Got house cleaner woes? If you have a vacation rental or an Airbnb and the house cleaner doesn’t show, you have house cleaner woes. If the room is a mess and the guests arrive and you aren’t able to manage the cleaning – you have house cleaner woes.
It’s possible to find and hire and manage an airbnb crew and track the cleaning.
Other vacation rental mailbag tips include tragedy, having an emergency contact to call for help. If you have a heart attack on the job the keeper password manager allows your next of kin reschedule your cleanings.
Listen: House Cleaner Woes – to House Cleaner Guarantee
Watch: House Cleaner Woes – to House Cleaner Guarantee
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.
When You Have House Cleaner Woes
House cleaner woes – What do you do when your Airbnb guests arrive and the place is not cleaned up from the last guest that left?
The first thought goes to oh no, my house cleaner’s incredibly reliable. Something terrible must have happened to him or her. What has happened to my house cleaner? Then the second school of thought is oh no. My guests have planned this amazing vacation and they’ve arrived and the place is not ready for them, so their vacation is starting off on the wrong foot.
They’re going to leave me with a bad rating and review. So now you’re balancing these two weird emotions, neither of which you have any control over.
Find Out Where Your House Cleaner Is
Okay, the first thing that we want to find out is where is my house cleaner? Are they okay?
And the second thing is how can I quickly pacify these guests so that they can go away for a few hours and then come back and their room will be ready. The first thing you want to do is just be honest.
Say, “Oh, no. Something terrible must have happened to my house cleaner. I would like to find out and then get your rooms ready. Why don’t you guys head on down to the local pub and be gone,” and give them a new check-in time. Let’s say that it’s 2:00 in the afternoon. “Your room should be ready by about 4:00. Why don’t you drop back by then and I’ll have everything nice and ready for you.”
Rooms are Sometimes Not Ready in Hotels
Now, this is not so far from what happens sometimes in hotels. We go to a hotel and they say, “Sorry, your room is not ready. But why don’t you go sit down at the lounge or the bar,” and maybe they even give you a free drink.
They say, “Hang out for a little bit and then we’ll get your room ready and we’ll let you know when it’s ready.” This is the same kind of thing.
You Don’t Have to Go Into a Panic When House Cleaners Have Woes
You don’t have to go into a big panic and, “Oh no, they’re going to leave me a one-star review.” Maybe they won’t because they’re human and they understand something may have happened to the house cleaner.
Your house cleaner is very reliable under most circumstances. Something terrible must have happened. And so send them away gracefully. Don’t make it a big thing and don’t get all wigged out about it or whatever. Just, “Hey, this is horrible. Why don’t you go down to the pub?”
And maybe you offer them a gift card. Maybe you offer them a $50 comp off their room or something like that. There are ways to soften the bad news. And just say, “This is very unusual. I’m so sorry. Give me a little bit of time and I’ll jump right on this and we’ll get you all ready to rock and roll.” And so if you make it okay, it’s going to be okay for them.
Check in With Your House Cleaner
Okay, then the next thing you want to do is you want to check with your house cleaner. What happened? Are you okay? Because you can’t have unreliable people working for you.
What you might do is have the ring doorbell, where you see people coming and people going. And so if you don’t see the house cleaner coming, you can jump on the phone and say, “Hey, I haven’t seen you check in yet. I saw the other guests leave about two hours ago. Is everything okay? We have new guests arriving in another two hours from now.”
Then that way you can kind of keep a pulse on what’s happening.
Don’t Overlook House Cleaning Woes or Blow Them Out of Proportion
We don’t want to overlook it, but we don’t want to blow it out of proportion and make this ginormous thing that it’s not. People understand there are things that happen.
Be as cool about it as you possibly can, and if it is necessary to comp the room. Then comp the room or give a discount or something like that.
How to Safeguard Your Business From Woes as a House Cleaner
All right, how do you safeguard your business if you’re the house cleaner and something bad happens to you?
Let’s just say, for example, that you had a heart attack one day while you’re on the job. You were immediately hospitalized and you were unable to access all your client accounts and your Airbnb accounts. What do you do? How do you keep your business afloat while you’re out temporarily?
