Cleaning with Purpose Podcast – Episode 3: Office Cleaning & Commercial Cleaning

Speakers: Charly (Host), Jeff (General Manager)

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Charly: Welcome to the Cleaning with Purpose podcast. Jeff, it's such an honor being on a journey with you.

Jeff: Thank you.

Charly: This podcast, we really want to talk about office cleaning and commercial cleaning and these different areas through that lens. And so to start this conversation, I'd love to know—and we've talked about this in previous podcasts a little bit—the evolution and history of Crystal Clean as far as these areas of cleaning and what the goal is as we go into the recording of this. By the way, this is November 2024, so going into 2025, how can we really help our service area, Southwest Florida, understand and know what it takes to keep things clean through the lens of this particular podcast topic?

So let's start with the types of cleaning that we've shared: office, industrial, medical. You want to go ahead and kind of talk about that for a little bit?

Jeff: Yeah. You know, throughout the history of Crystal Clean, common area cleaning with the HOAs and the towers built up a workforce that was going out daily. And with that common area cleaning in place and the recurring work, it's not that office cleaning had ever been necessarily ignored. There was so much work amongst the HOAs that we didn't necessarily seek it out.

So you take the last few years, and we've really grown the office cleaning. And we have some really nice local big companies that have trusted us to come in and clean every day. So office cleaning has kind of taken off, and we want to do more of it. It is another cycle of work that we're very comfortable and confident with.

As you go through the categories of office cleaning, you have the smaller offices that maybe independently own and operate it. It could be a dentist's office and doctor's offices at a small scale, realtor offices, so on and so forth. Our world is full of them.

Then you get into the very large complexes. And that's where things can get a little trickier because, again, the need starts to elevate. So in an office, you always do have the common areas that people come and go into—a lobby—and it needs to represent for the company. The restrooms are always a key area. You can't have overflowing trash and dirty, poor maintenance—all these things that would stand out and would just be really a terrible mark against any particular business.

So we get to help facilitate all those things. In an office environment, you're especially aware to make sure you're maintaining what is important to the company you're working for as well. And so we have very large-scale offices that are in the scientific world, and everything is really meant to be kept pristine. It's world headquarters. Executives come and go.

Knowing the areas that people will be especially sensitive to, having day porter routines to keep things up through the day, having evening staff to make sure they get all the garbage and all the floors and all the restrooms—it's been a really nice growth area for us from a business perspective. But on a personal level, it's really fun and nice to work with some of these big office environments and be a part of their team as the ones who facilitate the regular cleaning.

Charly: One thing that I really love about what you shared is that depending on the scope of the job, there's different frequencies or cadences of how you approach it to keep it pristine, to keep the perception of the place. That's where I think our scale really helps.

So to a person who wants to—doctors and dentist offices are a really good example of where a small company, just an individual, can say, "I'm going to go get a cleaning job." And that's part of what we compete with, and that's okay. Nothing against cleaners out there making a living. I'm happy for them.

But if it's once a week and it's a doctor's office, it's pretty simple to find maybe a person local that does a good job. And we do offices like that. But the next level is we can't afford for any inconsistencies. So if a cleaner can't make it, we need a replacement cleaner. If we're supposed to clean on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, or Wednesday, Saturday—if we're supposed to clean after hours—it starts to get more difficult to staff for a lot of people.

But again, with our scale, we blossom out to where we have over 100 cleaners that work for us. So people who are looking for part-time work or evening work, they can look to Crystal Clean and go, "Well, what can I do over the weekend to make a little extra money? Or what if I only want to work two evenings a week?"

With our scale and with our staff, we're able to facilitate a lot of the offices that have multiple days but different days through the week, or even on the weekends, or in the evenings, or some really early morning. Some of our cleaners like to work 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. So we're able to facilitate what is needed in the office cleaning world when it can be a little more difficult maybe for just a person to take on and provide what's needed for the office owner.

As it grows in scale, it becomes more important for someone like Crystal Clean to come in and provide the labor force and the techniques and all the things that go with that.

