Best Practices
In general, TIDY's goal is to serve as your partner for all things cleaning and maintenance. What we have found is that all customers, regardless of size, want to customize their experience in some way. There is no "one-size-fits-all" when it comes to helping customers with cleaning and maintenance.
Taking these in rough order, typically customers want to improve the following things:
- Improving Acceptance Rate of Jobs - Making sure their job requests get accepted.
- Improving Reliability of Jobs - Making sure their job requests get to the job (important as the cancellation rate in the industry is so high).
- Improving Quality of Jobs - Making sure jobs get done the way you want.
- Ease of Administration of Jobs - Making it easier to do all of the above.
In these sections, we will outline best practices for each of these.
The probability of a job request getting accepted and completed is affected dramatically by the property and your settings. These are some of the factors:
Less Likely To Accept | More Likely To Accept |
|---|---|
Last Minute Jobs | Jobs >1 week out |
Low-Cost Jobs | Higher-Rate Jobs |
One-Time Jobs | Recurring Jobs (when applicable) |
Lots of Compliance Requirements (e.g. gender preferences) | Little Compliance Requirements |
Single-Day Request (no flexibility) | Multi-Day Request (some flexibility) |
Remote Location | Busy Location |
Sundays and Holidays | Weekdays |
High Dispute Activity on Your Account | Low Dispute Activity on Your Account |
High Cancellation Rate on Your Account | Low Cancellation Rate on Your Account |
Few added pros | You have added pros |
Generally, the "better" your expected acceptance rate, the more high-quality pros will compete for your jobs.
So for example, making a job request for Christmas day on Christmas Eve with gender preferences in a remote location at a low rate will have an extremely low probability of acceptance. Making a job request for something over a couple of days, with reasonable rates and at least some notice, will have a high acceptance rate.
Adding pros you may have worked with before will help ensure a higher acceptance rate, however it is not required, and if you do not have pros we generally recommend just having us work on it for you. But if you have pros you worked with before, we recommend adding them.
How does this affect reliability?
While it varies by job type, generally speaking the cancellation or reschedule rate by pros is about 25% on average. This means about 25% of the time you book a pro, the average pro will cancel or need to reschedule. In some cases, where you are flexible, this may not be a huge issue. But for getting jobs done at a specific time, this is a challenge. TIDY has helped with over 1M jobs since 2014, and has developed a philosophy of:
- Smarter decisions - Using machine learning to predict cancellations based on about 20 factors. Actually predicting cancellation of a specific job is quite hard, requiring many factors to determine accurately, including the pros previous performance, time of day, day of week, expected traffic, expected weather, distance to the job, school schedules, and holiday schedules.
- Using many pros - Never relying on just 1 pro, and having a range of backups available. This is why good acceptance criteria are important.
- Use flexibility when available - For many clients, they genuinely can be flexible on the time. This is why we allow customers to set backup times to let us know what times we have to work with.
Specifically, with AI combined with having many options, we are able to do a few things:
- When a pro expected to be more reliable becomes available, potentially switch to them.
- When the threshold of expected cancellations in an area surpasses a threshold, TIDY will create a standby job for pros to let them know that if they agree to be "on deck", they will most likely be needed. This helps solve last-minute issues.
- When a pro does cancel, automatically find a replacement. The most we have ever seen is 12 pros on a single job over time! Meaning one pro accepted the job, then cancelled, and a replacement was found, and so on until 12 total people were on the job. The job ultimately happened successfully!
- When a pro has a higher likelihood of having an issue, we adjust our notifications to them to be more frequent. Pros who have a higher likelihood of issues get more notifications, but those who are expected to be good get reduced notifications, to reduce notification fatigue.
But these mitigation options generally only work well for clients with good expected acceptance rates.
With this in mind, these are our recommendations on practical steps you can take to improve your expected acceptance rates and reliability.
This way, if there is any issue with the job, a Pro has the time to come make it right later that day (or the following day). For example: if you have a party at 8pm and you schedule a 2.5 hour job for 5pm. Even if you get 2 Pros, if they shut down the freeway at 4:30pm, they may end up too late to help as much as you'd like. By scheduling early in the day, you enable more opportunities to respond to issues. For example, if you had the job done at 8am, but something similar happened, you could get it done later in the day.