One of the solutions is a website called Keeper. Keeper is a password storage unit where you can keep all your passwords and all your accounts. It’s also a great place to keep all your clients and all your alarm codes and all these things. You have to remember one password, and everything else is encrypted.
Have a Person You Trust to Keep Your Passwords
You need to have one person that you trust with your passwords. It might be your spouse or it might be your next of kin or your parents. But there’s got to be somebody that you trust that has that password.
In the event that you have a heart attack and you’re incapacitated and you’re in the hospital. Who is that person that can jump in and start calling your clients and calling your Airbnb accounts saying, “Hey, listen. Something happened and the house cleaner will not be there on schedule.”
You want to make sure that there’s one person that has access to all that information in the event that something happens to you. You don’t want to fall off the face of the map and then nobody knows who to contact or what to say or what your appointments are or any of those things.
You Don’t Want to Lose Clients Because of House Cleaner Woes
So somebody could log in with your password from your Keeper. They could log in and they could access your schedule and say, “Oh, no. She’s got 14 appointments this week she’s not going to be able to make.“
Then they could hurry and make calls to those 14 people to reschedule your appointments and/or let people know that you didn’t show. If you don’t show up for 14 appointments all of a sudden, it’s possible those 14 accounts could drop you.
You’re out in the hospital for let’s say a week, a week and a half. When you come back and you’ve recovered, you’ve got 14 accounts that have dropped off because they never heard from you. So it is important to safeguard your business with some kind of software or app. So, in the event that something happens to you, you can cancel your client appointment or reschedule.
What Do You Do if Something Happens While You are Cleaning?
If something happens to you while you’re cleaning an Airbnb, who calls who for help? That’s a great question, and it’s one that we need to stop and think about because many of us house cleaners work alone.
Now, what triggered it for me was I was in the restroom at an airport, and I found someone’s very expensive cell phone sitting in the toilet area in the stall. And I didn’t know who to call for help because there was no contact information on the phone. And it triggered an idea in my mind that sure enough, I didn’t have any contact information on my phone either.
So what I did is I went home and I created a screensaver that was a plain screensaver that had a picture of my face. Then it had my birthday and my blood type and my next of kin and a phone number for the next of kin. Someone can find all that information very quickly and concisely with my picture.
Have Your Information Available for People to Find
Now, if someone were to find my phone and they could only access that one screen, here’s the information they have. They match the picture with the person that’s here. Oh, yes, this cell phone belongs to them. This is their name, this is their birthday, this is their blood type.
Now, the reason I put the blood type is that if you have to take someone to the emergency room very quickly. You’re going to want them to have as much information as possible. Is it okay to take you to the emergency room?
If it’s right there on the phone, it’s okay to ER, then they say, “Oh, yes. It’s okay. I can call the emergency room.” Who else are they going to call? They’re going to call the next of kin that’s right there on your phone with the phone number.
You Have to Safeguard Your Business
There are ways that you can safeguard your small business so in the event that you do have a heart attack or some unknown thing that could possibly happen. This way it’s okay if someone finds you to call for help.
They know who you are and then they know who to call. Those are just a couple of precautionary things that you can do. And then one other thing.
If by any chance you’re traveling internationally and you leave your cellphone at the airport somewhere. Then someone can make sure your phone gets back to you.
*** RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE ***
Get Paid for Your Pad: How to Maximize Profit from Your Airbnb Listing – https://amzn.to/2WXtAbd
Turn Your Spare Space into Serious Cash: How to Make Money on Airbnb, HomeAway, FlipKey, Booking.com, and More! – https://amzn.to/2D63oDL
Optimize YOUR Airbnb: The Definitive Guide to Ranking #1 in Airbnb Search – https://amzn.to/2WWsCfx
Unleash Your Airbnb Revenue: How to make the most money with your first Airbnb listing – https://amzn.to/2I8MatR
How NOT to Airbnb: By the people who got it wrong first – https://amzn.to/2WYCO73
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