Aug. 29, 2021

Building a Successful Fully Remote Local Business with Neel Parekh

Show Notes
Transcript

In episode 87, host Eric Dickmann interviews Neel Parekh. Neel is an entrepreneur and Founder and CEO of MaidThis Franchise. He started his career working in venture capital and private equity identifying and analyzing investment opportunities and managing investment portfolios. His dream was to work for himself and to enjoy freedom from the confines of the 9-to-5 office life. Neel pursued this entrepreneurial spirit and founded MaidThis.

MaidThis helps homeowners and short-term rental hosts with their cleanings. As a franchise, it helps owners build their own meaning of “freedom” by empowering them to build their own fully remote, new-age business from anywhere in the world.

For show notes and a list of resources mentioned in this episode, please visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/building-successful-fully-remote-local-business-s6ep6

Send us your questions or comments

A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.

The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:

https://fiveechelon.com

WEBVTT

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Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.

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I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.

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In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business.

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Hey Neel, welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.

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I'm very glad you could join us today.

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Thanks for having me.

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Eric.

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Excited to be here.

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You know, I'm very excited about today's discussion because we talk with a lot of small and mid-sized businesses here.

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But you're truly an entrepreneur, you've gone ahead and built a business from the ground up in a crazy environment.

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You've got a great remote work story.

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So I'm really anxious to sort of dive into all the details of how all this started.

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But you know as an entrepreneur, the place that I'd sort of like to start our discussion today would be just tell me a little bit about how you got the inspiration to build a business.

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Where did you see that niche and an unserved market opportunity?

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Sure.

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And thanks for the kind words.

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First of all, Eric, I mean, it's very nice to hear.

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And I think with most entrepreneurs, um, you know, inspiration that started coming from somewhere, it's either gonna be.

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You feel a pain, which has maybe I had a job and you hate it and you really need to do it.

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Maybe you need to provide for family.

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For me, it was a combination of a couple of things of what started it.

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was I wanted to quit my corporate job and travel.

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But so I needed to remote type of side hustles to do that.

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So that's why I was working on it for a while, and I liked what I did.

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I was working in venture capital for awhile, and the other part was just providing financially for my family as well.

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So trying out a bunch of different things, a lot of stuff, which is not local

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business-related.

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So now I run, um, made this and made this franchise, which is a cleaning company, focused on vacation rental short-term rentals, Airbnbs, things like that.

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So upon starting try a lot of things out, came across to me this, and finally starting to get more clients.

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And a lot of people started calling and saying, Hey, I'm looking for Airbnb cleaning.

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Do you guys do that?

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And it was kind of like a light bulb, which went off and said, oh wow, this is such an untapped niche.

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Let's dive into it.

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So I think to be honest, yeah.

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On dumb luck from just being in the game.

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You know, it's just like, you're in there.

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Opportunities will come to you, but if you're not there, you're not going to see them.

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So that's kind of how it came about.

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I'm interested

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to explore this a little bit more because you talked about trying a couple of things,.

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was it always cleaning related?

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Did you just pivot until you found that specific niche within that opportunity?

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Or did you have completely different ideas?

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Completely different So look, I started with my end goal in sight and my goal was, Hey, I want to quit.

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And because of that, I thought, okay, I need e-commerce I need a digital marketing company.

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I need something which I could do it from my computer.

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And I kinda just came across a post of a guy on Reddit who started the cleaning company.

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I thought I'm trying a bunch of stuff.

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Let me see if this works.

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And it really, it started to work way better than any of the other ideas I was

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working on.

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And then I started thinking, okay, how do I make this remote, figuring out how to make a remote, and then dove into the opportunity from there.

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And kind of what I discovered is, at least they, with the cleaning and local services industry, it's kind of two years behind the times in terms of marketing.

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When I brought it to the cleaning local services world, I was blown away the competition from basic, basic stuff that I was doing.

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And I think that still holds true to today is like, it's such an unknown market, because I think just the whole industry is kind of behind the times with marketing.

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So if you're just doing what's current, you're already ahead of the game with local services.

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So it's such an unfair, competitive advantage, I think for a lot of people who know marketing.

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You know

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one thing I've found with people who really have that entrepreneurial spirit that drive is they don't get overly attached to a specific idea.

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If they see an idea isn't really working, they pivot, they try something else out.

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Whereas creators, you know, people who develop a product and then fall in love with it, they will hold on to that until the very end, even if all they needed to do was pivot a little bit.

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Have you kind of seen that or felt that in your own thinking, as you've looked at these other ideas?

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Oh, a hundred percent absolutely.And look even I was luckily in hindsight, able to have a bias and saying, oh, I totally pivoted as need to.

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It's hard to do it in the moment, right?

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So like I could always tell what if his story wasn't now.