Charly: One thing that I love about what you shared is this—and this comes back to the onboarding and the quoting process—is that with your knowledge, wisdom, skill, and Crystal Clean's history, four decades now, we are real clear on what it looks like to have specific frequencies, cadences for specific business types. And as a business grows—which is happening all over the place here in Southwest Florida, especially in the last decade—we can scale with you.

So these pieces are really important to unpack as part of the bigger offering of where Crystal Clean, I would like to say, is more magnificent—is an exceptional company in the context that if we're coming in and you're a single office but you grow to multiple offices, we can grow with you. If you're a single office that acquires more office space, we can grow with you. If you're like a four-story or five-story scientific organization—one of the ones that we work with is that—we can build teams of people to come in at specific cadences to keep things where they need to be kept.

And the operative word—we've shared this in many previous podcasts—is consistency over time. Almost always, when people are looking for new service and they've had previous service, one of the top issues is consistency over time.

Could you talk a little bit about that onboarding or that quote process? What do you expect if somebody calls or emails or sends you a contact through the website? What's the next step on the Crystal Clean side? How does that flow and what's the timing?

Jeff: Well, typically, if someone sends in a request just through Google, we get that right away. We're all connected through our phones and sitting at our desks. So we really try to get back with people within an hour or two is our goal. And it happens most of the time. And if we haven't gotten back within a 24-hour period, it would be highly unusual. I can't even think of a time where I didn't get back within 24 hours, but usually it's same day because it's too easy to at least go, "Hey, how can we help?" Yeah, and it gets the conversation started.

And for people who are in a hurry, because life is like that—they're like, "Oh no, I was supposed to get a quote"—and they'll tell us their story, and we'll do what we can. So it often includes a site visit. Like, okay, we'll come down and see you and take a look, and we'll talk about that scope of work and talk about what it is that you really need and what we can do to facilitate it.

And make sure that in the proposal process, if it's going to be competitive, it's nice to know. I don't care who I'm competing with. I just want to know that we're trying to match up things and align things to give us at least a fair shot at the job.

When we're able to pull all that together in relatively short order, then proposals for me usually two or three days. And if we need to start work, we say we like to have 30 days to align operations to start any new job. But the reality is when people go, "I really need you to start Monday," we come back, we talk with operations. And again, throughout the history that as I can think of it, we rarely, if ever, have not met a deadline and said, "Okay, we can do it." I mean, we have cleaners available. We're used to adjusting schedules. So if that's the demand, if that's what really is going to make the client happy in that moment and they need someone to come clean, we're going to be all over it.

Charly: I love this. So let's break this down. First of all, let's get this fundamental the way you answer the calls and you reply to them.

Jeff: Yes. Yeah, we have a real person answering the phone every day. And then, you know, Jannie is her name as our primary. But in between Jannie, Enfy, Zareth, Oxery—you're going to have a real person answer the phone. If you say, "Can I talk to Jeff?" If I'm sitting at my desk and the phone rings, yeah, I'm going to answer it. I feel like that's an important part of people's experience.

I don't know about you, but when I call and get put in the voicemail loop, it really drives me crazy. My whole thought process in that is they don't even care to talk to me. This is getting really annoying when I have to go from push one, push two, find an extension, punch in a person's name, leave a voicemail. We try to remove all of that and make it where you talk to a real human when you call in.

So this is a big part of what seems basic from your and my history and decades of business experience, but answering the call. But then taking care of the customer with some of the values we've talked through in our previous episodes, with care, true compassion. What does it actually mean? It means that Jeff or whoever is working with them actively listens to their struggles, their challenges, their frustrations, and really incorporates, "Okay, is this what I'm hearing? Got it. Okay. Let me go through. I would like to come out and do a site visit, depending on size or scope of work, to see exactly what it would take to accommodate you and take care of these struggles, frustrations, but also set the bar real high for the future to make sure we're living into a scope of work and a delivery of that work that is exceptional, cross-spectrum." And that C-word comes back consistently.

