The changing of the season from summer to fall brings forth a rush of allergens – unless the season change is greeted with a quality commercial carpet cleaning.
With summer nearing an end, fall winds and seasonal plant allergens create high levels of discomfort for many people. Sickness due to allergies can lead to missed days of work or lost productivity, as even the slightest allergy can cause a person to become drowsy and uncomfortable while working.
Woodard Cleaning & Restoration specializes in commercial carpet cleaning, and we recommend that businesses regularly clean their carpets to help reduce seasonal allergens. Carpets and all other upholstered materials act as filters, capturing airborne contaminants. While this helps keep those allergens from floating into the breathing zone, it is also a great reason for regular cleanings.
As Woodard’s operations manager, I have seen how bad it can get when commercial carpets are not well maintained – in fact, I’ve seen cases where soil has filled the depth of the fibers, from the carpet backing all the way up to the face fibers. Businesses with a lot of foot-traffic, such as restaurants or retail shops can collect a high amount of dust and soil. The longer it goes without cleaning, the more the soil sinks in through the carpet fibers.
At Woodard, we want to provide the legendary service that has earned us rave reviews as the “best commercial carpet cleaner in St. Louis.” Woodard crews will not only clean the carpet, but also provide carpet care advice to the business owner. It is this attention to detail and customer service that sets us apart in commercial carpet cleaning.
As a standard practice, I recommend for businesses to vacuum their carpets on a daily basis with a quality vacuum cleaner. When the bag gets more than half full, replace it, as the vacuum suction suffers as the bag fills. Once that soil gets down into the carpet, these particles actually cut the fibers of the carpet, which creates a “dirty” appearance (in fact, the carpet is just reflecting light differently, due to the abrasions on the fibers).
Great customer service makes a huge impact on your customers. Last week, I went to a nice restaurant with my wife and friends. We had anticipated the event for several weeks, selected a restaurant based on the type of food they offer, their ambiance, location, and their good reputation.
We enjoyed everything about the experience! The food was great, and the environment was nice, and the customer service was wonderful. Being Woodard’s Director of Sales and Marketing, I know great customer service – we work hard to provide it to our customers. Yes, there is a cost associated with the service, but there are a great number of customers willing to pay just a little bit more to be pampered through their experience – and these customers usually tell others of their experience, bringing in new customers for the company. At the restaurant, we paid a bit more, and we experienced great customer service with our food – and as a result, the restaurant has built a relationship with me.
At Woodard, one way we build our customer service is through engaging our customers. We’ve found that through our communication, we are best able to identify our customer’s needs, wants and desires – so we can fill them. This makes our customer’s objectives our own. We stay flexible in how we address these needs, making sure that our solutions do more than just meet our needs – in fact, we search for solutions that are a “win for the customer, a win for our employee, and a win for our company” – we call this “W3” and it’s what we strive for through all of our customer interactions. If we achieve W3 with our customers, we know that they will be thrilled with our service, earn us compliments, and will tell others of their experience.
One recent example of a W3 moment was when we responded to a residential water loss, caused by a pipe break in their basement. The project started simply enough, with us extracting the water and drying the structure. To speed the drying process, we opened up a few wall cavities in order to inject air, and unfortunately we found active termite damage. Working with the homeowner and their insurance provider, we assisted their exterminator by removing some drywall, insulation and wall studs, then quickly rebuilding the affected area after the treatment. While this situation was unusual for us (working with an exterminator), we quickly adjusted our service to best assist the homeowner and their insurance provider. As you can see, the customer won (we provided additional demo and reconstruction services to help save them time and expense), our employees won (they safely built their knowledge base of pest treatment while managing the reconstruction efforts), and our company won (through developing a very satisfied customer who is telling others of their great experience in light of an unfortunate situation).
I find it interesting how few companies look for a win-win-win solution, which usually means they put themselves before the good of the customer. Whether you own a nice restaurant, or work for a cleaning and restoration company, there’s something to be learned here for everyone: great customer service pays handsome dividends in the long term!
Let me know how you’ve been treated lately!
By: Dave Christoff – Director of Sales and Marketing, Woodard Cleaning & Restoration Services
Woodard is a proud sponsor of St. Louis Public Radio, and we were thrilled when Mike Schrand came to visit with us. We provided him with a tour of our rug cleaning and repair facility, and he produced a “Sonic ID” of Woodard for airing on KWMU-FM.
We’ve attached a couple photos of Mike Schrand (holding microphone) with Justin Woodard, and a copy of the audio Sonic ID.
Thanks Mike, our rug cleaning facility has a lot of interesting sounds for the radio. Helping with this was a lot of fun! Click here for the audio: Justin Woodard Sonic ID on KWMU_fmix30
Mike (with microphone) and Justin at Woodard's Moore Rug Cleaning Equipment
Mike (holding microphone) and Justin in Woodard's Rug Drying Room
When people ask me, “what sets Woodard apart from other companies,” I answer that it comes down to two main points: hiring quality employees, and providing extensive employee training. Certainly the cleaning and restoration results we achieve, our attention to detail, amazing customer service, and respect for our customers’ belongings also play key roles.
Woodard has a very thorough hiring process. We only hire people that embrace our core values (FYI, Woodard’s core values are: Do what’s right, Honesty/integrity/trust, Respect, Dedication to serving others, and Continuous improvement). Additionally, an employee has to be presentable and respectful. We understand that inviting a stranger into your home can be disconcerting, and we want our customers to be comfortable with Woodard employees. The hiring process also includes several screening interviews with various department managers, placement testing to determine fit, and additional HR practices to help identify a quality employee.
Once a person is hired, they then begin an extensive employee training program. Traditionally, a new employee will be hired into our Flex Work Force, a position that requires them to work in all business divisions, learning multiple job functions. They begin working alongside seasoned crew chiefs, as well as having considerable classroom training to earn industry certifications. There are many certifications that a new employee could earn (depending on what position they hold in the company). Altogether, Woodard’s employees hold over 400 certifications, including carpet and furniture cleaning, structural drying, odor elimination, mold remediation, and others.
Next time a Woodard employee is working in your home, ask how they feel about working for Woodard. You will see their pride in working for a company that cares for their employees, and the customers they serve. We feel that quality employees and extensive employee training gives Woodard a distinct advantage over the competition.
I sat down with our location operations manager Tom Blandford this week to talk about some of the exciting things happening in his department lately. His department includes commercial and residential carpet and upholstery cleaning. We are currently looking into expanding our commercial service offerings to include vinyl tile and ceramic tile, and grout cleaning. Some of our customers have been asking for these services and we are fine tuning our processes for both the stripping and refinishing of Vinyl Composite Tile (VCT) and also ceramic tile and grout cleaning. These are both services that we will be happy to offer our customers once we perfect our processes.
Another helpful service we are planning on offering shortly is a better solution for animal urine removal. The scent and staining caused by some animal urine can be very challenging to remove. While we have had success in many cases, the industry as a whole has trouble with the more extreme cases. We are currently testing new cleaning solutions and techniques that have shown remarkable success with even high levels of cat or other animal urine (it’s interesting to note that we’re conducting our tests on cat and dog urine, along with some of the strong urine products that hunters use to mask scents).
We have also upgrading many of our trucks and vans that were using slightly older equipment, and we’ve begun using a new tool designed for delicate fabrics on furniture. This tool is gentler and uses less water allowing us to clean delicate fabrics and upholstery safely. Tom is very excited to be expanding our offerings to better serve our customers both residential and commercial, and we should see these services offered to all very soon.
