Better Life Maids: A Cleaning Business Software Success Story

Matthew Ricketts, Co-Founder & President of Better Life Maids, talks about how cleaning business software has helped his company. Some of you may have seen Better Life Maids on the TODAY Show or featured in Oprah Magazine.

Better Life Maids is dedicated to finding green solutions to the problems created by traditional house cleaning. Some of these problems include billions of gallons of toxic chemicals that end up in our homes and the environment; over 4 billion pounds of paper waste that end up in landfills; and long-term health risks resulting from prolonged exposure to these common chemicals found in our homes and indoor spaces.

Q:  Tell us about your business goals.

A: Better Life Maids is a green house cleaning service founded in St. Louis, MO. We focus on providing an exceptional service that makes our clients say “Wow! I have never had a cleaning service like this.” Along with our co-branded retail product partner Better Life, it is our goal to create the first national name brand in green house cleaning.

Q: What pain points were you experiencing in your operations as you scaled?

A: One of the main reasons we chose Vonigo was that it helped make sales easier and straightforward. Our previous solution was great at scheduling and dispatch task but did not do a good job with sales and marketing integrations. With our old scheduling software, there was no flow in the sales process.

The final straw, so to speak, was the fact that our previous provider had a huge data outage affecting all of its clients for 3 days. After speaking with the Vonigo I was confident that they had a stronger safety net in place to avoid similar outages.

Q: What has changed since using cleaning business software?

A: Now we have a scripted sales process that the software walks our sales reps through on each new call. The scheduling functions of Vonigo are also superior in many ways. It allows you to create zones, territories and is built from the ground up to manage a franchise call center like the one we are building.

Vonigo has definitely increased our efficiency during the sales process. Having a scripted process that is followed by default really helps. With each new call, our sales reps follow the same process, and the result has been great. It is a true CRM for the service sector.

Q: Are you seeing a measurable ROI? Care to share figures?

A: Absolutely. We are growing faster than ever before. Vonigo is an important part of that growth. It allows us to sell when and where we have staff and resources in place to deliver timely service to our clients. We have been able to design much more efficient routes for our teams with Vonigo which saves us time and money as well. And most importantly we are increasing our sales month over month. Our St. Louis office increased annual sales for that unit by 8% in the month of May alone. Vonigo and the ease of the sales process was a big part of that increase in sales.

Q:  Are you combining Vonigo features to achieve these results?

A: The social integration is a really great feature of Vonigo. I love sharing this function of the software with new users. Showing them the message board, the ability to post messages, follow users, and more. It’s as if we have our own corporate social network. I communicate with my key team members in the software, assign them tasks, and track progress. I also like the fact that when we set up Vonigo, it allowed us to customize the software in so many ways. It allowed us to make sure the software spoke our language.

Q: In what ways has cleaning business software changed your service chain?

A: Vonigo does so many things well. First of all our average sales call has decreased from over 30 minutes to around 17 minutes. The real benefit here is to the client. Many of our competitors still meet the clients at their house for sales. So they book a time, the client has to wait at their house, meet the sales rep, wait for a call back to get a final bid, respond to the bid, and then finally book a cleaning. It can take a week or more to complete a sale. So their sales process takes weeks, and ours takes minutes. Our clients are busy, and we have to meet them where they are. In today’s world, meeting them where they are is online and on the phone. They don’t have time for that old kind of approach. They want to know why we are great for their home, they want a price, and they want to book right then. With Vonigo we are winning the race to acquire clients and deliver timely service.

Q: What do your clients love the most?

A: One of the features that many of our clients love is the ability to a book online, right from our website. They can check pricing, look at availability, and book within minutes. This feature has also helped us fill last minute spots by offering a promo code on Facebook and offering a limited availability, short term offer. These promotions are fun for our clients and really help us keep our staff busy. Another great feature that is extremely helpful to both our clients and Better Life Maids is the automated email that is sent out when a job is booked. It helps to let the client know what to expect and improves the overall experience of our service for our clients.

Thank you so much, Matt. Good luck with your expansion. We never expected that Facebook trick!

Learn more about how you can put Vonigo’s cleaning business software to work in your business.