Unless you’re involved in the day-to-day handling of demand requests, you may not be familiar with the steps that the Cleaning Services Department takes daily to meet our client’s needs. While this may differ from the Construction and Emergency Service divisions, here is a brief step by step of how the Cleaning Services Department handles all one-time requests from our clients start to finish.
Initiation: All demand services are handled by the Cleaning Services Coordinator or Specialist, as the Associates work strictly on recurring services. The coordinator will accept the new request through the client’s third-party platform or email as the requests come over throughout the day and new work orders are generated in Waves at that time. The Coordinator will then contact the location to review the scope of work and see if the Store Management team can provide any additional information (such as the location of the issue in the store, photos, etc.). At this point, the Coordinator will update the client’s third-party website acknowledging the request and let them know that we will provide them with our pricing and availability.
Assignment: The Coordinator will look through the history of the location in Waves and see which Contract Partner of ours has done services at the store in the past, and if necessary connect with the Field Manager in this territory to discuss the Contract Partner assignment and scope of work needed. Once a Contract Partner is assigned to a work order, we discuss the scope of work and the expected quote turnaround time of 48 hours.
Assessments & Pricing: We expect that all estimates that we receive from our Contract Partners will come back to us with a full breakdown based upon a quote template that is sent to them with the work orders at the time of dispatch. We look for the following information: primary scope of work being performed, number of techs/ hours, square footage, and supply/equipment/chemical costs and total costs. If this is a request where the crew is potentially traveling or if there is a quick turnaround time needed, additional costs may be taken into consideration. For smaller jobs under a lower dollar amount, the Services team can take a proposal without a breakdown. If there are questions regarding the scope of work or pricing submitted by our Contract Partner, the Coordinator and the Field Manager will work together to challenge the vendor’s proposal. Once the proposal is where we need it to be, a proposal is created in Waves and then either posted to our client’s third-party website or emailed over to them on the original work order request thread.
Post-Quote Approval: Once we receive quote approval from the client, we will thank the client for the quote approval and update the third-party website (if applicable). We will then mark the proposal as approved in Waves and email the Contract Partner that their proposal has been approved and ask them for a schedule date. We expect to obtain a schedule date from our Contract Partner within the next 24-48 hours.
Scheduling: Once a schedule date is obtained from our Contract Partner, we will reach out to Store Management at the job site and offer the date of service that our partner has offered. If the date is accepted, the client’s third-party website is updated and our Contract Partner receives an updated work order with the visit date and time set to the confirmed service date. The expectation is that all services should be completed within 7-10 days. At times, if the request is urgent the requirement will need to be moved up. There are also instances where the client may request a date in the far future, which is acceptable in certain instances.
Post Completion: The Coordinator will do a callback and follow up with the store management team to confirm completion once we are past the visit date and time, or once we come into the office if the service happened to be an overnight from the previous evening. If the service is satisfactory, we update Waves as well as the client’s third-party website with this information. If the crew has provided completion photos, we will also upload the photos at this time. The Coordinator will do a once over to ensure that the work order on the client’s third party website is in a billable status and it will be moved to a billable status in Waves so that the Accounting Department can invoice at this time. In the instance that we were to receive a complaint from the store team, we would go back to the previous scheduling step and have the crew go back out for a return visit.
Author: Katherine Warren, Sr. Director Cleaning Services
