Self-Booking Feature & Price Estimate Calculators are Horrible
If you have been operating a power washing business, then you are well aware that most jobs differ. Even if 2 different houses have the same square footage, one house might take 20-40 minutes longer based on many variables.
• No water on site
• Cleaning the back side of an attached townhouse that is in the middle of a building block
• A house on a busy road
• A house that is on well water
• A house with a hose outlet on the back side of the house
• Complex landscaping that requires more hose management
The point is that for something as outwardly simple as pressure washing, as we dive into the details and nitty-gritty of the trade we realize that determining the price of a cleaning service often requires a solution that is too nuanced for simple-to-use cost calculator to determine.
If a customer fills out the cost calculator and gets a price and then calls you to book the service and you give them a more accurate price based on what you see — this equates to a bad customer experience. You are trying to pull a bait and switch and people aren’t having it.
1. The Crew’s Routes Aren’t Optimized
When customers can book the day that they want, it doesn’t matter where they live in your target service area, you are beholden to servicing them that day and time. What if the 5 service appointment slots you have available for a given day are self-booked by homeowners who all live in opposite directions of each other? Ask me how I know about this problem.
What would ordinarily have taken your crew 8 hours (including travel time) to service these 5 appointments now takes 10 hours to service solely because of inefficient travel between locations.
With a crew of 2 guys you have added 4 hours of wages, an extra 20% to your truck’s gas bill, added mileage to your truck and you may be showing up late to an appointment or two….all because of the self-booking feature.
Now imagine the added complexity when you have multiple crews working and their are three times as many jobs that are self-booked in all corners of the state. The self-booking feature does NOT scale well.
2. Some Trucks Might Not Be Equipped to Handle Particular Jobs
Let’s say you have a 2 truck crew.
Truck A: has an 8gpm air diaphragm pump, ladder rack, 8gpm pressure washer
Truck B: has two 8gpm pressure washers, 500 gallon buffer tank, 2 - 32” Surface Cleaners
In this situation, it is obvious that Truck A is better equipped to handle roof cleaning jobs and Truck B is better suited at large residential jobs and any kind of flat work job. Now imagine someone self-books for a specific day and Truck A is the only truck in that area to clean their house and pool deck. You are now actively losing money by doing jobs more slowly because you don’t have the proper equipment on a specific truck.
3. Time Slot Booking Leads to Unhappy Customers
You are relinquishing control of your schedule to the whims of your customers by allowing them to book an open time slot. You need to do whatever you can to optimize time spent driving and working. This means that you will have to set the schedule to something that makes financial sense for you and the business. You shouldn’t get too preoccupied with worrying about one, slightly upset customer who can’t get to book the exact time they want. Customiser should be able to choose the day they wan’t you to arrive, but the time window you arrived should only be offered if you have the logistics of your pressure washing business completely figured out. The ultimate goal should be maximizing efficiency by reducing ‘windshield time’.
4. Some Jobs Take Longer Than Anticipated
When you are booking customers you should be giving them a clear expectation that you will be coming within a 1-4 hour window. You set the bar of expectations low and then surprise them with a follow-up message or call from the pressure washing tech when the crew is 30 minutes from their house.
By giving the customer a window of arrival, you allow for the time discrepancy in completing jobs. Some jobs you will get completed faster than projected. For some jobs, you might run into some issues and take longer than expected (ahem, roof cleaning jobs). Or, you just hit some traffic. Stuff happens and by creating a rigid schedule you are bound to misjudge the duration of projects and show up too early or too late.