Wow, 2022 - what a year it has been!
As we approach the holidays, Michael Brown, Swept CEO, held a live webinar for our first ever Customer Town Hall. The purpose of this town hall was to create better communication and connection with our customers. Our goal was to share our mission and vision for this industry and our role as a catalyst for change for commercial cleaning operators.
In case you missed it, here’s a recap of what we covered.
2022 at a glance
When we think about the janitorial industry and how it has changed and grown over the past few years, it's easy to get excited! The past couple of years have been particularly interesting with the pandemic changing how we work and how we clean. In 2022, we focused on how our customers' work was adapting and changing. We heard clearly there were more opportunities to generate revenue through things like add on services and tag work. Clients want fewer service providers on site and want more from the ones that are there.
Growing faster in 2022 meant ensuring you could add on additional services and grow your existing contracts and take on ad hoc work when required. We thought it was a perfect time to share why this mattered to us and share more about what’s next. Our purpose is to help cleaning companies grow faster and sleep at night. In 2022 that meant finding ways to support business owners who were positioning themselves to take advantage of the changing conditions.
Our mission is to be the most loved and trusted janitorial software in the world
Loved and trusted are very key to this message, and also very intentional. When we launched Swept, we set out to build mission-critical software for commercial cleaning companies. We discovered our customers value communication and connection above many other features. Improving visibility into what’s happening at multiple sites when you can’t be there and creating easy ways to communicate with teams in the field changes how cleaning companies operate. What they love is the simplicity we deliver through a user experience designed for ease of use, and connected workflows. With each feature, we design and update with these things in mind.
We lead the conversation
We firmly believe in the importance of a growth mindset when it comes to running our business and we think this is just as important for our customers. With the experience of owning a successful cleaning company along with talking to thousands of commercial cleaning companies around the world, we are well-positioned to offer insights, best practices and lead the conversation on what success looks like for commercial cleaning companies.
When we first launched Swept, initially people said “why would I want to talk to my cleaner?” In the background, we knew the value of finding out what was going on in the field, and how that could change the dynamics of a cleaning business. Flash forward and we see teams solving problems because we innovated & created a product that no one else thought could even be viable. We have led that conversation both in the market and from a product standpoint since day one. And we look to continue to do that.
As we lead the conversation online around janitorial operations, we realized how important it is to bring this message to our industry. For the past year, we’ve added live content through our in-person Cleaning & Cocktails conferences. These live and interactive workshops bring business owners together to network as we share high impact content for owners who are committed to growing their business. Our next event is in Washington D.C, March 23rd 2023 - tickets are officially on sale, you can register here!
We obsess about our customers
It’s simple. The more we know and understand our customers, the better our software will be. Understanding how you run your operations, your challenges and opportunities, are at the forefront of every design conversation we have. Our customers join us regularly for company meetings. Recently we connected a member of our product team with a customer to coordinate a “ride along”. This is an opportunity for us to work with a cleaning team in the field and experience first hand how they are doing their work. This is critical for us as we think about what we build and how we build it. To successfully be a catalyst for change in this industry, we believe we have to continue to be connected to our customers, their teams, and their clients.
Our guiding product principles
We know how much connection and communication are valued, and simplicity is what our users love. These principles are incorporated into our planning, from thinking about what to build and how to build it. Design really matters to us, and you'll notice this when you look at our product in comparison to others in the industry.
We have been intentional with the features we create, as we want to add direct value to your company. While sometimes we hear of competitors with more features, we never hear about ones that are easier to use. We continuously focus on building with intention, learning from our users, and then optimizing based on feedback, utilization and feedback from the field.
What we are doing: Mobile first
For Swept, opportunity and growth mean continuing to invest in our best-in-class mobile app, Swept+, which we delivered in 2021. Swept+ has allowed us to build and release new features that support cleaning companies that have opportunities to add new revenue sources to their business.
We updated our packages to reflect the different stages of our customers
We witnessed our customers growing on average of 30% in 2022, with the top 20% growing nearly 200%!!! We were inspired by our customers who leaned into the challenges and adapted to changing customer needs and demands. For our most successful customers, they have fully transitioned their business to run on Swept and are ready for more. For others, they are still focused on integrating a couple of key features into their operations, but aren’t quite ready yet for full integration.
For this reason, we updated our packages to reflect the diverse needs of our customer base. Our new Advanced Package has new features to support customers who are ready to on growth.
One Time Services: A simple way to earn additional revenue by offering one off jobs, like a post construction clean
Work Orders: A simple, easy to use workflow designed to help you track ad hoc requests from your existing customers and track revenue.
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Why we built this: For the past few years we have heard more and more from our customers that their clients are asking more of them. Your clients have confidence in you and would rather give more onsite maintenance work to 1 team than have several teams coming in and out of their space. Work Orders give you a simple way to diversify your services, assign these to your team in the field and track progress and revenue as they are completed.
Enhanced Checklists: Choose between having checklists for your cleaners at targeted locations or creating enhanced checklists that can be assigned to specific cleaners at specific locations.
Route Integration: Our friends at Route have nailed the walk-through process and have built an app to make it easy for you to bid and win new contracts.
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Why we built this: Bidding is one of the things most commercial cleaning companies have in common, yet it remains something that lacks consistency across the industry. Without a tried and true process, we hear about underbidding and losing money on contracts. Making it easy for you to use Route and push the locations into Swept lets you Win with Route and Run on Swept.
Enhanced Messaging: One of the most highly requested features, Direct Messaging, simplifies field communications and makes it easy for you to message 1:1 and easily track each conversation saving you time, improving your employee engagement and keeps clients informed. Within Enhanced Messaging, is also Custom Channels. Custom Channels make it easy for you to create channels for different groups within your team so that more relevant information can be shared without cluttering up your main channels.
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Why we built this: Simplicity and communications are at our core. Out of the gates, Direct Messaging has been a key priority for us and for you too! We have heard the stories about the endless scrolling, searching and frustration.
Looking ahead to 2023
As we go into 2023, we will continue to build on the features released in 2022. We’ve heard from users how important it is to be able to work from anywhere. This means making the mobile app more robust for Managers and Admin Managers. In 2023 we’ll focus on bringing common Web app functions to mobile, starting with user management. Look forward to being able to add cleaners, locations and scheduling cleaners no matter where you are!
With Cleaners being the biggest users of mobile, we know the importance of translation and multi language capabilities. In 2023 we will be evaluating options for complete translation of the mobile app. We are actively exploring how to deliver a multi language user experience to our customers.
We have heard from customers how important visibility is with their field team and their customers. We know how important it is to give your clients access to the cleaning schedule and scope of work. We are currently working on plans to deliver a client portal that will allow you to take your client relationships to the next level.
Last but not least - 2023 will see a focus on business insights. Growing your business successfully requires being able to make data driven decisions to improve your overall performance. You need insights on where your profit centers are and where your problems are, with the ability to quickly get to the root cause. With Business Intelligence, we will surface key metrics and performance data so you can make smarter decisions faster.
Go into 2023 running with Swept from anywhere, and Grow with Swept with our Advanced Features and Business Intelligence Reports.
From all of us at Swept, we wish you all a restful and peaceful holiday season and an abundance of growth in 2023.
