CBL Episode # 111-When your Cleaning Guarantee Gets Tested-How to Handle Re-Cleans Like a Pro

🎙 Episode: When Your Cleaning Guarantee Gets Tested—How to Handle Re-cleans Like a Pro

Your cleaning guarantee just got called out—now what? 

In this no-nonsense episode of Cleaning Business Life, we dive deep into one of the trickiest situations every cleaning business owner eventually faces: a client invoking your 24 or 48-hour re-clean guarantee.

When your part-time team isn't available to fix the issue quickly, what’s your next move? 

We’re pulling back the curtain on the uncomfortable but crucial truth—you’re ultimately responsible for making it right, even if that means grabbing your supplies and handling the re-clean yourself.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The exact protocol for navigating client complaints and quality concerns.
• How to communicate effectively with both your clients and your cleaning technicians during a service failure.
• Why personally showing up can turn a negative review risk into a customer loyalty win.
• The right way to document and address performance issues with your team—without damaging morale.
• How recleans reveal hidden cracks in your operations and how to use these situations to strengthen your business.

Think it’s too costly to handle recleans personally? We’ll prove why the price of fixing it now is far less than the cost of losing a valued client.

If you’re ready to take ownership, protect your reputation, and build stronger client relationships, this episode is a must-listen.

🎧 Tune in now and learn how your response to problems defines your business more than your service ever will.

#shannonmiller

#jamierunco

#kleanfreaksuniversity

#24hourguarantee

#recleans

It can be crowed when trying to figure out who you are going to learn from

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Chapters

• 1:44 Introduction to Reclean Protocol
• 6:39 Communication: Key to Managing Recleans
• 11:30 Who Handles It When Cleaners Are Unavailable
• 16:39 Creating Policies for Quality Control
• 21:21 Maintaining Professionalism During Challenges
• 25:46 Training, Management and Taking Responsibility

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:52

Hello, hello, hello. Long time, no see. Welcome back. Today we are going to talk about something that needs to be addressed and I haven't had a chance to actually address it in a while. And it is. It comes up every once in a while Sometimes. Thankfully, things run pretty smooth for me most of the time. But this topic is what to do with reclean. So you offer a 24-hour or a 48-hour guarantee on the cleaning and the customer calls you out on it, which is fine. And then what do you do when they call you out on it? Is there a protocol to follow? And what brought this up was an actual question in one of the groups. I'm not going to name names because I don't want to call anyone out, but it says how do you handle re-cleans with part-time employees who work hours may not cover enough time to perform a re-clean within the 48 hour guarantee, jamie so?

Speaker 2: 1:57

I've seen that post and it's. I've seen similar questions like that and let me tell you, none of my employees are full-time, not one. I never offer a full-time, it's always part-time. It just ended up like that because it's based around kid drop off, kid pickup. You know, you got that.

Speaker 1: 2:27

That's the reason why we're mostly women.

Speaker 2: 2:32

That works great for a lot of women. So there's that aspect and there's one or two ways you can handle this. And the way that I would handle it is first tell you know, communicate that with the employee. I don't know if this is a true W-2 employee or if they're subcontracting. There's always that stipulation, You're right. And if it's a subcontractor it plays out a little differently. Right, If it's an actual employee, you.

Speaker 1: 3:11

I believe this person does have true W-2s. I don't remember everything.

Speaker 2: 3:15

So then you get a hold of the employee, uh, that you know, and say, hey, mrs smith got a hold of me and said there was some things missed. Um, always communicate that part with your employees. That part of this gig is that there is, you know, a 48 hour window for us. Some are 24 hours, but for us it's 48 hours. If they see something that has been missed, we come back and reclean it.

Speaker 1: 3:48

Right so here's the second part of that question. It says, for example let's say your employee works two days a week Monday and Tuesday and the client complains about their service on Tuesday afternoon. What do I do now?

