If you conduct business within a commercial building, the chances are very high that your building needs to be cleaned. And unless someone at your office is doing this themselves you will need to hire a commercial cleaner.
Large facilities and office spaces usually have their cleaning needs managed by the property management company in charge of the building. However, many smaller commercial buildings located in Minneapolis ask the tenant to take charge and figure out the process themselves to hire a commercial cleaner. If this happens to be your situation, then I am guessing you do not have much experience hiring commercial cleaners. But don’t worry, the process is not difficult at all. It just takes time.
You’re stuck with the task to hire a commercial cleaner, now what?
If you are the person who is in charged to make sure their work space stays clean, you need to do your due diligence. Research the commercial cleaning industry and learn what you can before asking companies for bids. If you don’t know anything about the industry you could easily end up hiring a company who is not aligned with your businesses needs. Such a mistake could end up costing your business a lot of money in a short period of time.
Luckily for you, Minneapolis has many commercial cleaning companies who specialize in different types of commercial spaces (office, industrial, hospitals, apartments etc. etc.). So, finding a handful of vendors who specialize in the type of commercial space you are in shouldn’t be a problem at all.
Finding a commercial cleaning companies in Minneapolis is as simple as going to Google and searching “commercial cleaning company Minneapolis”. You could even call a few businesses up the road and ask for recommendations on who they use. Overall, you should have no troubles gathering a list of potential candidates in your area. Set up meetings with each of them to walk through your building and speak with you on the cleaning needs of your business.
But just because you have a line of commercial cleaning companies waiting at your door to give you a bid, doesn’t mean your task is completely done. Many people have been in your shoes before as the decision maker of this process. And too often has this process been handled naively without any due diligence into the details of the services being offered.
When meeting with each commercial cleaning company you find, give them a tour of your building and do the walk through with them. When doing the walk through, make sure to bring up the specific needs of your business by covering the following topics:
The Schedule
The size of your building will have the greatest impact of the frequency you will need commercial cleaning. Large buildings will most likely need daily cleaning service, while some small commercial buildings will only need cleaning 1-2 times a week. Other factors will come into play on the frequency of your commercial cleaning needs as well. These factors include how many people work at your building and also what type of work is being done there.
For example, one of our clients with Victory Building Services is a small business with only a few employees but they cut and sand wood and other materials daily. Because of all the dust generated, we need to clean their place daily. If we didn’t it would become a disaster. And another client of ours in Minneapolis who has a building twice the size, only requires cleaning twice a week because of the low volume of traffic and small quantity of employees who work there.
Determining the schedule that your commercial cleaning company will adhere to is very important. And this is something they should be able to advise you on right way. Make sure to speak to a few commercial cleaning companies and compare their opinions on the ideal schedule for your needs. This way you will have a good idea of what an appropriate cleaning schedule is for your space.
Supplies
One of the topics that many forget to dive into detail on is the topic of supplies. When you interview commercial cleaning companies, make sure to ask them about their process with the following topics.
Stocking
Will they handle reordering all of the cleaning chemicals, paper, and liner products? Or will you be the one in charge of reordering all of this?
Supply Costs
Will their bid price include the costs of all supplies or will your business be responsible for the costs of cleaning supplies? Costs of cleaning products are not very expensive, but they can definitely add up over time.
To give you an idea of a popular arrangement, Victory Building Services handles ordering of all the supplies for our clients. However, only the costs of chemicals and tools are included in our bid price. The costs of paper products and liners are passed onto our clients.
Quality Control
One of the main differences of a commercial cleaning companies in Minneapolis is how, or if, they perform quality control. Unfortunately, the cleaning industry is plagued with many horror stories of poor cleaning and bad management. The best way to avoid this is to ask each company you interview about their specific process for quality control. The way they answer this question will also give you a good idea about their communication skills (or lack of). And their answer should also give you insight on how committed they are to make sure the quality of their cleaning exceeds your expectations. When it comes to commercial cleaning, like anything else, things will happen and can go wrong. What separates the good services from the bad is their ability to make things right when things do go wrong.
At Victory Building Services, we assign each client an account manager who is responsible for the day-to-day of that specific client. The account manager is the clients point of contact. They are also responsible to physically go to the client’s location on a scheduled basis to perform quality checks.
Do your due diligence
Whether you are looking for to hire a commercial cleaner based in Minneapolis, or elsewhere, make sure to ask many questions. And don’t just hire the commercial cleaner who sends you the lowest bid. The lowest bidder is usually the one who will cost you the most in the long run. Both in money and in headaches.
We have you covered at Victory Building Services
At TC Facility Management we offer a free quote for a wide range of services. You have nothing to lose – start maximizing your business today and call or message us today!