If you have another vendor, even one who is not your favorite, add them. TIDY will reach out to other Pros you add to your list when issues occur in your priority order.
If you truly never want to see a person again, then by all means definitely blacklist them. However, if they were not your favorite but you would use them in a pinch, we would recommend adding them to the bottom of your priority list in the "My Pros" section. This is a better option. Pros cannot see your blacklist rate directly, but they can pick thresholds to not work with people.
If you frequently book and cancel jobs, this is considered a negative by pros. Pros can see if you cancel on them, and if you do this you might get seen as an unreliable customer. Some customers might not really end up needing a job done, but decide to let it happen anyway to preserve the relationship. If you need to cancel, then cancel! Canceling earlier is generally more polite than later cancellations. We just recommend being thoughtful about things. Pros can't see your average cancellation rate, but they can set thresholds and preferences that mean if you have a high cancellation rate you may not be able to get them for jobs.
This way, if there is any issue with the job, a Pro has the time to come make it right later that day (or the following day). For example: if you have a party at 8pm and you schedule a 2.5 hour job for 5pm. Even if you get 2 Pros, if they shut down the freeway at 4:30pm, they may end up too late to help as much as you'd like. By sched
TIDY provides when booking a probability that a job request will be accepted. This is a helpful way to see how you are doing on some of these aspects for a specific job.
Most people, for most cases, don't have "one exact time or not at all". By setting backup times, you still have a confirmed timeslot, but in the event some flexibility is really needed, then the job can still happen. For example: Let's say you have an 8am job, and the Pro has a car accident and can't make it at 7:45am. Without backup times, you would be unlikely to get a substitute to come within 15 minutes. If you set a backup time for 9:30am, you would have plenty of time to get a substitute.
Allowing substitutes allows someone to fill in for your regular Pro if they can't make it. If you only allow your preferred Pro to come, then you can manually request one later, but it is less likely to be successful (because when finding a substitute you want to start the search ASAP). For example, let's say you have a 8am job with Maria and she gets sick. If you don't allow substitutes, you would have to get the job with Maria on a different day when she is better. If you did allow substitutes, someone else could fill in for her.
This also allows us to authorize Standbys for a job. Standbys are pros who are in the area, knowing you may need them. In the event they are needed, they are able to get there quickly.
Improving the quality of jobs is something that can require time, and is an ongoing effort. Our team is here to help you with these pieces.
At a high level, getting someone to do the job right might require:
- Start by adding current pros: Even if you are looking to switch away from your current pros/vendors, we recommend adding them to your list when starting to use TIDY to ensure you have a smooth transition when starting. They may not be your favorite for cost or quality reasons, but having them in the mix improves the chance of smooth and high-quality experiences.
- Load property information: Capture the current state of the property to provide an accurate starting point.
- Use digital to-do lists: Define the desired outcome, including item placement, tasks, and other details.
- Mark to-dos as "Most Important": Typically, you have some things that are much more important than others. Telling your pros this can dramatically change things. For example, some people may really care about floors and bathrooms, others want to make sure everythign looks well presented with welcome packets.
- Add photos to to-dos: Showing pros what to do can dramatically improve how effective they are at complying with what you like.
- Video Introductions: Utilize our "intro video" feature (Video Introductions) by contacting an account manager, and giving your pros a video introduction to the property.
- Book appropriate job sizes: Ensure sufficient time is budgeted for tasks, e.g., if booking a cleaning with three loads of laundry, allocate enough time for each load.
- Inspections
- In-Person Inspections: These are more work and/or expense, but having an in-person inspection from a third party is the most reliable way to ensure quality work. TIDY can help book in-person inspections for you as a separate job type. For the best quality, in-person inspections are recommended. But they are expensive, so they don't work for all usecases. We can automatically schedule these after jobs are complete.
- Remote Inspections: Use the TIDY remote inspection feature to get an inspection done as a part of another job. The remote inspection feature asks your pro to take photos or videos either before the job, after the job, or both. You can also add fields to ask the pro to do inspection tasks while on the job. For example, some people add inspection tasks to a cleaning. ou can review the photos or videos from these inspections, or have our team review them for you (note these count as Concierge Actions on an eligible plan).
