CarpetBossPro Blog — Carpet Cleaning Software

Prefill From the Last Job: Why Repeat Carpet Customers Should Never Be Re-Typed

A good carpet cleaning customer is a repeat customer. They call back next spring, or every six months, or the week before the holidays. Each time, the house is the same, the carpet is the same, and the job is usually close to the same. Asking them to describe it all again — or making the office type it all again — wastes everybody's time.

What Gets Remembered

Add-ons were the subject of Pet Odor, Stain Protector and Deodorizer: Tracking Add-Ons in Carpet Cleaning Software. They are one of the things that carry forward when a customer is booked again.

In CarpetBossPro, a new job at a home fills in from that home's last job. That means the carpet job details come along:

• The areas checked: bedrooms, living room, hallway, stairs, upholstery, area rugs and so on
• The add-ons: pet odor treatment, stain protector, deodorizer
• Square feet and number of rooms
• Carpet type and cleaning method

Access notes live on the address, so the gate code, the dog, where to park the van and where to run the hose are already there for every visit.

The Phone Call Gets Shorter

Here is what a repeat booking sounds like without prefill: “Which rooms did we do last time? Was it the stairs too? What kind of carpet is it? Do you still have the dog?” Half the call is spent rebuilding the job.

With prefill, the office opens a new job at the address and the details are already filled in. The call becomes, “Last time we did the living room, three bedrooms, the hallway and stairs, plus stain protector downstairs. Same again, or anything different this year?” The customer either says yes or mentions the one thing that changed. The office unchecks a room or adds a sofa, and the job is booked.

That is a better experience for the customer too. It sounds like a company that knows their house.

Estimates Carry Onto the Job

The same principle works for new customers. When the office builds an estimate, it fills in the carpet job details along with the priced services. When the customer approves the estimate online, the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job, and the details carry onto it. The tech sees exactly what was quoted.

This closes one of the biggest gaps in carpet cleaning: the difference between what was quoted and what shows up on the ticket. If the estimate said living room, dining room and hallway, so does the job.

Prefill and the Waiting List Work Together

Repeat customers are set by minimum days between visits — a year, six months, a month. When the time passes, the home shows on the Waiting List map as due. The office picks a group of homes in one area to fill a day, and each new job fills in from that home's last job.

Put those together and filling a day of repeat customers is mostly clicking. The Waiting List tells you who is due, prefill tells you what they need, and the dispatch board puts them in route order. That workflow is laid out in The Waiting List: Filling Carpet Cleaning Days With Repeat Customers Who Came Due.

Keep the Last Job Accurate

Prefill is only as good as the last job. A few habits keep it accurate:

• Fix the job if it changed on site. If the customer added the dining room during the walk-through, make sure the job shows it before it closes. Next year's job will start from it.
• Use the tech's checklist notes. The tech records rooms cleaned, stains that did not come out, a condition and a note for the customer. The office can read those before calling the customer next year.
• Update access notes when they change. New gate code, new dog, moved the parking spot. Change it once on the address and every future visit has it.
• Check square feet on the first visit. If the phone estimate guessed the size, have the tech confirm it. Every future job benefits.

Different Jobs at the Same House

Not every visit to a house is the same job. A customer might get a whole-house cleaning every spring and an upholstery cleaning before the holidays. When that happens, the office simply changes what is checked on the new job. Prefill gives you a starting point, not a cage.

The same is true for move-out cleanings and one-time jobs. If there is no last job at the address, the job starts empty and the office fills it in, the way it would on paper — once.

To see how prefill fits with the Waiting List, dispatch and the tech app, return to the CarpetBossPro carpet cleaning software page.