Given the importance of convenience and speed in hospitality and healthcare facilities, commercial laundry clients, nowadays, are insistent on exceptional laundry customer service. Beyond delivering clean linen on time, the idea of what makes up ‘good service delivery’ is evolving rapidly, in addition to becoming more sophisticated.
In light of this, what do commercial laundries need to do to satisfy major corporations and facilities?
In our post today, we dive into the best ways in which your business can provide clients with services that are incomparable to anything else on the market. From automating certain parts of the laundry cycle to giving customers greater access to your services, discover some of the most effective best practices.
Optimise Customer Relationship Management with customer portals
One feature, some of the most efficient commercial laundries do not compromise on, is effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms.
In addition to software and solutions that automate certain aspects of customer interaction, however, laundries also invest in customised portals through which their clients can reach out to them with ease.
Apart from communication, these portals allow clients to submit orders, track their linen (via RFID linen tracking), and leverage a commercial laundry’s other service offerings with ease. Customer portals allow you to manage client demands, expectations, and with functional, well-designed commercial laundry systems, give clients visibility and transparency into your commercial laundry.
While this seems daunting, inside access is likely to leave your client more satisfied, as opposed to leaving them in the dark.
Be clear about contractual obligations with new clients
When it comes to new clients, the key to delivering good laundry customer service – and setting a long-term foundation for it – lies in being clear about contractual obligations.
While this goes beyond agreeing on payment structures, this is a very important point that needs to be discussed in-depth, especially when it comes to extra charges like pickup and delivering, ironing and other charges your laundry levies.
It’s also a good idea to cover client duties, rights, and responsibilities to ensure that everyone is on the same page. In this way, any potential dispute that arises later can be dealt with more amicably and effectively, preventing you from losing a client over mere technicalities.
Start focusing more on linen reclamation/recovery
Healthcare and hospitality organisations experience heavy staining on linen. This represents a significant cost for these establishments given that more money needs to be poured into replenishing stock levels.
If your commercial laundry has the capacity to focus specifically on removing tough stains, make sure you reassure clients that you can handle stains and discolouration and save them the extra cost. Just make sure that your staff separate stained linen so they can be handled and treated with the proper procedures.
If you want to go a step further, you can even partner with linen recovery service providers, where linen that’s damaged beyond repair are converted into smaller, useable items of linen. Here, a damaged bedsheet could even be converted to a smaller piece of bed linen and given back to the client.
Prevent linen mismanagement with RFID linen tracking
For commercial laundries that go one step further and rent out linen to their clients, losing linen is a headache – even when each item is clearly distinguished from those belonging to clients.
Fortunately, the industry has found a solution in the form of RFID tracking; a topic we’ve covered extensively on our blog. Here, individual items of linen can be tracked with a unique code, giving operators the relief of knowing where their linen is at any given time.
This also prevents disastrous disagreements with clients that can have a lasting impact on your commercial laundry’s reputation. RFID tags also automate certain parts of the laundry cycle, with RFID tag readers being able to read these tags and direct them to the appropriate stage of cleaning.
Transform commercial laundry customer service in a few simple moves
Who said optimising laundry customer service has to be complicated? Not us, that’s for sure.
By introducing some of the solutions and features mentioned above, you will soon find that transforming your own service into the best it can be is an almost automatic process. Leveraging RFID linen tracking and even effortless CRM with a customised portal is easier with a commercial laundry management system – especially those that deliver more than just these features.