- Track activity with GPS: Monitor pros to confirm they are performing their tasks.
- Communicate with the pros: If you have specific concerns or things you want the pro to do, communicating with the pro with our communication tools can dramatically improve results. In addition, you may be able to provide pros with immediate help and clarifications when needed.
- Assemble the right team: Finding the right pros may take time.
- Add more pros to your account.
- Block pros you don't like.
- Favorite those you do. Our AI will improve pairing recommendations based on your input, but the process can take time and ultimately depends on you.
- Leaving reviews will also help us to understand your areas of issues, and help find solutions.
- Require Your Own Training: (NOT RECOMMENDED) If you really feel specific training is important, you can require them on your account. This is not recommended, though, as it will dramatically reduce your acceptance rate. Talk to an account manager about setting up your training materials as a requirement.
- Speak with the success team: Discuss concerns, and we'll review your account, ensuring there are no issues and suggesting new pros if needed.
Getting quality right is an ongoing effort, and we will work with your team to make sure we get things up to your standards.
We Don't Recommend Training
For most customers, we don't recommend training pros in person. We instead recommend using digital tools like rich checklists and video introductions. Training requirements limit the pros you can work with, which typically reduces reliability and increases costs. Training can be effective for some customers and we can help you track it as a compliance requirement, but it is not recommended.
Generally speaking, to improve the administration of jobs, we recommend:
- Communicate with the TIDY team about what you want to do.
- Integrating whenever possible to the tools you use.
- Give feedback to TIDY about where your pain points are. We may have a solution for you already, and if not, we may be able to add it!
There are several options for managing the restocking of inventory, particularly for short term rentals.
Have an "Owner's Closet" or similar storage area on site so that pros coming to do turnovers have a reser. Typically we see people have an "owners closet" or something similar that has a stock of supplies so the resupplies go into there. This allows for things to be less sensitive to minor logistical hiccups. If you have a cleaning or inspection occuring, this is a great time to get an updated inventory of what is in the closet, and place orders based on that.
- Have a person on the property management team do restocking. This can be effective if someone is in the area, and able to do restocking as needed. TIDY can help you still manage stock levels, create alerts, create tasks internally for your team.
- Order and ship to the property to arrive before a pro comes to turn the property. When having things shipped, we recommend having it shipped as close as possible to when the pro arrives, to mitigate issues such as package theft. If scheduled for the right daytime, it can work well and we have had people successfully do this.
- Order and ship to warehouse facility or amazon locker and get a separate pickup job to restock. Shipping to an amazon locker can be a good approach as it can act like a temporary warehouse, and we can help schedule a job to pickup from there to restock. This typically involves about 1 hour of time, going to the locker, getting the stuff, and going to the site, and getting it in the closet. Additional cost for a standalone job here will vary, but its typically in the $50-$80 range.
- Order and ship to an warehouse facility or amazon locker and have a pickup occur as a part of a turnover job (e.g. cleaning or inspection). You can add a pickup from a facility to the beginning of a job such as cleaning. BUT in order for it to be successful I would make sure we have very clear instructions, a convenient pickup spot, and set up extra reminders for the pro that they need to pick up first. We can also help with reminders here.
- Have a pro be responsible for it. This isn't something we generally recommend or help with, we generally speaking consider most jobs to be "self contained" and recommend having redundant pros for when one cancels and can't make it. We have an integration with Thumbtack you can use for this, or any method you like to find a pro, train/get them to learn your system.
Generally speaking, TIDY's software offers integrated inventory tracking. We also offer various automations that you can set up to manage your inventory process. Use our "Concierge Actions" to have humans complete things that can be done remotely in about 5 minutes each.
So with inventory, this can mean:
- Ordering on your behalf
- Checking in with pros to make sure they have restocking instructions
- Letting you know of issues
We cannot:
- Actually go on site for anything, our team is remote.
TIDY is the most technically sophisticated approach to getting cleaning and maintenance jobs done. So our approach can be different than many are used to. Here are some FAQs that address common concerns:
First, if you have a pro added to your account, you can always book them specifically. But sometimes, when a client has an issue, they want to know how they can get "better pros". Practically speaking, we recommend following our best practices to improve the acceptance rate. This is the best way in the system to get better pros for a job.
