With proper maintenance your customers’ floors are going to last for many years. In addition to enhancing a floor’s durability and quality, correct floor care techniques are important for safety and appearance. That’s obvious. But oftentimes communicating that message to your customers can be a daunting task. They can make mistakes that may cause serious floor damage, and it’s up to you to prevent them.

Frequent Mistakes
What are the most common miscues in floor maintenance and how can you teach your customers techniques to prevent them?

Jack and Lynn Roth own Able Service and Supply in Skokie, Ill. Lynn has been troubleshooting for floor companies for a number of years.

“The most common mistakes,” she says, “include selecting the wrong chemicals and not reading labels. If you use the wrong product it can slowly eat the finish off a floor.”

Another major mistake is incorrect identification. “A customer once phoned me asking for products to clean a marble floor. I went there and found that they had a vinyl composition floor instead. Had I sold them what they asked for, they would have destroyed their floor, she explains.”

To prevent this, Roth asks her customers to keep a Polaroid camera handy. “If they have a floor they’re not sure of, they can take a picture and show it to me.”

The predominant mistakes in floor care are stripping floors incorrectly, bad timing and putting down too much cleaner, says Karen Degraffenreid, operations manager of the R.D. Filip Janitor Supply Co., in Kokomo, Ind.

“A bad stripping job can damage your floor. When you’re laying the new seal and the finish, don’t rush the time between coats. You probably need to leave 35 to 45 minutes in between coats, depending on the humidity. If you get back on the floor too quickly and it’s not completely dry, you’ll get hazing because you haven’t allowed the first coat enough evaporation time,” Degraffenreid says.

If someone is putting the coats down too heavily, it will sometimes in a wavy-looking floor, she cautions.

Another common mistake is applying too much floor-care product for the task. Many products are in a concentrated form, and only a fractional amount needs to be used compared with conventional products. It’s crucial to know the product and how it’s used.

It’s also important that the product is rinsed correctly if specified. Otherwise it can dry and leave an unsightly white haze on the floor.

Set Customers Straight
Distributors need to show customers how to create a cleaning system that will get floors shiny and dirt-free, but that won’t leave a residue that attracts dirt. The same goes for carpeting, upholstery or any other floor type. Watch for customers that apply product and let it sit too long or that don’t change rinse water often enough.

Randy Mayes, president of Springfield Janitor Supply, Inc., Springfield, Mo., has seen many mistakes being made by his floor care customers.

“The biggest mistake? People think anyone can strip and wax a floor. That’s just not so. There’s a serious learning curve — maybe six months of experience — before a customer gets consistent results,” he explains.

“People don’t understand the four variables of cleaning: mechanical action, chemical action, time and temperature. That’s the second biggest mistake. They don’t properly integrate those variables. For example, they’ll either put the stripper on and try to pick it right back up without giving it adequate ‘dwell’ time. Or they don’t use a high-productivity pad.”

Another mistake occurs in laying down the finish, says Mayes. “That takes technique and training. It’s different than just mopping a floor.”

Mayes says that mistakes often don’t stop there. “After that, people will use the wrong cleaner or the wrong pad to maintain the floor,” he adds. “And there are also contamination problems. Some people rinse with the same mops that they’ve used to lay down the stripper.”

Mayes believes people need to get a system and work with it. It’s important that they work through the process step-by-step, he emphasizes.

“These are the points we make when we train. We hold classrooms or go on-site and do hands-on training.” His company uses a lot of icon-type procedures in their training. “For instance, when we instruct customers how to place a wet floor sign on their floors, we show them a picture of a wet floor sign. When we tell them to dry mop their floors we display a picture of a dry mop. We also use wall charts, booklets, flip charts and videos. All designed to walk our customers through proper procedures.”

As ex-school teachers, the Roths of Able Service have “a passion for training.”

“We hold classrooms and on-site demos,” says Lynn Roth. “When we design a maintenance program for customers, I go back and check on them. We provide written instructions and training videos,” she continues. “Our customers are visually oriented, so a ‘show and tell’ approach is very effective.”

R.D. Filip holds seminars at their facilities several times a year, according to Degraffenreid. “We also do on-site demos where we teach all of our end-users to correctly apply the finish. We use print materials and overheads. All of our demos are hands-on; we get people to actually do something, whether it’s laying the products or running the equipment.”

It Takes Training
Whether it’s providing computer-generated training literature, making visits to customers’ locations, conducting classes, or providing information via your website or another way, training and education are the most important way to prevent mistakes.

In a recent article in Sanitary Maintenance, Glen Franklin, owner of a floor care company bearing his name in Snohomish, Wash., urged sanitary suppliers to “get aboard the education train.” Hard-surface floors are more popular than ever, he said. This fact alone magnifies your customers’ training needs and means you, with the growing hard-floor maintenance market, will have rich opportunities to prosper in this sector.

Jordan Fox is a Milwaukee-based writer and editor.




POSTED ON: 1/1/2001