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But even at the time, for a long time, I resisted doing Vicki's frantically.

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And I said, no, no, no, we do residential cleanings.

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That's what I've read online.

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That's what we're going to stick with.

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That's my idea.

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And then it does take some time to say, okay, here's a light bulb.

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It takes some months of like getting used to the mentality of it and then pivoting and shifting.

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So I think this is very stoop what you alluded to, and I think for most people, it's going to take some time and that's totally okay.

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But the reality is you do need to pivot or in other words, shift where you're doing.

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Even In your mindset, just to be able to say, this is how advanced, this is how I'm going to cheat my goal.

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And my goal is, Hey, I want to travel and I want to help support my parents financially.

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How do I do that?

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I got to pivot and do something else.

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We talked so much in marketing about finding your niche and really serving that niche well,.

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But it's very true I think what you're saying and explaining.

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You can't always determine what that specific niche is from the outset, right?

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Sometimes you have to cast a little bit of a wider net and then work on narrowing it down and getting that focus once you find out what's really gaining traction within your business.

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Eric, you know this better than I do with marketing.

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That's marketing essentially.

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I'm going to do a bunch of different things, let me see which one has the best ROI, then I'm going to double down on that.

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And you just test different marketing tactics over and over and over until you figure that out, which I'm sure you do literally every day.

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the same thing with almost anything in life, but let's talk about entrepreneurship is you try a bunch of different things and you say, and you go hard at it.

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You say, let me give this a real shot, let me allocate the budget to it, let me actually give this a chance.

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And then see which one actually works and which one actually ticks the boxes that you want.

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And then you can dive into it more.

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So a lot of things, everything is a funnel, everything is just testing.

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Looking at the numbers is making decisions from that.

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So exact same philosophy.

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It's interesting to me too, that you had a goal in mind when you started this company, as you wanted it to be remote from the start, you wanted to have the ability to do some traveling.

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But you're also talking about a business that has employees or people that work kind of for you freelancing for you.

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However, you've got it set up.

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That's a challenge, right?

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When you're managing a group of people and a pretty diverse set of customers, keeping everybody happy.

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So how did that work as you started to grow and added more people to your service?

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Yeah, it is tough.

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And I think that's why it's such a hidden gem opportunity and kind of why we also launched MaidThis Franchise, like expand because a lot of people don't realize you can do local services companies.

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It is totally possible in this day and age with how quick technology's moved now, there's Slack now.

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Like there's a bunch of systems where you don't really need to be local anymore.

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But when I was starting, I was doing it as a sign out.

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So it was literally like, I didn't know what I was doing.

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So the cleaner would be done with the work in this day.

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I need to get paid.

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I'm like, Okay, well, I'll go to the ATM, get cash, ran outside of my building, hand it to them in the car.

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And it just looked like the sketchiest thing possible.

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Then after a while you realize I could do this electronically, I could do the interviews electronically.

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The cleaners get dispatched from their homes straight to the job site.

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So there's not really like, there's not too much of a need for an office environment, obviously that could help in some cases, many people like to see that people everyday, they think it contributes to culture, which is totally fair.

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I just think with the way technology has moved and how rapidly it's moved, it is no longer needed.

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Now remember I said earlier, local services business are usually a couple of years behind, that's true as well with remote work.

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I think a lot of marketing companies and other companies have figured out how to do remote work a long time ago.

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Local service companies haven't figured that out and on top of that, maybe they also have a mentality of that's not how this business works, because that's not how we've done it.

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So if you could move faster than with better marketing tactics and be able to have a remote team, which is totally doable now.

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You can leapfrog the competition very rapidly.

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So that's kinda what I found, like you said, just from being in it, like trying it out and saying, Hey, here's my constraints.

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I want a full-time job.

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I can't physically go anywhere.

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Eventually wanting to quit and go out of country.

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How do I do this?

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So we built a system systems in a way which allowed that to happen.

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And I'd be lying if I said, Hey, it's all smooth and gravy with a remote work.

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It's not, it's tough.

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You know, you don't have as much as the personal interaction.

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Maybe some things fall through the cracks.

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UmBut it's the way I'd like to set it up and now I'm going to continue to run it.

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You know starting and talking a little bit about the marketing, how you grew your company, talking a little bit about how then you really provide the service, the product, if you will.

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And then sort of the after the fact how you deal with, as you were talking about payments and service, and customer complaints, cause that all grows with time as well.

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So let's start with that first point around marketing.

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So you've got a business, you're an unknown, you're going into a marketplace where you've got to reach a lot of people, right?

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To get that message out.

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So I'm assuming digital marketing is the way that you went.

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Talk a little bit about what you did to sort of raise your visibility.

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Sure.

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When I started I had no what I was doing in digital marketing.