Given our experience, we see that:
- Pro quality is not typically binary, as in it is unique for each job, even beyond client and pro! Similar to dating, there is no "best person", it is rather the best person available for the job. This is not like Uber, where people basically get you from point A to point B. In over 1M jobs, we have seen:
- Pros that a client liked for a while change their mind on.
- Pros that worked well for 1 job type with a client, but not another.
- Pros that some clients LOVE and other clients STRONGLY DISLIKE.
- Pro reliability is also not binary. Different people have different patterns of reliability issues. In our experience, we have seen:
- Some pros are very reliable on some days of the week, but not others. This is likely due to life plans, school issues, or other issues they may not even realize.
- Some pros go on streaks of reliability and not. Again, this is often driven by life issues.
- Some pros are unreliable only for specific types of jobs. Maybe they don't like them as much, so are more hesitant to do them.
All of these factors go back to our core principles of:
- Using AI to create better predictions of quality and reliability, going beyond simple unreliable metrics.
- Using many pros, so that we can find the right fit for a job and find replacement options as they become available.
Some pros are better on average, but trying to find a single, consistently great pro is hard/rare.
If you know the pro, you can see their ratings on their website. If you don't know the pro, we recommend using our AI predictions and generally don't share ratings because they are not effective. Issues with ratings include:
- The fit is typically around the job, not the pro themselves, for the reasons outlined in "Why can't I just pick better pros?"
- The quality of fit is more complex than reviews, Low volume/noise can lead to swings in reviews.
- Most vendors do many fewer jobs than, say, an Uber driver. So the number of reviews is typically much lower than you might see in other industries.
- The average reviews change across industries. For example, cleaning has a lower average satisfaction rate industry-wide (67% average positive rate) versus driving (98% average positive rate). So you have to benchmark the rating of the pro for the industry.
- TIDY collects rather unfiltered review data on individual pros, whereas other data sources (e.g., Yelp) have review data at the company level, across all their pros.
Another practical issue of looking at an individual pro for a job is that if you look at 1 person's reviews, you reasonably expect to see them show up. This means you forgo all the advantages of having many pros. And looking at a pro who may be switched for a better fit, does not seem helpful.
So overall, while there are some ways to see pro ratings, we generally don't think its helpful to review these and don't recommend it.
There are some compliance requirements you can configure, and we are considering adding other metrics to your criteria. Reach out to us if you have any suggestions for new filters to add to your account.
We are looking into other account level blocks, see "Can I define my own minimum criteria for pros?". However, it is unlikely that this would actually help reliability, since TIDY helps you optimize pros with a range of reliability metrics.
For example, say you have 2 pros.
Pro A has an on time arrival rate of 90%. Pro B has an on time arrival rate of 60%. This matches the industry average of 75%.
Would blocking Pro B (with a 60% rate) improve reliabilty? Statistically no...or at least not in most cases.
Pro A would already be preferred all things being equal. So the only time when Pro B would get the job would be when Pro A is unavailable. In addition, if Pro A is booked, and Pro B is a standby, you would expect 90% of the time Pro A to show up. The remaining 10% of the time, 6 of 10 times Pro B would show up, for a 96% completion rate, which is very high for the industry. Using 2 pros together, even when one is less preferred, typically leads to better results.
If you are starting with no pros at all, we recommend being patient. It often takes property managers years to get set up with pros they like for most things. Pros work styles vary tremendously and every property manager is unique, so finding a good match is more like dating.
You can use TIDY without any pros, and build up your list over time. However, we strongly recommend that you:
- Add any pros you already work with even if they are not your preferred pro, unless you would prefer nobody to them. If they are bottom of the priority list, add them to the bottom. Even adding them but blocking them might be a good idea if you truly never want them.
- Try other sources for pros: referrals, Thumbtack, Yelp, or Google - these can all be alternative sources. While our team can help dramatically as an option, we typically save 90% of the time here, and are not expected to save 100%. We are most helpful in automating things once you have pros in the system.