Attracting customers is not the sole key to cleaning success; keeping them is essential. To do that, cleaners have to determine what customers want in order to maintain the business relationship.

But to please customers, cleaners first need to determine who their customers are. Tenants, building management and passers-by are all affected by cleaning services, but the cleaner's ultimate responsibility is to whoever signs the contract.

When an Internet company moved into one of Kit Shulte's accounts and made cleaning difficult, Shulte, president of C & R Building Maintenance Inc., Seattle, wasn't sure whether to accommodate them. By reviewing her contract with the property manager, Shulte showed her duties were being impeded, leaving the manager to deal with newcomers.

The "customers" for in-house crews are internal, usually administration or facility owners who decide whether the work should be outsourced. Determining what their "customers" want done and tracking progress will provide in-house managers with bargaining tools and statistics to prove their department's worth.

Contract cleaners will need to offer valued services and find ways to expand on them to keep and attract customers.

Jill Griffin, Austin, TX, industry analyst and author of Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It divides the people who react to facility cleaning into four groups:

· Users - People who come in and out of the building.

· Buyers - Those in charge of the cleaning contract.

· Influencers - People who research options and can make recommendations.

· Decision makers - The person or group that ultimately approves the contract.

To determine which services are most important, cleaners must communicate effectively with management and occupants alike, while focusing work efforts.

Customer relationship management requires figuring out what accounts want, providing it thoroughly, and demonstrating value in cost, time spent, and specialized services.

What adds value?

Employment analysts such as Customer Retention Associates, Collingswood, NJ, have found that customer perception of a service's value has a stronger influence on loyalty than does customer satisfaction.

In other words, if a company sells services customers don't think are important, it will lose accounts regardless of the level of service.

Elements that could create value are: value-added services, employee training, reporting services, clear communication, and most importantly, thorough cleaning. These qualities create a professional and dependable image, which encourages loyalty.

Ian Greig, president of software manufacturer Daniels Associates, Inc., Phoenix, AZ, says companies whose only business is cleaning are easy to replace; but, companies that provide four or five services cut down on the number of competitors able to replace them.

Offering a variety of value-added services has worked well for Scott Smith, owner of Executive Cleaning Co., Inc., Billings, MT. Though his blind cleaning, high-rise window washing, and tenant services programs are not needed as often as general cleaning, Smith says they keep customers who otherwise would have to hire two or three companies to accomplish all the projects.

When customers request services his firm can't supply, Smith acts as a middleman, still encouraging customers to call him, but subcontracting the work.

"The value we provide is everything," he says, stressing the increased customer convenience in a single-provider relationship.

Cleaners can often identify value-added services by examining the businesses they serve. As some of Smith's largest accounts were banks and health care facilities, he expanded into document shredding to maximize profits.

Though it helps to ask clients if they would be interested in a service before investing in equipment, clients often prefer consolidating services with one provider, cutting costs.

Workers as a resource

It isn't always necessary to invest in expensive equipment to expand services: labor itself can be a big resource.

Greig suggests offering temporary laborers when the client company has hiring problems: If the person who normally cleans the loading dock and breaks down boxes is gone, offer to take up the slack.

"If you think of yourself as a manager of people," says Greig, "your horizons are infinite."

Customers may not consider janitorial training one of their top needs, but it is the means of creating the efficient, courteous cleaners they expect. Training ensures that employees are using the most effective products and techniques, saving materials and labor costs.

Customers also can find value when occupational training makes employees work better in specific environments, says analyst Griffin. Hospital cleaning crews, for example, can be trained to interact with patients, knock before entering, and respect privacy as if they were cleaning the patients' personal bedrooms.

Tracking the services provided, expenses, and how complaints are handled is, in effect, tracking a business relationship. Creating reports can show that cleaners are closely monitoring work have adapted services to handle concerns, reminding customers of their company's value.

In addition to organizing data, cleaning-specific software can help create a trustworthy professional image, says Steve Sloan, vice president of software manufacturer Vanguard Computer Systems, Nashville, TN.

The production and expense reports have the greatest impact on customers, he says, because they prove that money is not being tied up in unnecessary advertising or overhead costs. He also credits the software with quicker customer service as cleaners can access more information about their customers in less time.