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I was a finance dude, like I knew Excel models.

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I didn't know anything about digital marketing.

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So I thought, okay, I want to do this.

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I don't want to go door to door and put flyers out.

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I can't, because I have a full-time job.

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How do I do this?

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Let me try adwords.

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So I said, I heard about this thing called Google AdWords.

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Let me go and plug it in and start.

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And then we got a first test run that way.

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I dealt it as a profit customer, but I was just so excited that it actually worked and someone bought a product.

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I'm like, wow, this is incredible, and kind of kept going from there.

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And for anyone who's listening, who is a marketer, you have, in my opinion, such an unfair, competitive advantage on the local spectrum because most of the companies, have no idea what they're doing with marketing.

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don't even know what SEO is, they don't know what email marketing is, data they don't know how to lead captures on the websites.

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Like none of this very basic stuff they know how to do.

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So, if you are even average at marketing, As a marketing company, you will crush local competition as far as I've seen.

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even though I was doing very basic stuff, which I didn't really know how to do, I realized, Hey, we're still starting to get traction.

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And as I learned more and more, you know, you get involved with forums, see what other people are doing, see what other successful companies do.

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And you realize that the core aspects of any local company, at least in our industry are three things- one is SEO and rankings, the other is reviews.

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So making sure you have pristine Yelp, Google reviews, and the other is just email marketing and lead capture.

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Basic stuff, right?

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But those are the three things, for example, that we do for our franchisees, because we know how critical it is on the local spectrum.

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So once after a lot of discovery, I discovered, Hey, these are the three pillars which are bringing us the most business.

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I just doubled down on that.

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And we still have other ways of doing marketing now over the course of years that we've tested out just to drive leads when we need.

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You know, you pull a lever and you're able to get lead flow.

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Um, but those are the three things that I've found over this eight years of doing it.

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That this is the foundation.

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You have to have those three things, and then everything goes from there.

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I was looking at your website earlier.

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It's a nice website, but one of the things that I really liked about it is it clearly articulates your value proposition.

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And if somebody is looking for the service, it quickly gets to the point of figuring out how much it's going to cost, right?

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And how quickly that you can set up somebody to come and pay a visit.

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How long did it take you to get that website where it is today?

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Eight years?

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I just saw it yesterday, actually just for the podcast.

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Perfect.

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Yeah.

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Yeah You should see the first iteration of our website.

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Like, I didn't even know what Google Adwords was.

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So that's me trying to set up a website, it was just like terrible.

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A hundred dollar template, the logo was made in Microsoft Word.

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Awful, awful.

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So I went from that within a year, upgraded to another more template of the website.

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Within another three years, maybe another website.

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So this website iteration I've had right now is completely customizable, probably did that about two years ago.

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2019.

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I would say since it gets to this iteration took us six years.

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But you know, I think I should have done it way earlier.

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Anyone will say that because if we're focusing on digital marketing, if someone looks at your brand and decides based on the website, if they're going to buy you or not.

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Like, that's your biggest marketing piece right there.

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And we didn't even get a pristine website like this until six years down the line.

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Yeah, our website before wasn't bad.

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It just wasn't custom built, it wasn't fully catered to the audience.

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So you know, having a great looking website, I think is very key for doing digital marketing.

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I would assume that in your business, there is not a long sales lead time right?

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If somebody is looking for this service, they're probably going to convert pretty quickly.

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And so once they click on those keywords that you're paying for, you want to have them on a landing page.

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That explains exactly what they're going to get and get them to convert right then and there.

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How important has it been to sort of refine your messaging on those landing pages to have a call to action that actually results in them submitting their information.

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Yeah, very good observation.

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And I think it depends on the industry for us.

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About 50% of bookings are on the website, 50% are phone calls.

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We found that usually customers who have a ticket item over$200 will want to call.

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On ones under$200 for our type of service, they don't mind just booking online.

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But the bigger ones, they want to speak with someone they're like, Hey, I'm spending a good amount of money.

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Let me ask you to speak with someone on the phone.

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Phone sales typically do convert better I think, just because you could consult them and talk to them as well.

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So you know our calls to action are two things, either you book on the website or you call us on the phone, if you have a concern.

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So ideally they can just self book and on the booking forward to say, look, if you have any questions, you call us, our numbers here, along with a ton of social proof all around the booking form.

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And we kind of guide them through the different steps.

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So the whole goal is to avoid confusion on the booking form on the website.

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If the way it's set up is they'll click, do you have a one-bedroom?

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Yes.

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Do you want a deep clean?

00:14:34.337 --> 00:14:35.597
They're like, oh, what's a deep clean?

00:14:35.837 --> 00:14:41.867
There's a little hover bar you can hover over, and it says what deeply and is, and it also says all the time, Don't worry, you could edit this afterwards.

