 Hey everybody, this is Derek with Cleaning Business Today and I want to talk to you about a three-part series that we're starting with this quick video which is all about weather related and cold related issues because it's winter up here in Ohio and for those of you below the Mason-Dixon line, this may not be as relevant, although somebody who grew up in Texas I can tell you we did occasionally get snowstorms down there, too But it's how to deal with our winter weather. So we're going to break into three series and today I'm going to talk about scheduling, the effect on scheduling, and having your policies in place So one of the trickiest questions for most cleaning service owners is just deciding when to stay open and when to stay close And honestly, it's going to vary a lot by regions. As somebody who's lived in different parts of the United States I can tell you that Cincinnati, Ohio is surprisingly Gun-shy when it comes to snow compared to other places like Minneapolis and Chicago. So the policy which we had standardized on and I find most cleaning services use is Deferring to the school district. So if the school districts start late, the cleaning service starts late. If the school district cancels then they will cancel for the day for those employees and There's a couple reasons why this works. First of all is the reality is most of our employees probably have kids and if the school cancels suddenly they're not going to ever put their kids So they're not coming to work anyway Secondly, the school districts normally employ Weathermen or weather people to figure out the weather. They also have lawyers to figure out the liability of driving in the snow So if they've decided that it's not safe and they don't want the liability of the kids going to school I probably don't want the liability of my employees on the road So our policy was always to match the school district Now this can get tricky for a couple reasons because not all school districts are the same For example here in Cincinnati, Ohio a Lot of my customers live in blue ash, which is a relatively dense affluent part of town You've got great snow removal capabilities in blue ash. It can snow two inches. They'll have it plowed You won't even look like it snowed on the street by nine in the morning A lot of my employees come from more rural parts of town where there's not even a municipality They're counting on the state to plow and let me tell you the state doesn't plow the side roads very quickly So snow out in some of those more rural areas would cancel school for them But not for us in the city So we would have to communicate to our customers ahead of time that when we talk about canceling on snow days We are matching the snow days of where my cleaners live Not the snow days where my customers live and that means when it snowed Sometimes I would have seven of 25 employees come into work that day and have to reschedule certain sections So like most things it was important to communicate with the customers up front This time of year before the snow happens what your policy is going to be The other thing which we did which was important to communicate to both the cleaners and to the customers is when a snow day Happens we would have a makeup day just like schools would so when it snowed if we have Lost Tuesday our cleaners would work on Friday to make up for that day And so it was explained to them in the policy that when there's a snow day you are going to be working on Saturday to make up for the snow day and We also explain that to our customers so that when we were calling and needing to cancel due to snow We could reschedule them on Saturday and everyone knows what was going on So there's a couple key decisions here You don't have to match the policy that myself and a lot of others did about Matching what the schools did Some states use snow emergency levels one two three you could decide to use the snow emergency level system You could set a guideline that a certain amount of snow or ice and you cancel The important thing is that you have a guideline that you communicate it to your employees and your customers now So when it happens people aren't calling in and wondering they'll know oh, they're not going to come today school was cancelled got it and Also have the discussion now about how you're going to reschedule that work Are you going to work on Saturday to make it up? Hey, that may not work for everybody. That was our policy Are you gonna stay out the next couple of days a little late? Are you just going to skip the house? I will tell you that skipping the house typically didn't work very well for us because when it snows their kids stay home from school to They go out and play in the snow and then come inside with that wet muddy snow Boot slush and get it all over the house So the customers in my experience got kind of grumpy if we weren't going to come and clean when it snowed because their house got Really dirty when it snowed so having a strategy for setting them up for future appointments and rescheduling is really important We're gonna be talking a couple more things in the next couple weeks next week. We're gonna be talking about the fun of snow safety Shoveling driveways slips and falls injuries all that great stuff that happens in the snow that probably Runs up your cost and then the third one which is gonna be two weeks from now I'm gonna be turning it around and trying to make it a little more positive when it snows and it's cold What are the opportunities to generate some more revenue to make up for all of this nastiness? We're talking about so this will be our three-part a series on snow and hopefully this helped Thanks, and as always follows ask cleaning business today If you're not subscribed click on the right hand side of the screen to subscribe to get our newsletters. Thanks