So then what you're sharing too is that once they call you, you define what the project is. Typically within two or three days, you're turning that back around in the form of a proposal. And then depending on their need, you Crystal Clean the team is willing to accommodate and you have the scale to do that.

A big part of this, as we've talked about in previous episodes and a little bit today in this episode, is the idea that there's 100 plus people in different parts of the actual operations here to move things forward for customers.

Jeff: Correct.

Charly: So that is typically how things happen. And that first call tells so much, as you know. And talking to a person, getting a feel for the personality and what they're really asking for and what the requirements are. And you can tell the difference. Some people are just out to get five quotes and really don't care. And, of course, we respond to that. But when you have a meaningful conversation with someone, you pick up on that as well. So over and over again throughout our history, I mean, we've had large and small, but when you connect with people in a very real, meaningful way, like I said, it turns into a program and a relationship that extends well into the future. That's always the goal.

One of the big things we've shared as a big theme in many of our episodes is this idea of exceptional businesses are created from great communication, great systems, delivered consistently. And I just want to make sure we reiterate that through the cleaning process.

A big initiative we're kicking off for 2025 is what we call the Crystal Clean Cares Initiative, which is a place where people can go online and they can post and they don't have to give their name. Because, you know, we've talked about this. Sometimes we're like, "Oh, I don't want to be a tattletale. I don't really want to share this." But all they have to provide is the place of service that we're servicing and then the struggle, challenge, complaint, whatever that is. And then our team's on it. And it's just another way to provide a conduit for people to know we deeply care. We do want to make sure things are right.

We've talked about this too, that we're going to do our very best. If there are problems, we want to work on them. But we also need open communication, authenticity, transparency, trust—some of the values that form the Crystal Clean culture. And we're trying to emanate those on our end. And we provide all the conduit for you to have that. But you need to come to us if you've got an issue to make sure that we're taking care of it.

Our goal, because of the way the systemization and everything else—and we'll get into Crystal Clean University to assure that all the people that we bring into this Crystal Clean family from the employee team side, they are continually educated and reminded of these things.

But I just want to really reiterate the fact that we're going into 2025. If we set the bar, and I would challenge everybody on this, listening to this, to set the bar to say at an individual level, at a professional level, at a business level, what will it take to make 2025 the best year ever? That at least for the services we provide, we're already on that. But also, we want to be part of making your 2025 the best year ever.

And just so we have context, our filming here is November of 2024. So with everything I've shared, anything you want to talk through about examples or case studies or illustrations around great communication, great systems, Crystal Clean University—anything come to mind, feel free to share.

Jeff: Okay, so I'm really happy we're going to put Crystal Clean Cares out there for people. Yay! Because typically it's just been maybe when we're on site, and I'll share an example.

We're fortunate enough to be able to pick up multiple different federal offices in the area because you have to be vetted through the FBI. So, you know, you're badged, and very specifically, we have to have cleaners go there that are badged and processed.

And we had a cleaning job happen at one nearby that's a government office. And Dave and I were in helping clean the floors, the carpets. And we had basically a complaint from a woman who worked in one of the offices. And we hadn't been there long. It's really nothing we had done, but she was complaining about her floor being dirty. And it was really dirty. I don't know how it got that dirty. But she's just complaining about it because we're the cleaning company.

Dave and I stopped, brought all of our equipment over and said, "Okay, mission, we're going to get this floor clean." And it was a task. But we were able to facilitate her in the moment. She's just happy as can be. We're still cleaning those offices every day. And we love when that happens.

Now, Crystal Clean Cares allows a person, even just working in a cubicle or a resident living somewhere—anyone can reach out and go, "Hey, I'm really unhappy with this, or I think you might have missed this, or I would like to see this done." And if it falls within something that we can do to make them happy, or again, just on a personal level, we want to do what we can.

And we realize there's limits, and we can't do everything that everyone wants all the time. But we'd like to know when we're doing good or when we're not doing as good, or if there's just something that's maybe an anomaly that you go, "Yeah, we can do that next time we show up." And we have a process for that. I mean, obviously, we're able to create work orders, call our lead tech. "Hey, can you go over there and help the cleaner out with this particular project? Do you have to come and go with supplies anyway? Will you knock this out for us?" We're able to do that.