00:14:41.867 --> 00:14:43.727
Don't worry if you have questions, call us.

00:14:43.967 --> 00:14:46.937
We try to remove any other clutter which might pop up.

00:14:46.937 --> 00:14:48.317
So that way they don't click elsewhere.

00:14:48.457 --> 00:14:59.327
So having a good funnel, and actually just keeping in mind basic stuff like I want to avoid confusion, I want to make sure there's enough social proof, I want to make sure there's enough reviews, I think that's huge.

00:14:59.567 --> 00:15:03.918
I really used this to key few things you need to do, which will result in 80% of the benefits.

00:15:03.918 --> 00:15:04.727
I think.

00:15:04.899 --> 00:15:10.179
I think that's so important what you mentioned, because you're really talking about meeting the customers where they are.

00:15:10.449 --> 00:15:18.279
And so often I see companies forcing people down a very specific path, but that not might not be the path that they're most comfortable communicating.

00:15:18.279 --> 00:15:18.519
Right.

00:15:18.610 --> 00:15:21.939
Maybe they do want to actually talk to that person because they've got some questions.

00:15:22.120 --> 00:15:27.309
They don't want to talk to our chat bot or send an email to some unknown person, hoping to get a reply.

00:15:27.699 --> 00:15:30.370
And I think you have to understand your customers.

00:15:30.549 --> 00:16:10.449
And it sounds like that's exactly what you've done there is you understand that a customer is looking for a purchase over a certain dollar amount, they're probably going to want to speak to a person.

00:16:10.449 --> 00:16:13.409
Exactly, exactly.

00:16:13.409 --> 00:16:25.716
And that's what we advise all of our franchisees, as well as like, this is a short sales cycle, right?

00:16:25.716 --> 00:16:26.779
This isn't like someone's doing a bunch of quotes and getting people out to check the home and then maybe book in a month.

00:16:26.779 --> 00:16:26.836
This is like, if they like you with the phone, they're

00:16:26.836 --> 00:16:26.843
going to book you, so you

00:16:26.843 --> 00:16:26.866
gotta be ready on the phone to pick up and close the sale immediately.

00:16:26.866 --> 00:16:26.905
Because if not, they're just going to go to somebody else, right?

00:16:26.905 --> 00:16:26.975
So there's things that we do and things we teach franchisees, which is like, this is how you make it competitive.

00:16:26.975 --> 00:16:27.009
This is how you quote, this is how you captured them.

00:16:27.009 --> 00:16:27.052
But the reality is we found it's phone sales or online bookings, right?

00:16:27.052 --> 00:16:27.066
People can do chats.

00:16:27.066 --> 00:16:27.091
It is a little bit harder to manage.

00:16:27.091 --> 00:16:27.153
And the ROI from that for the time spent on managing the chat function is a little bit tougher.

00:16:27.153 --> 00:16:27.220
So we just focused on two things, phone sales, as well as getting the convert on the online booking form.

00:16:27.220 --> 00:16:27.242
And that's the biggest ROI for us.

00:16:27.242 --> 00:16:28.031
And then comes the hard part, right?

00:16:28.031 --> 00:16:29.562
Really delivering the service.

00:16:29.591 --> 00:16:31.631
And you know, you're in unique business.

00:16:31.631 --> 00:16:35.711
You're sending strangers into somebody's private space, right?

00:16:35.741 --> 00:16:39.731
You know their homes or their rentals, and that's tricky, right?

00:16:39.731 --> 00:16:47.471
Because there has to be a trust factor there that you have with the employees who are going in there and with the customers that you're signing up.

00:16:47.591 --> 00:16:56.991
So how did you really build that trust with your customers so they are comfortable with these people coming into their homes?

00:16:56.991 --> 00:16:58.271
Eric, I love these questions that your asking me.

00:16:58.341 --> 00:17:03.957
Since these stuff has taken me years to figure out, you as the marketer, like, of course you have to know that kind of information.

00:17:04.587 --> 00:17:05.428
This is what it is.

00:17:05.428 --> 00:17:08.607
He's thinking about what the customer's worried about, which is what you just pointed out.

00:17:08.788 --> 00:17:10.648
Who is a stranger who's coming into my home.

00:17:11.127 --> 00:17:16.768
Now the first iteration of our website, talk nothing about the cleaners just said, here's the price you pay, here's about us as the company.

00:17:17.097 --> 00:17:20.398
The reality is the customer doesn't really care about us as a company.

00:17:20.398 --> 00:17:22.557
They care about who's coming to the cleaning and how much they're paying.

00:17:23.278 --> 00:17:28.258
So, what that means is on our website right now, we have to explain to them how we're vetting the cleaners.

