MaidBossPro Blog — Recurring Cleanings

Changing a Recurring Cleaning Client From Weekly to Every Two Weeks (and Back)

A client's frequency is not a lifetime decision. People have babies, adopt dogs, lose jobs, start traveling, send kids to college and retire. Each of those can make a weekly schedule too much or a monthly schedule not enough. A company that changes frequency smoothly keeps the client. A company that makes it awkward loses them.

Why Clients Change Frequency

The three schedules and who they suit are covered starting with Monthly House Cleaning Clients: Making a Once-a-Month Visit Worth the Drive and the articles before it. Here we look at moving a client between them.

Clients usually ask to change for one of a few reasons:

• Money. Weekly is the most expensive per month, and it is the first thing trimmed when a budget tightens.
• Life got messier. A new baby or a new dog turns an every-two-weeks house into one that needs weekly help.
• Life got quieter. Kids moved out, or a partner started working from an office again.
• Season. Some clients want more help around the holidays or in a busy season and less the rest of the year.

Whatever the reason, a request to go down in frequency is a save, not a loss. The alternative is often a cancellation. Treat it that way.

Offer the Change Before They Ask

Some of the best frequency changes start with you. Watch for signs:

• A weekly client keeps skipping every other visit. Offer every two weeks so they stop paying cancellation fees or feeling guilty.
• An every-two-weeks client's visits keep running long, with notes from the team like “heavy pet hair again.” Suggest weekly, or a price that matches the time.
• A monthly client keeps asking for extra visits before holidays. Offer every two weeks.

Past notes on the team's phone and on the office record make these patterns visible. Skips arrive at the office with the team's reason attached, so a client who keeps skipping shows up on its own.

Repricing the New Schedule

If you price each schedule differently, as many maid services do, a frequency change is also a price change. Going from weekly to every two weeks usually raises the per-visit price, because each visit takes longer. Going from monthly to every two weeks usually lowers it.

Say it plainly in a text or email: “Every two weeks is $155 a visit instead of $135 weekly, because each visit covers more. Your monthly total goes down.” Clients accept the per-visit increase much more easily when they see the monthly total drop.

In MaidBossPro, your schedules can be separate services on your service list, so the new series picks up the right service and price. Make the change before the next visit so the invoice matches what you told them.

Setting Up the New Schedule

Recurring cleanings in MaidBossPro are fixed slots, and each series has one frequency. On the Recurring Cleanings list, Change handles the team, the day of the week, the time and the price for every upcoming visit. A new frequency is a new series:

• Stop the old series. Its finished visits stay exactly as they were, so the client's history is untouched.
• Add Recurring Cleaning for the same home with the new frequency, the new service and price, and the same time and team if they still fit.
• Pick the first date carefully. It sets the weekday and, for every-two-weeks clients, which week they land on. Weekly to every two weeks usually means keeping the same day, starting two weeks after the last cleaning.
• Choose how far ahead to schedule, 3, 6 or 12 months, and every visit goes straight onto the schedule and the team's app.

Check the next two weeks on the Scheduled List afterward so nothing from the old series is left where it should not be.

Keeping the Team's Week Balanced

Frequency changes ripple through a team's week. A weekly client who drops to every two weeks opens a slot on alternating weeks. A client who moves up to weekly fills one. When you make the change, look at the team's board for the next two weeks. If going every two weeks leaves one week heavy and one light, choose which week the client lands on to even things out, as described in Every-Two-Weeks Cleaning Clients: The Workhorse of a Recurring Maid Service Schedule.

The open slots are an opportunity. A freed weekly slot is a good spot for a new every-two-weeks client nearby on the opposite week, which fills the slot both weeks.

Seasonal Changes

Some clients want weekly from Thanksgiving through New Year's and every two weeks the rest of the year. That works fine, but it means swapping the series twice a year. Put a note on the client record, such as “Weekly Nov–Dec, every two weeks Jan–Oct,” and set a reminder for yourself to make the switch.

Confirm in Writing

After any frequency change, send a short confirmation: the new schedule, the new price, and the date of the next visit. It takes one text through two-way texting and saves an argument later. To see how frequency changes fit with the rest of the recurring system, visit the MaidBossPro recurring cleaning software page.