The professional home cleaning industry is one of the fastest growing segments of the cleaning industry. Compared to other related cleaning industries, home cleaning businesses run as organized companies are a concept less than thirty years old. The demand for quality service is being fueled by a rapidly growing customer base.
The first professional services were started in the late 70's and early 80's. Historically, house cleaning has been provided by day workers, women working on their own, full time or part time usually for cash. This model of service is being quickly replaced by a market demanding more sophistication and higher levels of customer service. The demand is fueled by dual income families working more hours and personal time is becoming a scarcer commodity. More and more consumers are hiring outside sources for services at home not because they want to, but because of life quality issues. When asked what the greatest change is in the industry in the last twenty years, the most common answer is consumers no longer see having their homes cleaned as a luxury, but rather a necessity. "In years past, when prospective customers would call and get an estimate, the first conversation always included comments like, I am only hiring a service because I work too many hours... customers felt the need to explain why they needed the service, now customers seem to not feel the need to "explain", they just hire us, the notion that having someone clean your home is only for the rich is not how consumers think today, says Carrie Kiser, Co-owner of Champagne Services in Sterling, VA.
This great demand for service is fueling incredible growth in the residential cleaning industry. Every area of the country is experiencing tremendous growth. While many service owners are individuals who started out cleaning homes themselves and have built substantial size companies, the appeal of high profit margins and relatively low start-up costs, combined with incredible growth potential is attracting many from the corporate world that have wanted to own their own businesses. In recent years, more entrepreneurs with business savvy have entered the industry, to take advantage of the growth potential. This new breed of owner has raised the bar for the entire industry and is causing the entire cleaning industry to change at a quicker pace.
Easy to get into, hard to stay in!
If you visit the business section at any bookstore, or search for information online about starting/ running a residential cleaning service, you will find source after source claiming that you start a maid service with practically nothing and make a fortune! While there are many "rags to riches" stories that are all inspiring of how people started with nothing and built huge companies this is not reality most of the time. Everybody loves a story like this and they do happen. The fact is a residential cleaning can be very easy to get into, but can be quite a difficult business to master.
Customer demand being so great can almost guarantee a steady supply of new customers with very low cost marketing tools, but the hard part comes in recruiting, hiring, and keeping qualified cleaning technicians to maintain high levels of customer service to provide a foundation for growth.
Many owners quickly find themselves in the vicious "revolving door" cycle, where customers are quickly pouring in the front door, but are just as quickly walking out of the back door. This contributes to high and sometimes quick "burn out" , causing the industry have more "churn" than other businesses. It is not uncommon for entrepreneurs to invest thousands into a new service, certain of a quick return on their investment, only to find themselves calling it quits after even less than a year sometimes.
So what makes it so different or difficult from other service businesses?
Most segments in the cleaning industry always hire "entry level", usually lower skilled workers that can be transient and tend to change jobs frequently. This fact along with customers demanding quality work, consistency, and security (and rightfully so) can make managing a home cleaning service industry a tough job.
One huge misconception by commercial contract service owners is "well I will start a maid service to give my nighttime workers, daytime work". This gets many into quick trouble because while in theory the two related industries are the same, both send employees out to clean buildings the two could not be more different. Almost every aspect of the businesses is different from the employees, customers, systems, and equipment.
To add to the difficulty that makes home cleaning unique from most related industries is the personal nature of the relationship. Cleaning technicians are deep into the personal lives of customers, much more so than in commercial cleaning situations. If a company experiences high turnover this can be a recipe for "customer churn", leaving many services owners feeling like they are just "spinning their wheels".
The personal nature of the relationship with the customer can also be huge advantage, for service owners that hire, train, and manage employees and accomplish high levels of customer satisfaction find that this can contribute to unlimited growth potential. Most customers do not buy on price, but rather service. Once they find "their" service that caters to their wants and needs they tend to be extremely loyal and will rarely change. It is almost unheard of customers changing services over price if the levels of service are there to justify the cost.
If you are thinking of house cleaning as a business option, do your homework, as with any business idea. The development and explosive growth has provided options for many resources that were not available before. The tools and information that are available to those entering the industry can dramatically cut down the learning curve and provide a much higher chance of success with less stress.
About Author
Perry D Phillips, Jr is the Publisher of Home Cleaner Magazine. The only publication exclusively for owners and managers of professional home cleaning companies. Visit his website at http://www.homecleanermagazine.com You can sign up for the free weekly industry newsletter.
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