00:17:28.738 --> 00:17:35.577
So we on the website on the first page, it says our five step cleaner screening process, only 2% of cleaners to make do with this process.

00:17:35.607 --> 00:17:38.008
We outline the steps and make it look very nice.

00:17:38.307 --> 00:17:43.677
The goal of that is to let the customers know, Hey, Dave, they've done a job with vetting the cleaners, the people who are coming.

00:17:44.458 --> 00:17:46.738
We feel secure and safe with them, right?

00:17:46.738 --> 00:17:52.077
But it took us a while to even realize like, oh duh, like of course the customer wants to know who's coming to their home.

00:17:52.288 --> 00:17:54.657
They don't care about us, the office staff, they care about the cleaners.

00:17:54.657 --> 00:18:05.187
So now that we know that, everything on the website's kind of geared towards ensuring that they know the exact process their cleaners is gonna go through and all the email communication talks about that as well.

00:18:05.708 --> 00:18:06.337
I love that.

00:18:06.337 --> 00:18:09.008
And I noticed it so prominently on the website.

00:18:09.218 --> 00:18:15.817
And one of the things that I love is as a marketer, what you're always trying to do is preempt customer questions, customer concerns.

00:18:16.448 --> 00:18:23.949
Not just talk about your features and benefits, you know, we leave your windows sparkling clean or something like that, yeah great, you'd expect that, right?

00:18:23.949 --> 00:18:30.098
But what you're really trying to do is overcome those objections and very prominently on your website, you're doing that.

00:18:30.308 --> 00:18:31.418
And what, what was the rate?

00:18:31.449 --> 00:18:35.648
Something like 2% are you accept or it was a pretty low number.

00:18:35.939 --> 00:18:36.617
It's a great stat.

00:18:36.617 --> 00:18:36.968
I love it.

00:18:36.968 --> 00:18:42.042
It's just like we only saw 2% of applicants who applied to get jobs who made this, like that's just the fact.

00:18:42.073 --> 00:18:45.802
So now that we have that stat, I can parade it around everywhere.

00:18:45.823 --> 00:18:48.552
Cause it sounds like such a low percentage and it is, right?

00:18:48.552 --> 00:18:50.802
We have a very strict screening process.

00:18:50.863 --> 00:18:58.312
The thing is customers are not going to know that unless you tell them that they're just very strict screening process and here's the data around that as well.

00:18:58.633 --> 00:19:06.192
One thing we also did on the website is to address exactly what you're talking about is having guarantees around what the customer's biggest worry is, right?

00:19:06.192 --> 00:19:07.603
For example, we have two divisions.

00:19:07.603 --> 00:19:10.093
One is regular residential, one is vacation rentals.

00:19:10.423 --> 00:19:14.472
Vacation rental is the customers are always concerned that the cleaner's not going to show up.

00:19:14.833 --> 00:19:15.103
Why?

00:19:15.103 --> 00:19:18.403
Because they only come into us if they work with the individual cleaner who's flaked.

00:19:18.732 --> 00:19:23.292
And they're like, oh my God, I need a professional company to come out because my guests are going to check into a dirty home.

00:19:23.653 --> 00:19:26.383
So our guarantee is never a no show guaranteed.

00:19:26.802 --> 00:19:27.222
Right?

00:19:27.462 --> 00:19:27.702
Boom.

00:19:27.823 --> 00:19:28.242
You get that?

00:19:28.363 --> 00:19:29.022
To get that badge.

00:19:29.022 --> 00:19:35.383
You put it right on the top of the header and all of a sudden the, where he is, Hey, is someone going to show up like, oh, they haven't ever no show guarantee.

00:19:35.472 --> 00:19:42.403
Oh, now there's this online booking, there's a phone number I could call, there's a cleaner vetting process here, like it all kind of ties it together.

00:19:42.762 --> 00:19:46.212
So I think the guarantee is actually extremely important for any business.

00:19:46.242 --> 00:19:58.413
It doesn't matter if it's local or not, but what is the one biggest worry your customer has make that a guarantee that your next biggest worry, make that as like a five-step cleaner screening process, which you could address somewhere on the webpage.

00:20:00.485 --> 00:20:03.336
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast.

00:20:03.336 --> 00:20:08.195
But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level?

00:20:08.405 --> 00:20:14.766
If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you.

00:20:15.036 --> 00:20:20.945
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00:20:21.185 --> 00:20:23.735
We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads.

00:20:24.006 --> 00:20:28.145
How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers.

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00:20:37.145 --> 00:20:44.915
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00:20:45.365 --> 00:20:46.625
Now back to the podcast.

00:20:48.660 --> 00:20:49.980
I love that as well.

