Any cleaning team that services the same building week after week will eventually miss something. A bin left full in a meeting room. A streak on the entry glass. An office skipped because someone was still working in it.
A provider who promises never to miss anything has not been cleaning for long. The useful question for a facility or office manager is not whether mistakes happen. It is what happens next, and how quickly.
Why “we’ll fix it next clean” is not good enough
If your office is cleaned weekly, “next clean” can mean six days. If the miss is in a bathroom, a kitchen or the reception area, your staff and visitors see it every day in between, and you are the one who hears about it.
Cleaning providers usually offer one of four answers when something is missed:
- No stated timeframe at all
- Fixed at the next scheduled clean
- A re-clean within a set number of days, often 72 hours
- A return visit within 24 hours
Ask your provider which one they offer, and get it in writing. A timeframe that only exists in a sales conversation does not help you when a complaint lands on your desk.
What a proper make-good process looks like
A good make-good process is more than a return visit. It has five parts.
- One clear contact. You report the problem once, to a person who can act on it, not to a general inbox.
- A timeframe in writing. You know how soon someone will come back.
- Proof the fix was done. A photo or a note, so you do not have to walk over and check.
- A look at the cause. Was it a gap in the checklist, an access problem, a new team member or too little time on site? If the cause is not fixed, the miss comes back.
- A record. Each issue is logged, so patterns show up. The same area missed twice is a scope or timing problem, not bad luck.
A real example
At a multi-building strata property we look after, a resident noticed streaks on the tiled floor on the ground floor of one building and sent a photo. The building contact forwarded it to us the same way, with the photo attached.
Our team went back to redo the floor, and checked the other floors as well. If streaks show up in one place, the method or the product is often the cause, not one bad shift. Fixing only the spot in the photo would have left the same problem waiting on the next level.
Questions to ask your cleaning provider
Use these in your next review or when comparing providers:
- If something in the scope is missed, how do I report it, and to whom?
- How soon will someone come back to fix it?
- How will I know it has been fixed?
- What do you change so it does not happen again?
- Can I see the record of past issues on my site?
If the answers are vague, the process probably is too. Our guide on what happens when your cleaner misses a session covers the related question of missed visits and cover.
How Gold Keys handles a miss
If something in your agreed scope is missed, tell us and we come back to fix it within 24 hours. You speak directly with the owner, not a call centre.
The fix is logged in Connecteam with photos, the same way every regular visit is recorded with a checklist, a timestamp and photos. Then we look at why it happened, and adjust the checklist, the timing or the team briefing so it does not repeat. Our guide to checking whether your office cleaner is doing the job explains how that documentation works for you.
Book a free site visit or contact Gold Keys to talk about your site.