Speaker 2: 4:03

Right. So communication again plays huge. For this to work, this business to work, you have to have communication. You have to have feedback from not just the client, but you have to talk this with your employee. There should have been a discussion somewhere along the line of you know, we have a 48-hour clause that if something is missed we go back and re-clean. Are you okay with that? You know basically. So that needs to be communicated back to the employee and say, hey, mrs Smith got ahold of us. This, this and this was missed. I really want to make them happy. It's part of our agreement. Can you go back and do the reclean of the things that are missed?

Speaker 1: 4:59

Right. So basically, in a more firm manner, so to speak, you're going to say that Mrs Smith called and complained and you missed these three items. I need you to go back today. Can you make that happen? Three items I need you to go back today. Can you make that happen? It's not like, well, maybe maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. You need to have it happen. Do you need to fix it right away when someone brings, when someone takes the time of not slamming you all over social media and every review sites you need to fix their problem because they have obsessed.

Speaker 1: 5:36

It's in their mind and you know, as women we hold on to stuff. For 14 years.

Speaker 2: 5:44

And I just played for the service and it's happy Right.

Speaker 1: 5:48

So if you Rolodex back to that moment of violation, automatically, we just trigger back. So you need to go back and you need to fix it right away. So if that particular employee refuses to go back or cannot do it because they went and done kid pickup or whatever, and I've, I've gone back with kid pickup, I'm like, okay, sit in the car and you might not have a kid that can sit in the car. So there's my phone around that here. Yeah, here's my phone. Don't go anywhere, don't talk to any strangers. Yeah, baby, babies, I'm talking. Little kids, yeah, and they're going to sit in the front room on the floor while you do this so you can watch them and the customer. And you're going to either the either the cleaning tech goes back and does it or they can't do it. And then what do we do next, jamie?

Speaker 2: 6:37

I honestly I will go. This is my baby. This is my baby. I'm getting right out there. Oh, mrs Smith, I am so sorry your cleaning tech is not available. Let me handle this for you right now, right, that's it.

Speaker 1: 6:50

I've actually been getting a pedicure and had that happen and I'm like I got to go and they're like what I got to fix this. So you, as the business owner and the reason why we're bringing this up because sometimes and I've spoken to, I speak to hundreds every single week Sometimes you guys, it's not on your radar. You're like, whatever I'm not doing it, it's your responsibility. If you're cleaning text, do something for damage, or if there's a quality control issue, you as the business owner need to own it. So either you go back yourself or it could be that it's all the way across town and it's 45 minutes of traffic and you have a cleaning tech who lives in that neighborhood. You can get them on the phone and say I need you to do me a favor, I'm going to pay you. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Can you go over there and do that Nine times out of 10, they're going to say sure and you're going to make sure you pay that cleaning tech.

Speaker 1: 7:38

It's not the. I'm going to punish the one girl because the other girl didn't do what she was supposed to do. You need to fix the problem with customer service and we've talked many times about how there is not customer service. I mean, we were just discussing this morning booking Koala and the hacking and how the whole site went down and how they didn't have customer service in place. Hopefully because I talked about pain this morning in my Facebook post the pain point was big enough that they fix the lack of customer service and the empathy that was required for all the people who didn't have their service Because they're mad. Yeah, they were mad.

Speaker 2: 8:19

They're mad.

Speaker 1: 8:20

There has to be a point in your customer journey where you either as the owner and if you're able to go down there yourself when you go down yourself, it subconsciously shows the client you care enough about their business to fix it right away.

Speaker 2: 8:37

And you'll also get you know I'm sorry, I don't normally do this thing and I tell them no, no, no, no, no. I need to know this is for this relationship to work, you have to communicate this with me Again. That's another feature on Jobber that I like. There is a feedback card. It goes to nobody, it comes straight to me, I'm the only person that can see it and it don't go out into social media. It just says hey, it'll ask you to score your clean and normally people are just like we, just you know. And then they'll tell or they'll say I have a complaint and, by the way, the client is aware of this that that feature is on there. But in order for this to work, you have to have communication for this relationship to work, and whenever you, as the business owner my gosh do, you know how special you just made that client. You just saved the relationship more most likely or the cost of acquiring a client.