00:20:49.980 --> 00:20:59.279
I recently had some service work done at my house and they say, well, the technician might be there anytime from eight o'clock until three in the afternoon or four in the afternoon.

00:20:59.639 --> 00:21:00.779
And you think about that.

00:21:00.809 --> 00:21:02.700
So you're just supposed to sit around and wait.

00:21:02.970 --> 00:21:09.779
So when it's convenient for them to show up, That's not really delivering very personalized service, it's not addressing any of my needs.

00:21:10.049 --> 00:21:12.990
I'm a working person, I need to be doing my job as well.

00:21:13.109 --> 00:21:21.089
So I love that you're putting a guarantee behind your service and addressing those specific challenges because I can imagine if you've got a rental business.

00:21:21.389 --> 00:21:21.539
Yeah.

00:21:21.539 --> 00:21:30.619
It would be awful if your unit wasn't cleaned when your next guest showed up.

00:21:30.619 --> 00:21:47.258
You know, we have a one hour arrival window and I had a customer recently ask me, Hey, I've a very tight deadline, Can you make that 30 minutes?

00:21:47.258 --> 00:21:47.339
I would love to tell them, yes,

00:21:47.339 --> 00:21:47.360
don't worry, it will be

00:21:47.360 --> 00:21:47.378
done in 30 minutes.

00:21:47.378 --> 00:21:47.627
Hey, look, I'd rather not over promise and under deliver.

00:21:47.627 --> 00:21:47.925
We have to keep the one hour arrival window, LA traffic sucks.

00:21:47.925 --> 00:21:51.165
I'm so sorry but that's part of our guarantee.

00:21:51.165 --> 00:21:55.336
It could only be guaranteed if these are the parameters around it, which isthe one hour arrival window.

00:21:55.336 --> 00:22:03.395
So also being transparent with the customer with what are the parameters around the guarantee, I think that's critical as well.

00:22:03.510 --> 00:22:20.070
I would imagine that because you're a remote managed service based business that you can't go out and inspect every house that's being cleaned to make sure that these cleaners are doing a good job, so you're relying a lot on your customers to really validate whether the work is being done correctly.

00:22:20.070 --> 00:22:23.830
How do you manage that with your customers and keeping up customer satisfaction?

00:22:24.780 --> 00:22:24.891
Yeah.

00:22:24.891 --> 00:23:09.721
And look at it's, that's probably the toughest part of any business, So I think are a lot of our focus is on customer service more than anything, right?

00:23:09.721 --> 00:23:16.421
Because the cleaners get dispatched from their home straight to the job.

00:23:17.500 --> 00:23:26.018
So hopefully we've onboarded a good cleaner, and we have a good way of screening out the bad matter what things are going to, cleaner's going to get through, which is the bad experience for the customer.

00:23:26.018 --> 00:23:26.196
So if there is a bad experience, we're always following up after the first cleaning via text messages saying, first of all, How'd everything

00:23:26.196 --> 00:23:26.196
go?

00:23:26.196 --> 00:23:26.196
Cool?

00:23:26.196 --> 00:23:26.198
Once you leave us a review on Facebook, Google, Yelp, anything like that.

00:23:26.198 --> 00:23:26.199
If it's bad, we address it immediately.

00:23:26.199 --> 00:23:26.201
We are very generous with our refund policy, with a refund policy, anything to keep our reviews pristine and the customers happy, honestly.

00:23:26.201 --> 00:23:26.203
So it is a pain, but the reality is for any market, you know, that your existing customers are 10 times easier to sell another service then, and you got.

00:23:26.203 --> 00:23:26.205
So the fact that you're giving them, let's say a free cleaning just to keep them happy as well.

00:23:26.205 --> 00:23:26.205
Just

00:23:26.205 --> 00:23:32.115
keep your existing customers happy and just bite the bullet on you know, when issues come up and just make sure they're taken care of.

00:23:32.475 --> 00:23:38.806
And it's painful, like especially at the beginning, we were like, I am giving this customer all their money back for this specific small reason.

00:23:38.836 --> 00:23:40.155
I think it's complete BS.

00:23:40.925 --> 00:23:44.625
Then you know the trick I found is you write it as a budget line item.

00:23:44.625 --> 00:23:46.435
So my mind is more of like sanities.

00:23:46.455 --> 00:23:49.875
Like I am budgeting$500 a month for refunds.

00:23:49.996 --> 00:23:50.536
It's okay.

00:23:50.536 --> 00:23:53.056
It's in the line item of my budget and I feel okay with it.

00:23:53.115 --> 00:23:56.355
So that's like, we want to get over it, but that is key, that is key.

00:23:56.879 --> 00:23:58.170
That's a great way to look at it.

00:23:58.200 --> 00:24:07.289
And it's interesting to me because oftentimes with growth companies where they really fall apart is on service delivery, right?

