First Week In Business And Our Company Founder Loses A $14,000 Key and Gets Sued For $17,000
Like many embarking on their first business venture, I had left the corporate world with a stellar record as a Manager from local level to the executive suite, It seemed whatever I touched turned to gold.
Of course I worked hard at it. Enough to make brown hairs turn grey.
Turns Out Delivering A Leading Gold Coast Commercial Cleaning Service Is Not Easy.
That was in 2009 and I was soon to learn, cleaning would take me down a peg. Or three!
Let me explain.
November 2009 was unseasonably hot and humid. And I threw myself into the deep end, starting my ownership on the very first day of Schoolies where my job was to clean 100 full apartments in 6 hours.
It didn’t scare me, but looking back on it, maybe it should have.
By the end of my first day, a Master Key to a whole Hi-Rise building had been lost. To have every lock changed would cost me $14,000,
And by the end of my first week, an Insurance Company sued me for $17,000 claiming I had flooded a customer’s floor with a scrubbing machine. At this point, I was still under the watchful eye and full instruction of the previous owner. I knew little about cleaning and it was the previous owner that was operating the scrubber, Same as he’d been doing since starting in that job six years before.
The Buck Stopped With Me and I Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way.
You see, because I now owned the business, I was the one sued.
I had my best friend with me in the business. He was an excellent cleaner. I figured I knew about managing and he knew about cleaning,
But it was him that lost the master key.
Just about my whole world collapsed.
The thought that kept me sane that week was the compulsion I felt to own up and be responsible for my mistakes and to solve the problems for my customers, that I created.
OK, I thought, to keep my customers happy, I am going to have to be pretty damn cool under pressure and be damn good at solving customer problems.
And mine too!
Funnily enough, both customers must have sensed that my heart was in the right place because in the end, both kept MD as their cleaner.
For years.
In fact, in ironic turn of events, MD Commercial Cleaning is still helping customers today while both customers have shut up shop.
In the end, the key was found on the cleaners trolley, locked away in the cleaners room. And the warped dance floor? The insurance company accepted it was caused by a combination of the floor boards being seated too close to the wall and a humidity level that was too high for too long.
And you can bet your life it was me that had to find out how floors reacted to water, to the environment, how they are built and why such a small scrubbing machine couldn’t possible cause that level of cupping of a floor.
But what a wild ride that was. All in my first week of owning a cleaning company.
Sometimes, it is our biggest problems that provide our biggest learning opportunities. Like Things Not to do!
And with sweat dripping from my eyebrows, and indeed every pore of my body that week I learnt to stay professional and provide exceptional service in the midst of a virtual Level 5 Cyclone.
Or in my case, two of them.
They Were Valuable Lessons That Made Us Better Serve You
Our approach is to learn from our mistakes. And to learn from you, our customers, our suppliers, our competitors and industry best practice. All in an effort to serve you better and keep our prices down. Read about our prices . Learning and improving is a hallmark of our approach to making your life as easy as possible where we touch it.
Your happiness drives our thinking.
We often talk amongst ourselves around how we are a customer service company that provides cleaning.
We see ourselves as a customer service company that provides (your) cleaning. Not a cleaning service that provides customer service.
If you are not happy, we are not happy.
And we mean it,
What you want and need from us is almost never too much trouble – if it is, we’ll let you know and part ways! Read about or Service Culture here.
Your Happiness Inspired by The Best Customer Service I Had In My Life
When I bought a Kindle that did not operate properly, I contacted Amazon who replied, “I’m sorry to hear that sir. Let me send you another Kindle right away”. They didn’t even ask for the first one to be sent back.
Their service had me. I was blown away by it. And I thought, wouldn’t it be so cool, if we could be thought of in the same way by our customers.
that feeling our customers get when they know we are looking after them. That service model is what we offer you.
Want some of that? We are fanatical about quality because you should expect that of us. Read about our Cleaning Quality Here.
And we are fanatical about serving you.
We are all about the inputs.
And making you happy is the input we are most interested,
We know that money will only come our way, but only after we have made you happy.
It does not work the other way around. Not for you, And not for us either.
