Mother's House Cleaning Service
Opportunity
Problem & Solution
Problem Worth Solving
The wealthy single income families, and affluent double income families of Cleanly,Wa are in need are a house cleaning service that is professional, trustworthy, and highly effective. Our services are well worth our fees.
Our Solution
Mother’s House Cleaning Service’s mission is to provide the customer with all residential cleaning services in an environmentally sound, completely trustworthy, and professional manner. We exist to attract and maintain customers. When we adhere to this maxim, everything else will fall into place. Our services will exceed the expectations of our customers.
Target Market
Market Size & Segments
Mother’s House Cleaning Service will be focusing on two upper socio/economic groups. The first is the affluent where only one spouse works. Although the other spouse is at home and has time to clean, he/she chooses not to. This spouse would rather volunteer for a public interest organization, play tennis and golf, or just spend time how he/she chooses to. They have no desire to clean the house. To them that is not enjoyable and they have the money to pay someone to do that kind of work. This market has annual incomes over $200,000 and live in expensive houses. While Cleanly, WA only has 650 families that fall into this category, this group reliably uses cleaning services.
Our second segment of the market that we are targeting is the two income family. Over the last couple of decades, the number of two-income households have increased, to a point where in parts of the country they exceed one income families. Our target customer is two income families whose combined annual income is over $125,000. These families don’t really have the time to clean, can afford a cleaning service, and choose to hire a service because the opportunity costs are too high to waste time cleaning their house. These households are typically age 32-55 and live in houses valued over $250,000. Cleanly has approximately 10,000 families that fall into this demographic. It is this segment which has tremendous potential for us. Nearly 80% of dual income households use an outside cleaning service for some of their house cleaning according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Additionally, there are some potential customers that MHCS has labeled as assorted "well-off" households. These are families that have the money for our services that do not fit neatly into the two previous categories.
Competition
Current Alternatives
Although there are lots of competitors in the cleaning service space, there is good reason for this competition, demand is high. Plenty of maid/janitorial services have waiting lists, they are unable to meet demand. Additionally, many of the maid and janitorial services are "mom and pop" operations without enough employees. Cleaning service customers want quality, and not everyone in the cleaning service space offers quality. How often when you ask one of your friends for a referral do they tell you they have been using a bunch of different companies and they have yet to find one that they are truly happy with.
Our Advantages
Our competitive advantage will be based on our large investment in human capital. MHCS begins with a rigorous training program for new employees. At the outset, employees with be trained on how to clean. Granted everyone has some idea on how to clean, but we will show them a methodical way producing a far cleaner home more efficiently. We will then be training employees to work effectively on teams. While there are some households that prefer individual cleaners instead of a team, a request that we are more then happy to oblige, we generally work in teams as they are more efficient. Working efficiently on a team takes training, and through this team training, we are able to make significant gains in efficiency.
The next topic of training involves professionalism. We provide our employees the tools necessary to impress our most affluent clients. Professionalism is a skill that is used throughout the service call, from the way the employee greets and interacts with the client, to the way they clean, to the way they act when they break that priceless vase (which in the inevitable case that we do break something, we have specific guidelines for the employee to follow to resolve the conflict).
We finally train our employees to know what the expectations of our clients are. We will provide them the tools needed to exceed these expectations.
This extensive training, both up front, as well as continuously (called our continuous learning system) builds a trust relationship between our company and the client. It is the bond of trust that will not only earn MHCS the loyalty of that customer but also the referral of several more of their friends. Satisfied customers like to tell their friends about service providers that they are happy with, people like to "spread the wealth" with their friends.
Lastly we will emphasize our use of environmentally sound chemicals. Other companies also use environmentally sound chemicals so this is not a huge differentiation, but it is something that we are proud of, and will be mentioned.
We will also be creating the appearance of professionalism through the use of uniforms and large magnetic sign affixed to the side of the vehicles we use.
Keys to Success
Keys to Success
Keys to success are:
- To create a service based company whose #1 goal is exceeding customer’s expectations.
- To increase our number of clients served by 20% per year through superior service.
- To develop a sustainable home-based business, living off its own cash flow.
- The utilization of Mother’s House Cleaning Service on a regular basis by at least 30% of the leads that contact us for more information.
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