00:24:07.289 --> 00:24:25.680
It's after the sale service, because they've spent so much time and energy investing in their product, in developing their marketing to sell their product, that now all of a sudden the product or service is going out the door, but they really don't have the infrastructure in place to service those customers once they get the service or the product.

00:24:25.889 --> 00:24:27.500
How did you approach that?

00:24:27.720 --> 00:24:37.440
You know you're talking about having a call center like function where people can call in and talk to a sales agent as well as being able to call in if they have any service delivery problems.

00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:40.579
So how did that work as you grew the company?

00:24:41.289 --> 00:24:41.740
Yeah.

00:24:41.920 --> 00:24:47.410
You know, when you asked that now it makes me so jealous of like our franchisees, who don't need to reinvent the wheel.

00:24:47.440 --> 00:24:53.349
Like, I don't know how many hundreds of thousand dollars she probably lost from not having that set up, but that's the entrepreneur's journey.

00:24:53.349 --> 00:24:55.569
When you get started, you summarized it perfectly.

00:24:55.599 --> 00:24:59.799
You have a product, you put it out, you're like great people are buying, we're growing, things are awesome.

00:25:00.129 --> 00:25:11.650
Then you realize, oh, there's the other end of it where after you've done the sale, now you have to take care of the customer in case there are issues, and seem to take you a long time to figure out that system of how do you keep the customer happy?

00:25:11.980 --> 00:25:16.450
Which is part of marketing to be honest, the marketing, sales, it's all related because customer retention, right?

00:25:16.450 --> 00:25:20.549
If you have a great marketing funnel, but then the customers don't stay, what's the point of the marketing funnel?

00:25:21.440 --> 00:25:26.500
So we've tried a ton of different things, and we're still constantly iterating what we can do for customer happiness.

00:25:26.680 --> 00:25:30.889
The number one thing which is going to solve 90% of the issues, just to make sure you have a good product, right?

00:25:31.670 --> 00:25:38.440
Sometimes it's tough, especially when humans are involved to make sure you have a good product and a consistent product, but that's going to solve most of the issues.

00:25:38.440 --> 00:25:43.539
And then after that, you just have to realize or take account of what are the biggest complaints I'm seeing?

00:25:43.990 --> 00:25:46.029
And having someone constantly analyze it.

00:25:46.029 --> 00:25:51.789
So on our weekly management meetings, we look at every single complaint for the week and try to find the common thread.

00:25:52.029 --> 00:25:53.859
Is this a quality and scheduling issue?

00:25:53.930 --> 00:25:55.529
Are customers just moving away?

00:25:56.849 --> 00:26:00.460
Are we communicating with them too much, so that way they don't like it.

00:26:01.269 --> 00:26:07.990
So we're constantly looking at what are the common threads of why people are canceling and trying to button those things up with patchwork kind of.

00:26:08.589 --> 00:26:19.029
So that's all I'd recommend is make sure your product's good, and then afterwards, analyze, analyze, analyze data points of why customers are unhappy, and then button those up one by one.

00:26:19.562 --> 00:26:20.073
When you mention

00:26:20.073 --> 00:26:21.480
How would you measure?

00:26:21.480 --> 00:26:37.232
You mentioned earlier, reviews, things like Yelp and Google reviews, and I'm sure customer referrals play a role in the business as well, where friends refer other friends or, uh, other Airbnb hosts recommend their friends who are doing the same.

00:26:37.353 --> 00:26:43.292
How important is that to your business or to the growth of your business?

00:26:43.323 --> 00:26:47.833
Especially on the vacation rental side.

00:26:47.833 --> 00:26:49.608
It's huge because any vacation rental community in your city is going to be a pretty small community.

00:26:49.608 --> 00:26:52.789
Meaning all the hosts, like they're on the same Facebook groups, they know each other.

00:26:53.000 --> 00:26:56.990
They're going to ask each other, Hey, my cleaner's late, can your cleaner come out?

00:26:57.230 --> 00:26:58.879
Thus we have to do co-hosting.

00:26:59.299 --> 00:27:11.990
So even if you can't take care of the clients, letting them down in a nice way, or even if let's say I'll give an example, we're fully booked, so there's some new hosts who are trying to contact us and we can't take care of them.

00:27:12.589 --> 00:27:17.329
So I'm telling my team, contact them still, even though they've inquired and we can't take care of and tell them, I'm so sorry.

00:27:17.389 --> 00:27:18.349
We can't take care of you.

00:27:18.680 --> 00:27:25.299
But at least call them and tell them because the reputation is so important in the small insular community and word gets around rather quickly.

00:27:25.910 --> 00:27:30.589
So I have not been able to attribute a certain percent of our business, which is referral-based.

