"Can you come before Saturday? We've got a party"
Tuesday evening: a customer texts asking for an extra clean before the weekend. Another asks to go eight-weekly from now on because money is tight. A third says to skip the winter and start again in March. A new neighbour wants a single clean before they sell the house.
You reply to each one and mean to update the round. By Friday you have done the party clean, forgotten the frequency change and cleaned the eight-weekly house at four weeks, and the winter pause customer is still on your list. In March, nobody remembers to restart her.
Change requests arrive as chat, not as changes
Round apps and notebooks hold the regular pattern well. What they handle badly is the stream of small changes, because those arrive as conversation in texts, calls and at the door.
- Requests come by text, WhatsApp, phone and at the door.
- One-off cleans are added to the round by hand, if at all.
- Frequency changes are agreed but not updated in the round.
- Pauses have no restart date, so customers are lost.
- One-off customers are not asked whether they want regular cleans.
Cleans done wrong, customers lost quietly
Cleaning a house at the old frequency after the customer asked to change leads to complaints or unpaid cleans. Missing a one-off before a party loses a customer's goodwill at the moment it mattered to them. Paused customers who are never restarted are lost income that nobody notices. And one-off customers who would have become regulars are never asked.
There is a round-level cost too. Every change you forget to make leaves the round a little less accurate, so your daily lists drift away from reality. After a few months you stop trusting the app or notebook, and start keeping a second list of exceptions in your head, which is exactly the thing that makes a round hard to hand to anyone else.
Every request becomes a change on the round
We build a request handling layer on top of your round records.
- Customers get a link, in texts and on your invoices, to request a change: extra clean, one-off, change frequency, pause, cancel or add a service.
- Requests by text or WhatsApp can be forwarded into the same list with one tap, and the system reads the customer and request type for you to confirm.
- One-off cleans are placed on the best round day in that area before the customer's deadline, and the customer gets a confirmation.
- Frequency changes update the customer's cycle from their last clean, and the next due date is recalculated.
- Pauses require a restart date, and the customer gets a friendly message before their restart.
- One-off customers get a follow-up after the clean asking whether they would like to join the round, with the options.
| Request | Today | With request handling |
|---|---|---|
| Extra clean before an event | Remembered, hopefully | Booked on the best day before the deadline |
| Change to eight-weekly | Agreed by text, not updated | Cycle recalculated |
| Winter pause | No restart date | Restart date and reminder |
| One-off for a house sale | Done and forgotten | Follow-up offer to join the round |
The round matches what customers asked for
Changes are made the moment they are agreed, not when you remember. Customers get what they asked for and a confirmation. Paused customers come back on time. And one-off work becomes a steady source of new regular customers.
On a normal evening, instead of scrolling through messages, you open the request list, confirm a handful of changes that are already filled in, and the next day's list reflects them.
In spring, the customers who paused for winter get their restart message a week before their first clean, and most simply reply to confirm. The ones who do not are on a short list for you to ring. Nobody silently disappears from the round because a date was never written down.
Are changes slipping through on your round?
- You have cleaned a house at the wrong frequency.
- One-off requests arrive by text and are easy to forget.
- Winter pauses have no restart date.
- You rarely ask one-off customers to join the round.
- Round changes wait until you have time to update the app.