Startup CleanASpace aims to create convenience

When Jon Thomas founded CleanASpace it was in response to potential clients looking for cleaning services over the phone. While some of these people were just price shopping, others just didn’t want to deal with the upfront “work” that was required to find the right cleaning company. Thomas also learned that not all potential clients wanted to meet with a salesperson for a price estimate.
CleanASpace targets the growing number of people that make a majority of their purchases online, but Thomas explains, “Another main reason for its creation was to help and support cleaners. We saw that there were a lot of cleaners that needed more cleaning work. We also saw that they really needed some sort of a system to work within. Not necessarily an employer, so-to-speak, but a system that not only made it easier for them to clean, but also a system that provided some consistency to what they were doing. Seeing all of this helped us to realize it was worth it to create a new business to serve them.”
What differences have you seen in offering your service online?
Well, a main difference is the amount of time it personally takes us when a customer purchases. Because they can get a majority of their questions answered online and even complete the booking process, including scheduling and payments, on the site that is time not spent to “sign up” a customer, thus allowing us more time to focus on creating more tools to improve the process. Of course, if a customer wants to speak with us and ask questions the “ol’ fashion way” they can certainly do that.
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How has using technology increased your platform for finding clients and managing it?
I think using technology is almost always about finding ways to make things easier and more efficient. By providing a way to actually interact and book our service online, as opposed to just advertising it, gives us the opportunity to sell the service to many more people in a shorter timeframe. Technology also provides tools to help with the management piece of our business, which ultimately revolves around the scheduling. Scheduling for this type of business is very dynamic, changing all the time, and if not watched closely can be all consuming for the person managing it, especially as the business grows.
For the cleaners that partner with us the technology not only helps us find cleaning work for them, but also help better manage processes that they otherwise would have like payments, communication, customer service, etc.
Has being able to find services online changed how people or companies look for cleaning services?
Definitely. We are in a time where more and more people are changing the way they find what they need using the internet. I remember when I first started talking about the idea of CleanASpace with friends, family, and business peers, and one of the biggest push-backs I consistently got was that they saw this as a referral business. They said that if they needed [a cleaning service] they would just ask their friends. First, this obviously only worked if their friends used the same type of service. Also, I would ask them to tell me about the last thing they purchased and how they determined where to buy it. More often than not some or all of their research involved online reviews and/or reports. It showed me that online referrals, in this day and age, are gaining weight and becoming more trusting to consumers. I can see the same trend happening in the cleaning services industry.
As a result of online services, are you seeing an upsurge in the number of people starting their own cleaning services?
Yes, however, I am doubtful that they will all last. What many of them may not know is that just creating an awesome website and online tools is a very small part of making a cleaning business work for the long haul. I think we will continue to see these types of surges across the board in many industries but I also think as people get into these businesses and understand all the other things that go along with it we will begin to see many businesses fall off just as quickly as they were started. I think our experience in the industry, learning firsthand from customers, has taught us a lot about what to expect and how to handle certain situations beyond just the online part of it.
More information about CleanASpace is at https://cleanaspace.com/
Watch CleanASpace short video here.
Read about more Arizona startups here.