WindowBossPro Blog — Recurring Cleanings

What Plan Customers See in the Window Cleaning Customer App

A plan customer has a relationship with your company that lasts years. Over that time they will want to know when you are coming, change their card, ask for an extra cleaning before a party, look up last quarter's invoice and maybe tell a neighbor about you. Every one of those used to mean a phone call to the office. The WindowBossPro customer app lets plan customers handle them on their own.

Why Plan Customers Need Their Own App

The office side of recurring routes, including the two-van split, is covered in One Van on Homes, One on Storefronts: Routing Recurring Window Cleaning Plans. This article is about the other side of the glass: what the customer sees.

One-time customers need very little from you after the job. Plan customers need a lot, just spread out over years. Giving them a place to see and do those things themselves makes the plan feel easy, which is the whole point of a plan. It also takes a steady stream of small calls and texts off the office.

Watching the Crew on Visit Day

On the day of a visit, customers can see the route on a live map: “You're stop 12 of 20 — the crew is 5 stops away.” That one line answers the most common question a plan customer has: when will they be here?

It matters most for inside-and-outside jobs. A homeowner who needs to be home to open the house can see how close the crew is and plan around it. A storefront manager can see when to expect the van and make sure the door is open.

Choosing Their Own Alerts

Customers pick the alerts they want in the app:

• Night before — a reminder the evening before the visit.
• When I'm next — a text when they are the next stop on the route.
• Tech arrived — a text when the tech pulls up.

Plan customers vary a lot in how much contact they want. Some want every alert. Some only want to know when the tech arrives. Letting them choose means fewer complaints about too many texts and fewer surprises at the door. More on reminders in Reminders Before Every Recurring Window Cleaning Visit.

Requesting Extra Cleanings

Even plan customers sometimes want an extra visit. A graduation party. A house going on the market. A storefront with a grand opening. Customers can request service right from the app, and the request comes to the office to schedule.

Watch these requests. A quarterly customer who keeps asking for extra visits may be ready to move to a shorter plan. A twice-a-year customer who requests a summer cleaning every year is a quarterly customer who has not been asked yet.

Customers can also sign up for services and see your pricing in the app, which makes it easy for them to add screens and tracks or hard-water removal on their own.

Cards, Invoices and Payments

Billing is where the customer app saves the most office time for plan customers:

• Update their card. When a card expires or gets replaced, the customer updates it themselves, so the next auto-charge goes through.
• See invoices. Every visit's invoice, with line items and sales tax, is there to look up.
• Pay online. If a charge failed or an account pays by invoice, the customer can pay in the app.

For accounts on monthly billing, the monthly statement covering every location is there too. That means fewer calls asking “what was this charge?” and fewer failed cards that sit unpaid.

Ratings and Referrals

Happy plan customers are your best marketing. In the app, customers can rate their service and refer friends. A quarterly customer whose neighbor asks about their spotless windows can share your info in a few taps. Referrals from plan customers tend to become plan customers themselves, especially if they live on the same street and can be cleaned on the same day.

Ratings also tell you how plan customers feel over time. A drop in ratings from one neighborhood or one van is worth a look before it turns into cancellations.

A Plan That Feels Easy

The customer app turns a recurring plan into something the customer barely has to think about: alerts they chose, a live map on visit day, a card that updates itself when they change it, invoices on hand and a quick way to ask for more. For how the customer app fits with plans, routing and billing in WindowBossPro, visit the recurring window cleaning software page.