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Important questions to ask a cleaning service before you hire them:

1. How do you charge?  Is it by hour per person?  Flat rate per visit?  How much is it? 
2. Can you come on a set schedule every month?  Can I provide you primary instructions so the same work is done each visit? 
3. If so, do you send the same cleaning crew/person each time or is it different people? 
4. How big of an arrival window do you provide?  For example, is it 4 hours (i.e. 8 am 12 noon), 2 hours (i.e. 8 am to 10 am)? Shorter? Longer? 
5. Do you bring your own cleaning equipment, cleaners and supplies? 
6. Do you use eco-friendly cleaning products (if this matters to you)? 
7. What background checks to you do on each employee? 
8. Do you have Workers Compensation for every employee? 
9. Is your company insured for breakages, insurance and other possible problems?

Related: Cleaning service cost calculator

Benefits of Hiring a Professional Cleaning Service

You could always stock up on all the cleaning utensils and household cleaners and do all your own house cleaning- or you could have family or local teenagers do it. But in today’s world, whether you’re outsourcing for a service that’s not in your wheelhouse, or thinking about doing it DIY, hiring the pros is almost always going to be cheaper, easier, and more efficient. Here are a few reasons why.

1. Lower Overhead Costs

Hiring your own cleaning team, or handling it yourself in some other way means investing in cleaning equipment, training your own people- whether it’s family, friends, or yourself- and setting aside a dedicated space that could be used for your existing needs. Handling cleaning functions on your own means you’ll have to build out your own cleaning capabilities with the same capacity as a professional cleaning service. Why would you go through all the expense and the trouble when you can simply hire an existing cleaning service that is ready with trained professionals and all the necessary equipment?

2. Accountability

Naturally, handling cleaning in-house does not prohibit you from holding yourself or whoever you have do the work for you responsible for poor performance or unprofessional behavior. But it does mean that you’ll have to dedicate time and energy to the business of handling these concerns yourself. With an external cleaning service provider, they will take care of all these kinds of things for you. If you want a given individual rewarded or censured, simply have the service do it for you.

3. High-Quality Custom Service

With a professional cleaning service, you get to build out or choose a customized plan for your cleaning services. That means you’ll never have to micromanage your cleaners. Just expect them to stick to your custom plan, and enjoy the results.

Questions to Ask Before Hiring

Any professional service that intends to send employees to your property should be eager and able to answer a few questions initially. The best cleaning services will anticipate these questions and provide you with literature detailing the answers to questions like the following.

1. How Long Have You Been in Business?

There’s nothing wrong with hiring a new company. In fact, a new company may be more highly motivated to do great work than an old, lumbering, or languishing outfit. Still, you want to prompt your prospective cleaning professional to make the case for why they are the best choice, and this is an important part of that process. This will also give you a chance to vet the company’s work history by mentioning other businesses they have worked for.

2. How Are Your Employees Screened?

Janitorial services usually take place after hours, when few to no one else is around. That means you’re going to be placing a great deal of trust in the character of the people who will be given the keys to your building. So it’s important to make sure that their staff are well-vetted, do not have a criminal history, and are of good character.

3. How Are Your Employees Trained?

Unfortunately, the cleaning business is one in which many untrained or under-trained people are often given low paying jobs just to fill out cleaning teams. You do not want to work with a company that does not ensure its workers are well trained. After they explain their training process, you may have the opportunity to look over their training material and judge it on its own merits before hiring the company.

4. Are You Insured?

Accidents happen. It’s part of life no matter what you’re doing, and that’s why God created insurance. Any cleaning company worth the vans it rides in will have insurance protecting you from any damage that may occur. Chances are, they are going to be operating heavy machinery and potentially dangerous chemicals. That means insurance is not optional.

What to Expect From a Cleaning Service

Naturally, what you expect from a professional cleaning service is a clean office, home, or what have you. But that’s not all.

In many cases, you should expect an email indicating that the cleaning service will arrive at a given time and that you must cancel by a given time if you no longer wish to receive the service. This is your chance to make sure the space is ready to be cleaned. Before the service begins, you should expect to take your cleaners on a complete walk-through of the facility or spaces to be cleaned. This is your chance to point out any special areas of interest, things not to be moved, and the like.

You can expect to be pleasantly surprised by the quality of the work. Professional cleaners are professional cleaners for a reason- that is, they should deliver professional-grade service. You should walk in, notice the difference right away, and be glad you chose to hire them.

Whether you contract with the service regularly or hire them for a one-time service, you should expect to receive a call or email asking for feedback. Tag lines like “how did we do?” are common for these types of messages. This shows that they are willing to take criticism and improve. It’s also an opportunity to prompt the company to reward its staff for a job well done.

What Goes into Becoming a Professional Cleaning Service Provider?

Depending on the equipment used and the types of spaces and jobs done, different cleaning services will need to be trained in different ways. Personnel may need to learn to operate powerful machinery and deal with potentially dangerous chemicals. This means that training is critical.

Hands-On Training

Sometimes, having a new employee learn by doing is a great way to handle training. You may have to judge for yourself whether this is appropriate given the particular circumstances of the job. But as long as an experienced cleaner is there to watch over the new employee, there’s nothing wrong with hands-on training.

Shadowing

Companies that pay a new employee to follow experienced staff to learn the job indicate that they take quality very seriously. Having new cleaners observe experienced and trained senior co-workers is a great way to ensure that they truly understand what goes into a job, rather than simply knowing how to operate a piece of equipment.

Certification

In many cases, local regulations require certifications specific to the type of cleaning being done. If certification is not mandated, some companies may choose to have their employees certified anyway, or expect it before hiring. This is a good practice and will demonstrate to you why such a company may be a great choice.

In-House Training

Any good cleaning company will do at least some in-house training. It’s cost-effective for them, and it benefits the trainer as much as it does the learner.