Speaker 1: 10:11

It's a lot of money right and or at that.

Speaker 2: 10:14

You know this boils down, I feel, for this particular business owner that's asking this question boils down to, I'm sorry, your management or your training is not, it's just subpar.

Speaker 1: 10:34

You know, sometimes it's the business owner didn't communicate the right thing. I mean, sometimes you know you get talking and chatting and you're like, oh yeah, I totally forgot that extra bedroom that was turned into an office. It wasn't on the sheet. I'm really sorry. Can you go fix it for me? I'll totally make it up to you.

Speaker 2: 10:50

Right, right, and even I had something like that this morning. I had no idea about two dogs that were in the laundry room. Mrs Smith, oh, is that really, mrs Smith, the laundry room? Mrs smith, oh, is that really? Hey, mrs smith, that is that room's gonna be skipped. I had no idea about the two dogs and we'll discuss this. You know, blah, blah, blah, yeah, but anyways, this comes down to a um and what you should do moving forward with this particular cleaning tech, because they're not off the hook. No, you should have a policy in place that a verbal warning. If it happens again, then we're writing you up for actually on paper, in your employee file. But it comes back down to you and or maybe not you or whoever you're having train them. They need retrained. They're obviously not hitting the mark that you're you are requiring, so you're going to have to roll your sleeves up and get out there and do it. Yeah, you just got to buck up and do it.

Speaker 1: 12:09

So here's the rest of the actual post. It says so. I gave the example. It's the employee works two hours a week Monday and Tuesday. And then it says so you tell the employee they need to go back out. Dot, dot, dot. However, now the employee is done with working hours for the next week. Whether you have, whether they have a second job or whatever reason, they don't work until Monday again. So again you either you get a hold of the cleaning tech and say I had a complaint, I need you to go back out and fix it. If you cannot get them to go back out and fix it because they're working their second job or whatever, then you're going to send another cleaning tech out there and you're going to pay them for doing that. Hopefully it's a lead and they can apologize and thank them for bringing it to their attention.

Speaker 1: 12:50

Or you, as the business owner, is going to get up out of your office, drive across town, as inconvenient as it is, and sometimes it's just they just want to see you, right? Oh, my God, I haven't seen you in forever. Susan, how are the kids? Sometimes it's just they want to visit and thank you so much for taking the time. It really does. It really does make an impact by doing that. And then it says do you have some scheduling policy in place requiring an employee to do a reclean, even on days that they don't work? So no, you're not going to make an employee I'm laughing because I can see the mind working Right. She's trying to settle this out in her mind, trying to figure it out. So you're not going to make them go on a day that they're not working. You want to fix it that day. And sometimes it's just getting you on the phone. They don't want you to fix it, but they want to make you aware that something happened. So there's no required sending someone out, right?

Speaker 2: 13:47

Right, right, an actual phone call, not just a text. An actual phone call. We have to have that personable connection, these, that makes the client trust you more. Right and stay with you and not go and do a smear campaign on social media about how bad you handled the situation. Right.

Speaker 1: 14:12

Don't be booking koala. I'm laughing, but I'm not laughing because it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2: 14:20

I was like ouch and then to apologize through social media. I just wow.

Speaker 1: 14:27

Awful, but it's. Hopefully. If you get slammed on social media, you can. I always recommend that you defend yourself as professionally as possible. We are at the age of entitlement, where everyone thinks that they deserve something for free, regardless of the consequence of what that happens, and hence the reason why everyone takes before and after photos, right? Hence the reason why some cleaning companies are actually using video cam, which I am absolutely against for a lot of reasons. I don't remember what podcast that was. That was last year sometime I don't know so last year. So it's. These are the steps that you need to take as a business owner.

