National Clothesline

Are you the “cleaner of choice” in the minds of your customers? If not, how do you attain that status? And how do you avoid falling out of favor with customers by making mistakes that can spoil the relationship?

Those questions were addressed by speakers Laura Barron and Chris Allsbrooks at the Southwest Drycleaners Association’s convention in Arlington, TX, last month

Barron, who is president of The Barron Group based in Knoxville, TN, suggested that cleaners should think about the things they like or dislike when they go shopping or eat in a restaurant as they strive to become “the cleaner of choice.”

As a customer, what sort of things would make you never go back to that business? What is your pet peeve when dealing with other businesses?

Looking at things from the customer’s side of the counter can give insights into what you should be doing — or not doing — to raise your status in the minds of customers, Barron said.

Customers can range from very satisfied to very dissatisfied, she said. In between those extremes is what she called “a zone of apathy.” Customers who fall into that zone are easily swayed. Since most customers fall into that zone they are the ones a cleaner needs to work on to bring into the “very satisfied” category. Otherwise, they are susceptible to becoming a competitor’s customer.

“Listen to your customers,“ she said. “Ask them what they like best about your service and what could make the service even better.“

When problems occur, Barron said, you and your staff must rebuild trust and credibility with the customer.”

“Take care of the problem and they will be back. Don’t take care of it and you will lose them,” she said. She advised going the extra mile to create a “wow factor” in the customer’s mind and make them permanently loyal.

Avoiding problems that create static with the customer was the topic of Allsbrooks, who is a textile analyst for the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute. She discussed common mistakes that drycleaners make and how to avoid them at her Sunday morning presentation.

Topping her list of mistakes was failure to read care labels.

“The first thing that I see in the lab as a common mistake that cleaners make is not checking the care labels,” Allsbsrooks said. Most care labels will at least provide a starting point for handling the garment, she said, although some are not correct and some don’t even make sense.

Cleaners need to apply common sense when the care label doesn’t. In those cases, she said, cleaners need to “trust their gut.”

“A lot of cleaners know there may be a problem before they do something, then go ahead with it and wish they hadn’t,” Allsbrooks said.

As an example, she cited a garment labeled as drycleanable with fiber content designated as PVC. A professional cleaner should at least think about it before drycleaning it, she said.

Mistakes also abound from improper stain removal. Failure to dry fabrics properly after stain removal, not testing for dyes and using the wrong stain removal agents all lead to damages that end up being the cleaner’s responsibility even though the customer put the original stain on the garment.

Dirty solvent is another issue that frequently leads to garments showing up in the DLI lab.

“If you have a dye bleeder, you have impurities in your solvent. If you don’t distill properly, you have impurities in your solvent. If you don’t use your filters properly you have impurities in your solvent,” Allsbsrooks said.

Dirty solvent means that whites will not be bright and light colored garments can show color changes. Allsbrooks recommended that cleaners use DLI’s Cleaning Performance Test to monitor the condition of their solvent.

Staff training, or the lack of it, also leads to problems, Allsbrooks said.

A cleaner wouldn’t put an untrained person on the spotting board, Allsbrooks said, but the “hiring a warm body approach” often leads to people being put to work on the counter with the idea that they will learn on the job.

“It’s a big mistake when you don’t train your staff properly,” she said. “If they’re not doing their job right, your customers are going to be affected and they’ll start leaving you,” she warned.

Allsbrooks emphasized the importance of communication within the plant. Information must be shared, such as posting garment alerts and bulletins where people in the plant can read them. Customer concerns need to be communicated from the front counter to the people who are doing the work. And regular staff meetings give an opportunity to iron out problems.

Finally, Allsbrooks said, when a problem with a customer arises it must be resolved quickly.

“The longer you take to make it better, the more likely the customer will be to take their business elsewhere,” she said.