retain clients.
Market Your Transition: Use marketing and communication channels to promote your new concierge-style cleaning services.
Final Thoughts
At its core, concierge-style cleaning is about putting the needs of the customer and end building users first. This is accomplished by offering services that go beyond basic fixed requirements, considering the holistic building experience, and centering operations around the way buildings are actually being used. Cleaning managers must have the ability to capture and understand live occupancy patterns, anticipate customer needs, and respond with seamless additional service delivery that can only be achieved by adding layers to the backbone of fixed cleaning plans. The business case for concierge style cleaning is the opportunity to create more customer value, differentiate from the competition, drive new revenue lines, and win new contracts.
To find out more about how Infogrid Smart Cleaning Pro can help transform your services and make on-demand and usage-based cleaning a reality, check out our interactive product tour.