00:27:30.589 --> 00:27:33.619
I know I should be focusing on that more.

00:27:33.619 --> 00:27:41.180
I'd say that's one of the biggest pillars that any local service companies should be focused on is what is your percentage of business coming from referrals?

00:27:41.680 --> 00:27:43.400
So I don't know that exactly.

00:27:43.400 --> 00:27:49.789
I do know it is vitally important to keep your reputation overall in line because the world has lost smaller than they think.

00:27:50.298 --> 00:27:50.778
Oh, it is.

00:27:50.778 --> 00:27:52.818
And it's a shame how some companies handle it.

00:27:52.818 --> 00:27:57.858
I had an experience recently where I had some problems I had called into the company to try to get them resolved.

00:27:58.009 --> 00:27:59.058
Wasn't happening.

00:27:59.269 --> 00:28:01.969
I left them a negative review on Yelp and Google.

00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:06.560
If I didn't get a phone call the next day, you know, but by that time, it's too late, right?

00:28:06.560 --> 00:28:07.941
The damage has been done.

00:28:08.181 --> 00:28:18.951
And I think for a lot of companies, they don't take that after the sale service seriously enough, they let things get out of hand, which then results in people leaving a negative review because let's face it.

00:28:18.951 --> 00:28:25.040
People are more likely to vent their frustrations in a negative way if they've had a bad experience, than a positive way.

00:28:25.371 --> 00:28:29.911
And so you really have to be proactive when it comes to customer service to get those positive reviews.

00:28:30.590 --> 00:28:32.000
Eric, question for you.

00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:39.250
How would you recommend someone do that if they don't have the resources to have someone call every customer and say, how do your experience go?

00:28:39.250 --> 00:28:46.470
Do you have an automated solution or would you say, Hey, this will help prevent negative views online.You know, companies which are rapidly scaling, they might not be able to devote resources to that.

00:28:46.980 --> 00:28:49.740
Companies sometimes or people just want to be heard.

00:28:49.891 --> 00:28:57.980
And so I think a lot of times, if you can just provide them a venue to be heard, maybe it's a survey, or maybe it's a survey with a small incentive, you know?

00:28:58.350 --> 00:28:59.881
We really appreciate your business.

00:28:59.881 --> 00:29:06.990
If you would just take a few minutes to fill out the survey, I want to send you this$10 Amazon gift card or$5 Amazon gift card, or something like that.

00:29:07.260 --> 00:29:12.901
And then you could prompt them at the end, you know, if you've been really happy with our experience, would you be interested in leaving us a review?

00:29:13.141 --> 00:29:21.121
But if it feels real, if it feels genuine, and you're really trying to improve you know, their experience as a customer.

00:29:21.240 --> 00:29:22.770
I think people respond well to that.

00:29:22.770 --> 00:29:27.181
They just need a voice, but not like calling into the bank.

00:29:27.300 --> 00:29:30.060
and after every phone call they say, would you mind taking this brief survey.

00:29:30.121 --> 00:29:32.070
That just feels inauthentic, right?

00:29:32.070 --> 00:29:35.490
It just feels like that's something for HR needs.

00:29:35.490 --> 00:30:03.240
It's nothing for me as a customer, it's not gonna make any difference in the service that I get.

00:30:03.320 --> 00:30:04.000
You know, it's funny.

00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:05.103
I was just on my Chase website and I logged in.

00:30:05.103 --> 00:30:05.485
And as a marketer, you appreciate how ridiculous this is.

00:30:05.485 --> 00:30:05.597
They took over the entire page just to get me to leave a survey.

00:30:05.597 --> 00:30:05.619
And I couldn't figure out how to get out of this.

00:30:05.619 --> 00:30:05.622
Chase

00:30:05.622 --> 00:30:05.623
did this.

00:30:05.623 --> 00:30:05.626
and I was like, okay, I'm just going to exit the whole window, I guess and not log back in the chase to do my banking for now.

00:30:05.626 --> 00:30:05.627
It was just kind of ridiculous.

00:30:05.627 --> 00:30:05.629
We were like these large companies, sometimes you're so out of tune with how this works, Exactly

00:30:05.629 --> 00:30:11.660
what you said that you can't just make an impersonal, you can make it intrusive for the consumer, but a lot of times companies do that.

00:30:11.841 --> 00:30:15.721
People want to feel like their comments are going to lead to action.

00:30:16.152 --> 00:30:22.622
That if they leave a negative comment that somebody is going to call them and follow up and say, I read this that's really concerning.

00:30:22.831 --> 00:30:31.852
Tell me a little bit more about what happened, or even if somebody leaves a very positive comment in a survey, follow up and say, thank you so much for that nice thing they want to feel heard.

00:30:32.001 --> 00:30:36.862

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