Electronic workloading is another way to demonstrate that tasks have been consolidated to provide the most cost savings in labor.

Greig says the value in workloading software is in showing that cleaners have a mathematical way of determining staffing. By multiplying the area by the number of tasks by task frequency, cleaners can demonstrate the amount of work involved and justify pay expenses.

Electronic reporting procedures have proven valuable to in-house manager Jimmy Johnson, housekeeping director for administrative and academic buildings, Duke University, Durham, NC.

"I need to be able to justify our value to the university, which equals cost, which equals budget," he says.

Assessing needs

To determine which services are most important, cleaners can collect information from management and occupants, and do their own building need assessments. Previous cleaning services also can be used as a benchmark to determine service levels and target areas for improvement.

When creating customer surveys, Griffin suggests giving clients questions with a set scale of responses to track a business relationship. It is important to ask clients to rate the cleaning company's overall performance, how likely the account is to continue being a client and how likely the account would be to recommend the cleaning services provided.

Surveys are not failproof, however. Getting people to fill them out is difficult, says Daniels' Shaw, as is getting the survey to people who know the facility well enough to make helpful recommendations.

Instead of surveying employees across the board, Shaw suggests concentrating on the most senior staffers, because they have had a greater opportunity to note facility problems.

Jim Brewer, director of housekeeping for the University of Texas at Arlington, and a former private contractor, agrees that polling all building occupants isn't the best way to gauge their perception of the cleaning service, as the ones most likely to respond will be complainers.

"In most cases," says Brewer, "(tenants) only notice when you do a bad job."

While it is crucial to listen to management requests, cleaners still need to use their expertise to guide building management and to educate them on the value of certain projects.

In today's facility, the administration may be too busy or uninformed to know the full extent of its building needs, hence the need for cleaning specialists.

Bill Love, assistant director of facility management and director of building services for the University of Cincinnati, suggests a tour of the facilities for new or reluctant administrators. He makes note of what the administrator notices and how they react to specific problems, and uses that as a guide in choosing new projects.

Staying connected

Although the most important bond to maintain is with the decision makers, Griffin says complaints from any group could jeopardize employment. To avoid this, she says, develop methods of processing feedback and be proactive in problem solving.

Brewer says the relationship with powerful influencers, such as executive secretaries, is critical to success. By finding out who pays attention to cleaning quality and helps to form the opinions of the decision maker, cleaners know who to target with questions or apologies.

How and when to communicate

Brewer says cleaners need to make business communication positive, friendly and frequent. "You don't keep accounts that don't see you," he says.

For Brewer, monthly informal contacts are as productive as quarterly formal meetings; the point is to ask clients what services they want that they aren't receiving.

"Don't assume you're doing a good job," says Brewer, stressing that the customer's perception of service is what matters. "Keep asking, `What can we do for you?'"

Greig prefers to have both formal quarterly meetings and informal check ups to discuss service. He avoids asking the client what more cleaning can be done because it looks like the manager is not keeping track of service quality.

Cincinnati's Love treats his cleaning department as a separate business. He schedules biweekly meetings with his superior to present work updates, customer problems, construction concerns and budget figures to give an accurate picture of the department's progress.

He also meets yearly to present department goals and discuss the success of the previous year's goals. Love stays well connected to university decision makers by attending meetings of the board of trustees, student council, and the business administration.

Although the tenants are not the final authority in his contract, DMS president Dotts credits his tenants with decent perception and does not feel the need to outline current services in every meeting.

"There's nothing worse than overwhelming them (clients) with information they don't need," he says. "They're generally aware of service."

Hotlines, email, faxes, log books and bulletin boards can all communicate needs effectively. The trick, according to Rick Robinson, president of master franchise Jani-King Southwest, Phoenix, AZ, is using the method most convenient for the client.

Robinson, who usually contacts clients at least four times a month, says face-to-face contact is the communication method to focus on, and uses digital or paper methods to follow up.

"Communication is more important than cleaning," Robinson says.

And for cleaners who depend on communication to identify valued services, it may be the key to their success.