What does your business smell like and how clean is it? These are the two things every customer notices when they walk into your business. As a business owner or manager, you may or may not notice either of these things due to everything else on your mind. Yet, in order to accomplish your goals and maintain your customers, it’s important that first impressions are never overlooked.
What Does Your Business Smell Like?
On a recent vacation to Cancun I stayed at a resort with an incredible smelling lobby. The lobby was the first part of the resort we entered in order to check in, and right away the smells told my brain I was at a nice place. . If the lobby smelled terrible, I would have noticed that too. I might have even canceled my reservation and gone elsewhere.
Smell is a very important and powerful sense humans use to gather information about a place, including how clean, inviting and even safe it is. A lot of research has gone into the power smells have on us and how they impact our emotions. Our sense of smell is a built in mechanism that helps us avoid dirty, unsafe and polluted areas. If your place of business smells, no matter if you sell food, clothes, real estate or hotel rooms, it sets a negative tone that your customers notice.
The moment people smell something bad their instinct is to turn around and leave. In some instances we don’t have the luxury of leaving a stinky location without fear of being rude, but that’s not the case when it comes to where we choose to do business or spend our hard-earned money. If your business has a funky odor, your customers will have no qualms about leaving and quite possibly never returning.
How do you keep your business odor-free?
-Take out the trash every single day. This is so important to prevent icky odors from lingering in the air. Even after you take the trash out, residue left on bins can produce disgusting smells. That’s why it’s equally important to rinse out trash bins every time you take out the trash. Never leave trash to sit overnight, take out trash and clean bins at the end of each day. That way the office smells fresh the following morning.
-Be prepared for stinky emergencies. When operating a business, something unexpected always has the potential to occur, causing your normally clean office to smell rather rank. Say for instance a customer or employee becomes ill and throws up in the entryway. Or, someone spills food on the carpet and it leaves behind a lingering smell. Have a plan of action in place to reduce unexpected and stinky accidents. This might be a nightly professional cleaning service with the power to remove any stain or smell.
-Never let business (public or private) bathrooms get dirty. A dirty bathroom can smell to high hell and back. Bathroom cleanliness should remain a top priority for every business. A professional cleaning service can come in on a daily or weekly basis to maintain sanitation and cleanliness.
How Clean Does Your Business Look?
A clean workplace almost always smells good, and so these two things go hand-in-hand. Our minds are naturally set to link clean businesses with professional businesses. The way in which your business looks has a huge impact on your customer’s perception of your workplace and the type of business you conduct.
Dirty spaces take a while to develop, and people that see the space on a daily basis may not notice these changes taking place. So while you and your employees might not notice the accumulation of dust on baseboards and windows, your customers will. Customers don’t watch the changes slowly manifest; instead they see your space for what it is in that moment. And if it’s not perfectly clean, they are going to take note.
2 noticeable and important (but often overlooked) areas of your business to keep clean include:
-The floors. Carpet, tile, wood floor, it doesn’t matter what surfaces you are dealing with they all require regular surface and deep cleaning. All flooring surfaces slowly accumulate dirt, and if they are regularly cleaned this dirt won’t have the same chance to build up. As a result, regular cleaning helps your flooring surfaces last longer.
-The windows. Your windows make an impression on your customers before they even walk into your business. The insides and outsides of windows should be regularly cleaned in order to maintain a fresh and professional appearance.
Every last detail counts when it comes to keeping your business clean. Janitorial services, repainting, pressure washing and buffing/waxing floors are all important services that’ll help you maintain a professional appearance.
Tidy Team offers professional cleaning services, window washing, floor buffing, power washing, and every other service you need to keep the inside and outside of your business in tip-top shape. From the parking lots to the bathrooms, you can count on us to clean it all!