Speaker 1: 15:04

If your cleaning tech damages something, you, as the business owner whether you have W-2s or 1099s need to own it. This all comes down to did you vet your 1099? They said they can clean. Why didn't you verify that your cleaning tech did have insurance? It's you, it's on you when the mistakes happen. You are the business owner. It is your responsibility to ensure smooth running shifts and that the clients are happy. Now, I'm not talking about the crazy lady who has gone through 99 other cleaners. That's keeps getting brought up. We keep revisiting it. We're not going to talk about it today. Genuine blips. It just happens every once in a while.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Right. And then you know and I think you had a week, shannon, where you know blips happen and you have to reevaluate how you're running, how your cleaning techs are working. You know, check in with your clients to check in with them. How did your clean go today, mrs Smith? How was? How was Shannon and Jamie at your house today? Did it come out good? Check in on them. And then don't sit around and wait for that cleaning tech to get off because you're trying to hand it. She's trying to. I'm assuming she's trying to hand it to you. You're the one that did the clean. You go back and do the reclean. No, this is your business. You're the one that trained her or somebody else. Obviously there's a flaw in your, so somebody needs to be retrained somewhere. But you handle it right.

Speaker 1: 16:56

It doesn't need to be a public scolding either If you're cleaning tech's mess up. I fondly well, I don't fondly remember. I distinctly remember I was in a store and it was a retail location and the employee had made a mistake. So, instead of compensating for the employee making a mistake, the manager comes in and there are 15 people in line and starts to yell at this individual very loudly and I'm starting to get mad because this person is shaming and I have a huge. It's a huge trigger for me. I've gone to therapy for it. I'm middle-aged and it still triggers me every freaking time.

Speaker 1: 17:34

I don't like to be publicly shamed, ever. So I'm a big advocate for nobody being publicly shamed, and if you're being publicly shamed in front of me, I will say something. So I ended up saying something to this manager who felt it was his right to berate this poor w-2 who was in tears, um, in front of 15 other people. I'm like this can be handled in the back without yelling or screaming or belittling. I go you are an awful individual and I'm calling corporate and I'm going to be reporting you. This is obviously before cell phones. Um, right, exactly, but you just remember those most.

Speaker 1: 18:10

You don't if someone's called out on social media, you want to address it as privately as possible. You want to do what Jamie's has suggested. You want to give a verbal. Put it in your calendar, because you're not going to remember if it's a verbal. Or I gave a verbal warning to Mrs Smith on such and such a date for this. Slide it in their employee file or put it in their digital file and then be done with it, cause you won't remember. So much happens in cleaning businesses. You won't remember three months from the road, like what did? What did this person do? I don't remember. So that way you can have, you know, a paper trail so that you can remember and own it. Apolog it, apologize. Thank them for bringing it to your attention. They could have slammed you all over facebook, instagram. Look at that. They missed one hair, right yeah well, you know, one hair is.

Speaker 2: 19:02

You know, if you're paying for a, I get it. What it comes down to is a you factor, not just your cleaning tech. You know, maybe they're having an off day. Have you checked in with them before? It's almost like a smear campaign. I, you know, who knows I have, some of my cleaning techs are in some of the groups that I'm in and I, you know, just yeah, you just everyone with dignity and professionalism absolutely you're not shaming anybody, because if I'm behind you I'll say something.

Speaker 1: 19:50

You never know where shannon's lurking. But yeah, we can talk about the one hair rule and this is dependent. We can. We can actually elaborate. We could actually make this a whole podcast. Oh, that's great. But the one hair rule depends on if that person has pets.

Speaker 2: 20:09

Or have you went to the bathroom since? Did you know what happened?

Speaker 1: 20:16

If someone has pets, 99% of the time knows that you're not going to catch all that dog fur. Oh yeah. If you just not have pets and you leave a hair behind. Oh my goodness, you better have. You know the one hair rule there should not be a one hair. And then some of us humans are more furrier than others.

Speaker 2: 20:34

Yes, that's 90 or something crazy. 90% of dust is human dry skin, especially meds yeah, I just. Or an elderly person, and I can go on and on. I'm going to tell you this I dislike cleaning a super clean house. They're so hard, they are so hard, hard.

