The push for retail businesses to adhere to strict hygiene standards is here to stay. Even after the coronavirus vaccine and various areas returning to less quarantined situations, studies have repeatedly shown that customers’ attention to cleanliness has remained.
Our aim is to provide a simple solution to merchants in the Triad area of NC. There’s enough going on running the store itself, and having a reliable maintenance solution builds the kind of stability you can grow from.
Our retail cleaning services include:
- Thorough sweeping and vacuuming of floors and carpets to improve appearance and prevent buildup that becomes a trip hazard
- Wipe down and disinfecting of all hard surfaces, particularly in break rooms and around cash registers
- Restroom cleaning, including disinfecting of toilets and sinks
- Window washing, especially for front-facing displays and features
- Optional use of the Clorox Total 360 system that can fully disinfect large, open areas even in nooks and crannies. It will even kill the coronavirus on surfaces.
At some point everyone has walked by a store, whether free-standing or in a mall, and noticed that the front glass windows were dirty or smudgy. It’s perhaps only a minor negative impression the first time, but becomes far more impactful if they walk past (or to) the store repeatedly and keep seeing it.
To be blunt: Things like that will send the message that the store either doesn’t value cleanliness or isn’t making enough money to have people regularly clean.
Nobody likes to shop in a store where either assumption is at play. In the latter case, people may not want to get attached to the products there if the store isn’t doing well, and may opt to shop elsewhere to ensure a steadier experience.
We all know this to be true on some level. After all, it’s why so many businesses make it a point to decorate and advertise to project success.
A personal anecdote about retail entryway cleanliness…
A couple years ago I would walk the mall fairly regularly with my wife to get our FitBit steps in bad weather. When you do that for awhile you start to notice patterns in the mall, the staff that works there each day, the goings on of certain stores, etc.
One thing we also noticed were two clear examples of what we were talking about above.
The first example was a luxury store with big glass windows along both sides of the entry door. The idea was obviously so that any passerby could see right into the showroom of luxury chairs, appliances, and gadgets.
Trouble was, those windows weren’t just smudgy. Big streaks if filmy residue adorned them in numerous places, and there was even some discoloration.
Can you imagine the impression a dingy display window makes against what is supposed to be a high end store?
Week after week when we passed by we’d take playful bets about whether someone had finally cleaned the windows or not. And week after week, nothing changed.
It’s one thing to be that dirty. It’s another to let it stay that way for months, showing that day after day those employees would show up and either not even notice the windows or not care enough to clean them. What degree of service should a passerby expect noticing that?
The other example was when we passed through a major retail chain that has since gone out of business (kind of case in point) that begins with an S.
Each time we walked through we’d notice the bed section, with numerous demo beds having brown stains on them that were never cleaned. The tech section had broken shelves with dust bunnies all over them, and always had at least 2 TVs on display that weren’t working — or had a “no signal” message floating around.
Sure, some of that doesn’t fall to cleaning per se, but it fits with the overall point here that when it’s clear that no one at the store cares about this kind of stuff, does it speak to a store with a future?
In this retailer’s case, the answer was obviously no.
Proving The Value of Retail Cleaning
This isn’t simply conjecture and the intention here is to go deeper than that trite statement that first impressions matter.
This post is the first in a series we’re adding about retail cleaning. The next posts will share direct consumer research that’s been done to demonstrate just how much this all matters in the perception of shoppers.
And that tiresome claim about first impressions? Research shows it goes way beyond the first look. Dingy appearances can even cost retail businesses longtime customers, and even affect the way people view prices.
Stay tuned.
In the meantime, if you’re a retail business looking for a proven cleaning company to keep things pristine for you, call us today.