Today my partner and I got trapped in a bathroom. No, I'm not kidding. The client was home when we arrived but left her large dog when she left, unbeknownst to us. At first we didn't even realize she had left it (it's some kind of German Shepherd mix, very big), but it eventually made itself known and started growling at Katy, my partner. We couldn't get to an exit so we ended up closing the door to the master bedroom and waiting for the client to return.
The client was actually angry at us for making her leave work too. Incredibly rude. We really couldn't of done anything else, the dog was larger than both of us. I'm sure our new employer, Check Maid, loved that one. She asked us to leave and we went to eat before the next job.
I've never had anything like this happen before... hopefully it's the last. I love dogs, although I have a cat, but when they want to be scary they are REALLY scary. Especially German Shepherds. Damn Germans and their scary inventions!
I hope everyone is doing well. Winter is coming!
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
A small rant about Yelp
This is something I forgot to add to my last post. A lot of business owners, some of them my clients, believe that when Yelp calls for advertising and you say no, they filter your positive reviews.
Personally, I've never had this happen. I've been called a few times. But it does seem a little weird when you start to look at evidence of it. Yelp basically has a filter system that their website automatically puts reviews it thinks are fake into. You can view the filtered reviews, but only by going to the bottom of the page and clicking a small gray link that's very hidden if you didn't otherwise know.
Luckily, I don't actually have any filtered reviews. What I have experienced though is clients threatening to leave me a bad reviews if I don't do a free cleaning. This kind of behavior is outrageous, and I can't understand why Yelp lets it occur - I've reported these individuals and their emails they sent to me but despite that Yelp lets them post lies on my page and doesn't even bother to reply to the evidence I submitted. I'm going to strongly consider posting the emails here because if nothing else, it's funny (or at least it's funny after you sleep the anger off). I'm going to pass for now as I don't know if it's legal to do so..
So advertising scams or not, they definitely don't take care of non-paying businesses very well. By far most clients are a joy to work with and I love every one of my regulars, but we all know how some people are, and it would seem Yelp has given some of the crazies a ground to romp free on businesses that won't do as they demand, which is a shame. But life isn't always fair, and you just have to roll along with it. Most of us learned that long before Yelp though.
In the Hotels I worked for we constantly had to take classes on not only how to clean rooms perfectly, but how to treat clients respectfully no matter what, and why that matters and how it affects the business, etc. I've taken a lot of this so-called customer service experience with me, and I think it's worked to my benefit with Yelp, despite their filter system and ignoring of emails. There's probably a point in there somewhere.
If you have your own Yelp stories please do share them with me, I'd love to hear. Maybe I can prepare better or learn something about the site I don't know!
Until next time.
-C
Personally, I've never had this happen. I've been called a few times. But it does seem a little weird when you start to look at evidence of it. Yelp basically has a filter system that their website automatically puts reviews it thinks are fake into. You can view the filtered reviews, but only by going to the bottom of the page and clicking a small gray link that's very hidden if you didn't otherwise know.
Luckily, I don't actually have any filtered reviews. What I have experienced though is clients threatening to leave me a bad reviews if I don't do a free cleaning. This kind of behavior is outrageous, and I can't understand why Yelp lets it occur - I've reported these individuals and their emails they sent to me but despite that Yelp lets them post lies on my page and doesn't even bother to reply to the evidence I submitted. I'm going to strongly consider posting the emails here because if nothing else, it's funny (or at least it's funny after you sleep the anger off). I'm going to pass for now as I don't know if it's legal to do so..
So advertising scams or not, they definitely don't take care of non-paying businesses very well. By far most clients are a joy to work with and I love every one of my regulars, but we all know how some people are, and it would seem Yelp has given some of the crazies a ground to romp free on businesses that won't do as they demand, which is a shame. But life isn't always fair, and you just have to roll along with it. Most of us learned that long before Yelp though.
In the Hotels I worked for we constantly had to take classes on not only how to clean rooms perfectly, but how to treat clients respectfully no matter what, and why that matters and how it affects the business, etc. I've taken a lot of this so-called customer service experience with me, and I think it's worked to my benefit with Yelp, despite their filter system and ignoring of emails. There's probably a point in there somewhere.
If you have your own Yelp stories please do share them with me, I'd love to hear. Maybe I can prepare better or learn something about the site I don't know!
Until next time.
-C
Getting work as a home cleaner, part 2
This is a follow-up to my first post about getting work. I'm going to list two websites most everyone has heard about, and then finish up with some final thoughts and what I'm currently learning about and hope to share next!
Facebook
Email
This one is tricky. Unlike Twitter, anyone with a Facebook account typically has personal information on it and even though they can make their accounts private, it's just weird to ask people to "Like" your page. I did get some initial work through friends and a couple of clients that had big followings (one a musician that I had known of, actually!) but ever since I just haven't had much luck with it. I see other big cleaning companies with pages, but I question if they know something I don't or if they just have it to have it.
Anyone reading who could chime in will be added to my monthly free cleaning lottery, to which you'll be the first and only with a ticket!
This is probably my favorite. I didn't actually think of email originally, for some reason, but through reading different blogs I caught on quick. Much like Twitter, it's very easy to get clients to allow me their email so I can update them with when I'm available or if I'm running any deals. What's extra great about is that you can be sure they at least saw the email from you-- you can't ever be too sure with Twitter as things happen fast or people just don't check it very often. If I have a cancellation or a deal running or whatever, I can shoot a quick email out and I always get good results from it (and a couple complaints in the beginning for over-doing it, I'll admit).
Additionally, at the bottom of the email I always link to my tweet that's made right before I send out the emails so those who'd like to re-tweet and help me out can. And they do! A lot actually. So in addition to getting my clientele to see it, at least a few of them always re-tweet and all their friends see too.
Final thoughts
There are many ways to advertise your cleaning services and these are really only a few of many. Philadelphia itself is a GIGANTIC city and has thousands of ways to advertise outside of the internet. I've had a lot of small business owners with shops call and ask if I'd like to put up fliers (some for free just to get a nice promotion in their store). I imagine if I put a significant amount of time into this type of non-internet advertising, it would also overwhelm me with work.
Facebook must have a lot of potential, but I'm still unable to take advantage of it. My offer of a clean house stands true to anyone who can offer a few words of advice, but if not hopefully I can figure it out and shed some light on the topic.
Angie's List and AdWords are the two other big ones that I'm not yet familiar with. Angie's List is like Yelp in that it's about people reviewing businesses. The difference is I don't really understand how to get reviews there. I've never once had a client ask about it while many have asked about Yelp. I do have a page, but it sits at 0 reviews. It's a little bit frustrating because I do see huge companies using it and they can't be doing that for no reason... maybe it just takes a lot of money to get into. Another thing I wish I could find advice for, and that hopefully I can figure out.
AdWords is just damn complex! It's Google's advertising service (the yellow ads you see when you search for things, that's AdWords ads). I don't actually have time to learn this on my own, and I can't deal with the current work coming in, but if I ever need to use it in the future this may be the one thing I hire someone to take care of. I'd need a website to go along with it so I'd definitely have to pay someone to set all that up.
OK that's all for now!
-C
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)