Speaker 1: 21:02

You're like where was I yeah it's like here right, I was at this point because everything you're like looking for dirt it always, but yeah, it always feels like it takes so much longer because it's you just did I get everything?

Speaker 2: 21:15

because I know you know, you know so. But yeah, whenever come back to that post, coming back to and it's just not that post, I've seen that that question asked a couple of times and um, it just uh, they took no responsibility whatsoever. That, uh, and I haven't read the comments um, I didn't go through all of them.

Speaker 2: 21:42

I don't even remember if I commented or not, but I know that it does come up, yeah, and it does come up and take responsibility, even if you're asking the question in a private group. Just know that that comes down to a training and a management 1,000% yeah, yeah, and you're going to have to eat the cost on it. That is part of the gig of running a business with W-2s. You will have to eat the cost. They still deserve to get paid. They're still under the training with you. I'm, knock on wood. I am fortunate to you know, if I, you know, most of my cleaning techs were a very tight knit group and we've I've had them over two years, all of them. So, which is nice, which is nice.

Speaker 2: 22:43

And when we're back onto the campaign of hiring again, which, uh, you know, um, it ebbs and flows, it does it ebbs and flows. And, uh, I, I'll be doing the training this time. I'm not going to off, put it to somebody else. I felt like I was always horrible at training and I'm going to. I got this. That goes cuts down a little bit on costs if that's a problem for you, but at the end of the day, you do have to roll up your sleeves. You are the face of this company and you're the leader. You're the ship, the captain of the ship. People are looking to you as to, hey, what do we do here, captain? You know which is sometimes that's a hard pill to swallow whenever you need to take responsibility and say this is more of a me thing, and I didn't see any of that in that Right.

Speaker 1: 23:48

We all do it. I mean, with my blunder this week, I had to sit down and write out all of the steps because it was painful and I'm like, well, where did I miss a step? So there was just one one thing that new company policy that had to be tweaked, cause I was like obsessing over it. Not only was I angry and a lot of other emotions, I was like, okay, I need to fix this so it doesn't happen again. And I went down line by line, rewriting in my mind and then writing it out. So I knew where I stood and it was like this one microcosm of space that lets someone take advantage of me and I'm like, never again.

Speaker 2: 24:24

Yeah, yeah, it'll never happen again, never, never. My mine is with my employees. Uh, I realized real quick that, um, sometimes people like to just throw into uh, it's a big communication for Jobber on Jobber. That's where a lot of communication. And you know, the night before, hey, I need tomorrow off. I hope you've seen it in Jobber. Huh, I have about 500 billion. So now I am setting up for request time off. You need, I need, two weeks. You know it comes down to a me thing, you know. Oh, I have to tweak it. You have to tweak your stuff every now and again and same points to that.

Speaker 2: 25:14

That's ebb and flow.

Speaker 1: 25:18

So this is what you would do if you have to have a reclean. It's pretty standard in the industry to offer or guarantee work, and this is for normal clients. There are going to be clients who are extreme, and you'll be able. Those are the red flag clients that you never want to take on, and once you have one, your radar is up automatically, right you have one, your radar is up automatically.

Speaker 2: 25:45

Right, you'll be able to pin uh if they've gone through several cleaning techs, that's a huge red flag and and but you know, staying on.

Speaker 1: 25:52

They have their own pre-built in laundry list per se of cleaning items to to like left hand, right hand, like how many types? And those, those people are not. Those people don't make good clients. And they make cleaning items to to like left hand, right hand, like how many snipes. Those, those people are not. Those people don't make good clients and they make everybody who takes them on suffer. Don't do it.

Speaker 2: 26:09

And then which will make you go insane, you know, and then that that's whenever you're like, okay, that's not a me problem, that's you problem. You know you'll be able to see them once you get going in your business, um, and if not, just you can always reach out to uh, shannon or I and I'll be happy to walk you through that definitely well, this concludes our episode on um how do you handle re-cleans.

Speaker 1: 26:40

If you guys have any questions, reach out, take care.