Customers email

Here's her email to me :

I want a professional cleaning but some of your reviews are not that impressive. I need the living room, hallway and 1 bedroom cleaned really well. The other rooms do not need cleaning. How much? and can you do a professional job on a set price.

Mind you I have 130 reviews all 5 stars except for 2 - 1 star and 1 - 2 stars, here's my response :

Hello Roxy, first of all I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to serve your cleaning needs, I'm going to try to address your questions / statement one by one, regarding our reviews, we are not perfect nor any other companies in this world, it is impossible to please every single customers due to level of expectations every individual has, that being said we are trying our best to please everyone to the best of our abilities.
We charge by square footage, unfortunately we can't give you an estimate without some kind of numbers given to us, we charge $ 1 / sq ft to clean wall to wall carpeting including deep cleaning and all treatments you may need, it is a professional steam cleaning job which is a hot water extraction, our minimum charge is $ 300 which covers 300 sq ft of wall to wall carpeting. Please let us know if you have any other questions or would like to schedule an appointment, have a blessed day :-)

Btw all of her 10 reviews for other businesses are all 1 star except for 2 businesses got a whooping 3 stars, let's see if she responds to my email, lol.

I wouldn't even consider her as a customer....would gladly run away from that one. The odds are that she is going to rake you over the coals no matter what you do....at best, a weak 3 star review.

Talk about a big red flag, she's trouble if you ask me.

Holy cow your minimum is 300.00! Good for you DP.

Mo, my minimum is $ 125 but it is $ 300 for her because she is "special"

I figured you were factoring the customer in that minimum, but I would still walk away at that price.

She doesn't want her carpets cleaned, she just wants to complain about something. Tell her she is ugly...no charge.

This is why I dont like to support yellow pages, Yelp, Angies, etc....they get you into competition and convert it into money at the cost of your hard work....I do not and wont support those companies! I run on my name...if that doesnt work...For Sale!

I would send an email more in tune of saying....My record is nearly flawless....if you want a five star service its $500 a four star is $400 and a three star is $300....you get the picture.

dp1 wrote:Mo, my minimum is $ 125 but it is $ 300 for her because she is "special"

  Smart

Devon07 wrote:This is why I dont like to support yellow pages, Yelp, Angies, etc....they get you into competition and convert it into money at the cost of your hard work....I do not and wont support those companies! I run on my name...if that doesnt work...For Sale!

I would send an email more in tune of saying....My record is nearly flawless....if you want a five star service its $500 a four star is $400 and a three star is $300....you get the picture.

I understand where you're coming from, but for some in the metropolitan areas like LA, it's extremely hard to get word of mouth advertisements, competition is a lot stiffer, Yelp, Google, etc has become a very important advertisement media, it gets rougher by day in the winter it seems, but it is what it is, because the demand drops, supply increases, the prices drop, and the customers are taking advantage of it, seems like they know that after the holiday is the perfect time to get their carpets cleaned.
I just got a call from a guy asking me how much to clean a king size mattress and when I told him how much I charge, he said "naah" and hang up the phone, lol.
I just can't see myself discounted my prices even in these times because I find that when I started doing that, I get more headaches from these people that expected 5 star services for 3 star prices.
So far I haven't heard anything from the lady, thank GOD !

I understand, but once you play the game you essentially become an employee. I always new back when I did this and made good money and was a multi van operator that too much money was going into advertising and the banker....I sat down and figured out a way to avoid both of those at the extreme most do.....Yellow pages pissed me off when they made several headings for my one service...instead of just carpet cleaning they added furniture cleaning, water damage, etc...everyone knows carpet cleaners do this....but they forced you into several adds in one book....not anymore!....I swear I dont spend over $100 a month in advertising....AND I dont owe my banker......AND my business design is based in a way that IF....IF i want to be cheaper....I can and will make a higher profit than my competition by far! I dont do that though.....I run good rates and make a good income because my design is not my enemy. Adverting with those companies has youat thier mercy like yellow pages did back then. They have no loyalty or respect for long term customers.

We all spend more on advertising than we realize. That signage on the van, uniforms, etc. all cost money and are a form of advertising. I haven't had to advertise much in my little pond, but I can get away with that for now.

In Dp's case, I think you would be quickly forgotten if you didn't advertise aggressively. Unless he was willing to shrink his service area a great deal, advertising costs would just be something you would have to accept.

That being said, those review sites bother me. When I read online reviews, I skip the positives and go straight to the negatives. Partly due to there being less of them to read and partly because they are often more honest, but I can tell if they are a fair criticism or not....many are not.

I like to clean. I would hate to have to regulate reviews and standings on review sites. It would be difficult to not take them personally.

Rob, saying DP would quickly be forgotten supports what im saying 100%.....thats more of a reason to avoid them, they know you are too invested to turn around....I know its hard to do that once invested but its so wrong to me.

Recently our new phone books came out and it was really weird to not at least get my name in them....the very next day I had a call that assured me I was making the right decision....he said he had to Google me because I wasnt in the book he just got. Im set in stone on this approach and know my calls will be much less with this thinking but seriously I cant do anymore than I'm doing WITH NO contractual advertising....as a matter a fact I wish Yelp, Angies and the others would stop interrupting my productive days pushing the crap on me with uninvited calls....not to mention rude.

Maybe its the smaller town that makes this easier to do but if I was in the big city and had to stay on this road DP is on....I would seriously negotiate with them or get out.....they offer discounts to new guys and make it hard to defend yourself against a customer who just feel like being a prick......Ive had them...no matter what I did they got worse. They love control and will drop you the your knees to show you.

The review sites are for generating new business after a certain length of time those new customers should turn into repeat clients that will generate income for the biz for years to come and those repeat clients should be bring in referrals and so on and so on...

The questions is how much new business do you need to generate per year and from what source.

The question that I would ask myself is this. If you third party referral source ie Angies, Yodle etc would to dry up would it have a dramatic impact on your business. If you answer yes to that question that is not a good position to be in and you need to change that right away.

In my small town market I have found that the best referral sources are you current customers, realtors, and house cleaning services

Devon07 wrote:as a matter a fact I wish Yelp, Angies and the others would stop interrupting my productive days pushing the crap on me with uninvited calls....not to mention rude.

This one I couldn't agree more !
Here's a little information I've realized over the years, very few will put your # in speed dial, when they need you again, most likely they will go back to the media where they find you and look for you there, guess what happens when you're no longer there ?
I used to spend over 3 grand in advertisements every month, now $ 350 / month just so that they won't mess with my organic listing
I know what you mean Scott, now they got me under their control paying extortion fee of $ 350 / month, but that amount has brought us well over $ 10 grand / month in new customers, as much as I think they got my balls in their hands, 3 % "investments" ain't bad at all