How would you answer this?

An online review was left for a competitor ("special water" people) which was interesting. If your customer would have left this regarding your business, how would you respond? What would be your thinking?

First, the guys who came were super-nice, and at first, I was impressed. The 2 stars instead of one is for the guys. But about 2 weeks after they were here, one of my cats spilled his water bowl on the carpet they'd cleaned. Just water, no big deal. I grabbed paper towels to mop it up and prevent mold...the paper towels came away GRAY with dirt. I was shocked. This wasn't months later, or in a high traffic area. The towels should have been wet but not dirty. I won't have them back because their cleaning method apparently doesn't *clean*. Nice employees, but I wasted my money. :-(

After 23 years I have come to the determination, that no matter how much I clean an area; they may get some "grey" if blotting a wet spill.
I'm a carpet cleaner, not a carpet cleanest.
Today I was doing a rental, and this one area kept pulling grey water. With my RV, I went back and forth 5-6x. Looks better, dry passed it real good. Done. Clean? More like cleaner and looks better.
Disclaimer; I'm not a carpet cleanest.

To clarify, this would not be my response to a customers review.

I remember watching a video years ago where one cleaner used a Steamin Demon extractor and the other pad-capped. When they both finished, they ran a bonnet over the Demon side....dark grey pad.

The encap cleaner smiled big at the results until he went back and dropped a bonnet on his side....dark grey pad.

Both agreed that you can't get all of it and some soil will remain.....which is true every single time. We use prespray and agitation to suspend the soil and then flush it away with water, so the water and soil is mixed. If the carpet is still wet when you are done, then there is still a percentage of dirty water left behind. Now drop a tablespoon of dirt into sink of water and tell me how much of a mess it can make.....it takes very little when suspended in water.

In this company's case, the problem is their advertising. They over-claim the effectiveness of their service by claiming that they leave "zero residue" and only use "special water" to clean the carpet. Add a list of BS charges like "disposal fees" and you have a customer that pays a premium only to find that reality and sales aren't always the same.

As the advice goes, always under-promise and over-deliver.

How I would answer that ? Just like Matt said, no answer, however I would contact the customer and invite him to a demo of re clean a few square footage of areas in his home as many times as he deemed that it's cleaned properly to prove that it's going to be still gray when blotted with clean towel / paper towels, now I also would like to challenge him that if we spend that much time proving that to him, if it's still gray and we give him a refund, he will take the review off the internet, it's only fair for the both of us.

That is really the issue, education and understanding. Once you educate the customer you will both be on the same page and misunderstandings will not lead to a negative review.

I think you might be surprised how many cleaners don't realize that the paper towel will always come up gray, it isn't just the customers.

Yes, exactly. The matter of proper education and understanding. They need a proper demo of this to make them understand it.