CarpetBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

The Holiday Rush: Scheduling Carpet Cleanings Before Thanksgiving and Christmas

For most carpet cleaning companies, the weeks before Thanksgiving and Christmas are the busiest of the year. Everyone wants clean carpet before the family arrives, and everyone seems to remember at the same time. The phone rings constantly, every caller wants “before the holiday,” and the vans that were half full in October are suddenly booked solid.

The companies that come out of the season happy are the ones who scheduled it before it started.

Start With the Customers You Already Have

The last guide, Saved Views on the Carpet Cleaning Dispatch Board, covered getting around the board quickly. In the holiday rush, you will need it, but the bigger win is filling the board before the rush hits.

Your yearly and six-month customers are the easiest holiday bookings. Many of them had their last cleaning around the same time last year. Open the Waiting List map in early fall and look at who is due now, who is overdue, and who is coming due soon. Reach out to them first, before the new callers fill your vans.

Book Early, Book by Area

Holiday customers do not care much which day it is, as long as it is before the holiday. That gives you room to schedule by area:

• Pick a cluster of due and soon-due homes on the Waiting List map.
• Text them: “We're booking holiday cleanings now. We're in your area on the 12th or the 19th. Want one?”
• Assign the ones who say yes to that van and day.

A customer who comes due a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving will often happily move up to before it. The minimum days between visits is a minimum for when they come due, not a rule about when you can clean. Booking by area was covered in Filling a Carpet Cleaning Day by Area Instead of Driving Across Town.

Protect the Last Few Days

The days right before a holiday are the most requested and the most stressful. Customers booked on those days have no room to move if something goes wrong, and dry time matters more than ever when guests arrive the next day.

• Fill the last few days carefully, and leave a little slack for same-day calls and redo visits.
• Put bedrooms and guest rooms early in the day.
• Do not stack big whole-house jobs back to back on the same van.
• Encourage flexible customers to book earlier in the month.

Keep a List of Who Wants In

When the vans are full, keep taking requests. New callers who come in through your website request form land in Form Responses, and requests show on the Waiting List alongside due customers. When a cancellation opens a slot, look at the map near it and offer it to someone who wanted in. Short-notice openings fill fast in December.

Be honest with customers when you are full. “We're booked through the holiday, but I can put you first in line if something opens up, or book you for the first week after” keeps the customer instead of losing them.

Over-Communicate

Holiday customers are anxious about timing. Automatic texts carry a lot of weight in the rush:

• Night-before reminders, so nobody forgets during a busy week.
• On-the-way and arrived texts from the tech app.
• The live route map in the customer app, so they can see their place in line.

Plans include a monthly text allowance of 500, 1,000 or 2,000 texts sent and received on Start, Pro and Crew. Keep an eye on it in the busiest month.

Add a Little Revenue Per Visit

During the rush, adding work to existing visits beats adding more visits. A customer getting carpet done before the holiday may want the sofa, an area rug or the stairs too. Offer those when booking or on site, add them to the job, and the invoice matches when the tech taps Complete. Combined visits are covered in Booking Upholstery, Area Rugs and Tile With the Carpet Job: Scheduling Combined Visits.

After the Holidays

January is often quiet. Every holiday customer you complete starts a new count toward their next cleaning, and the Waiting List will bring them back next year. Use the slow weeks to work overdue customers, follow up on estimates and offer six-month plans to pet households.

To see how the Waiting List, dispatch board and customer texts handle a busy season together, visit the CarpetBossPro carpet cleaning scheduling software page.