A remodeling project can take what seems to be a never-ending amount of time. One step forward, two steps back—that is what happens sometimes.
All the decision making can overwhelm the clients. Decision fatigue can occur.
The project starts and the demo takes place, often triggering discovery of conditions that create the need for change orders. Yes, you told the client unforeseen problems were likely, but they still are not happy about it.
Weeks of hard work create a beautiful product. Final completion gets closer and closer. The inevitable flagging enthusiasm on the part of both your company's employees and the clients is overcome by extreme happiness that the project is done.
The clients move in. And what are they likely to discover? Dust in the cabinets. Odd bits of hardware. Debris in the strangest places. What happens to their opinion of your company? It moves in the wrong direction.
I know how hard it is to clean a completed project so that it is spotless and in perfect move-in ready condition. Early in the life of our company, we would try to do it with our own employees. They were not professional cleaners, they were carpenters and laborers. They did "okay" cleaning, but not stellar.
Our clients were not as happy as we wanted them to be. So, we built into our proposal getting the entire house professionally cleaned.
Yes, even if we were doing a kitchen remodel and had good dust protection barriers up along with a fan creating a negative atmosphere in the work area, dust inevitably would get all over the house, at least to some degree.
If the clients had a professional cleaner who worked for them on a regular basis, we would pay that cleaner to clean the whole house. The money to do so was built into our estimate.
Leave your clients astounded by how clean their project was when they moved in and they will tell their friends what a wonderful remodeling job your company did. Leave it dirty, even just here and there, and they will tell their friends your company was good, but...
What do you want them to say? Have the site cleaned professionally and their tales will be positive ones.