And it's coached into our staff not to go, "Why would I do that? It's not in the scope." We don't want to hear that. We're going to be like, "No, let's just take care of it. It'll make the client happy."

Charly: Wow. I'm going to unpack one thing that I think is amazing here. You just said that you and Dave—Dave's the owner—were out cleaning. One of the big principles, I'm a high-performance coach, and one of the things we teach in high-performance leadership is that we don't have followers in a business. We have collaborators. And we are in it, demonstrating it, role modeling it, day in and day out, wherever it's applicable. We've got to step in, we do it. There isn't a multi-dimensional piece here where I couldn't possibly clean because I'm the general manager or I'm the owner. No. If it needs to be done and we need to step up, all hands on deck. Let's get it.

Can you talk about that idea?

Jeff: Sure. It is a mindset. I can't even say that Dave and I have sat around and had a discussion ago, "When we have the opportunity to jump in and help, let's do it and set an example." We don't have those conversations. You just do it.

But at the same time, we do it all the time. We're out in the warehouse helping move things around and arrange things or prep for jobs. One time, we have a country club that just scheduling issue and nobody shows up on Saturday morning. I literally, my phone rang from my client, 7 a.m., "Nobody's here." And typically our cleaners show up between 5, 6 a.m. So I'm like, "Okay, let me make a couple of calls." And like I said, scheduling, just a miscue. And I'm like, "We'll be right there." And I didn't know who would be right there, but I was like, "We'll be right there."

I called Dave, and I called our operations team, and we only had a select few people that could make it, and so we started calling some cleaners, like, "Hey, you want to come help us out?" And next thing you know, by 8 a.m., we're all there cleaning, including Dave and myself, going through sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, cleaning a country club top to bottom because that's what needed to be done.

In fact, it was an opportunity to clean even more extensively than normal and make sure that we made a good representation of going, "You know what, if there's a miss, we're going to fix it." We're out there doing it anyway. Do it extra well while you have the chance. It makes the client happy. You're going to keep them and retain them. And they are still a client.

And so moments like that, I mean, we are proud of it, but I hope that it's just coached in and we don't even give it a thought. We just go, we just do it.

Charly: Two things I want to unpack here. One is if there's a problem, our focus is always to make it right. One thing that I'm hearing—not hearing you say, "It's not my fault. Somebody else's got an excuse. I'm denying the fact that they're not supposed to be there." Blame, excuse, denial are all principles of things that we don't have as part of the Crystal Clean philosophy. We always discuss solutions that—I mean, again, we are wired that way for whatever reasons. If there's a problem, that means, okay, well, what can we do to resolve it and make it better—solution focused?

Yeah. And then two, it's like 11th hour. We get it. I consider that when you think about what you've just shared is going the extra mile. And one quote that I love is "go the extra mile because it's lonely there." And that's just a part of the fabric of this.

The part I really enjoy too is you shared it wasn't something we sat down and thought about. We just stepped up and did the work. So it's like inherent into our culture and into our beings that we're going to, "Hey, if there's a deficit here or something was misscheduled or whatever that might be, well, okay, you got it. Let's go get it. Let's take care of it."

That's a big part of that last part of the great communication, great systems, consistently and the great communication part with consistency and then get out there and handle it. So I just want to commend for that. That's awesome. So cool to hear.

So when we think about if you can break down the different types of cleaning you're capable of, I'll give you a little bit of seed idea here. We're talking about a single office, maybe a once-a-week cleaning to a medical office with specific requirements and compliance. That sounds like something. An industrial area where they have specific requirements and compliance to getting authorized for federal government work. Like this whole spectrum of stuff.

So can you talk a little bit more about the different types of cleaning you can do and you're authorized and you're willing to get certified where you need to be or get clearance where you need to be? A little bit more on that. What are the different categories?