CarpetBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

Scheduling Carpet Cleanings Around When the Customer Is Home

Lawn crews and window cleaners can often do a job with nobody home. Carpet cleaners almost never can. Someone has to open the door, point out the rooms, mention the stain by the couch, and be there for the walk-through at the end. A customer who is not home is a stop that does not happen, and a hole in the day that is hard to fill on short notice.

Home or Not Is Part of the Booking

The last guide, Booking Around Dry Time: Scheduling Carpet Cleanings So Customers Can Still Live in the House, covered picking the right part of the day for the carpet. This one covers picking the right part of the day for the person.

Whether the customer will be home is not a detail to sort out on the morning of the job. It belongs in the booking, right next to the rooms and add-ons. Ask every time, even for repeat customers, because life changes between yearly cleanings.

Questions to Ask on the Phone

• Will you be home for the whole cleaning, or just to let us in?
• Is there a time you have to leave, or a time you get back?
• If you cannot be home, is there a key, lockbox or door code we can use?
• Is anyone else in the house that day, like a family member or a pet sitter?
• What is the best number to text the morning of?

Put the answers in the job notes or the access notes on the address. Access notes in CarpetBossPro cover pets, gate codes, where to park the van and where to run the hose, and they show on the tech's card every time that address is on the list.

Turning Answers Into Route Order

Once you know when the customer is home, route around it. A customer who leaves at ten goes first. A customer who gets home at two goes in the afternoon. After you auto-route a van's day, move those jobs by hand to the spots they need. Hand ordering was covered in Setting Carpet Cleaning Route Order by Hand When a Customer Needs a Certain Time.

Do not promise an exact time unless you have to. A customer who has to be home “between nine and noon” is far easier to schedule than one promised ten-fifteen. Arrival windows are covered in the next guide.

When the Customer Will Not Be Home

Some customers would rather not be home at all. They leave a key, a lockbox code, or a garage code. That works fine as long as it is written down clearly:

• “Lockbox on back door, code in notes. Lock up and return key to box.”
• “Garage code in notes. Rooms: 3 bedrooms upstairs and hallway. Cat will hide under the bed in the guest room.”

For these jobs, the before and after photos and the finished checklist matter even more. The customer is not there for the walk-through, so the checklist note for the customer, the stains that did not come out and the estimated dry time all stand in for the conversation.

Reminders Keep Customers Home

The most common reason a customer is not home is that they forgot. CarpetBossPro sends automated reminders by text and email, and customers choose their alerts: the night before, when they are next, and when the tech arrives. A night-before reminder catches the customer who forgot, while there is still time to rebook.

On the day itself, on-the-way texts go out automatically from the tech app, and the customer app shows a live map with their place in line. A customer who can see the van is two stops away is a customer who will be at the door.

When Nobody Answers

It still happens. The tech knocks, calls, waits a few minutes, and nobody comes. In the tech app, the tech taps Skip and notes why: “No answer at door, called twice, waited 10 minutes.” The office sees the skip and the reason right away.

The office can then text the customer, and the van moves on to the next job instead of sitting in the driveway. Getting that job back on the schedule is covered in When a Carpet Cleaning Job Gets Skipped: Getting It Back on the Schedule.

Home When You Arrive, Happy When You Leave

Scheduling around the customer being home is mostly about asking, writing it down and reminding. Ask when booking, put it on the job, route around it, and let the reminders do the rest. To see how reminders, routing and access notes fit together, visit the CarpetBossPro carpet cleaning scheduling software page.