Are You Flushing Customers Down the Toilet? Let’s Talk Restrooms

Let’s talk restrooms, everyone’s favorite topic. Did you know that an average of 10% of convenient or gas station customers use the restrooms? While clean restrooms don’t prove the same lure as a promotion or special offering, they are a huge opportunity in the customer experience to create a fan and a repeat customer.

 

Clean Bathrooms = Overall Cleanliness and Quality

Whether it’s a conscious conclusion or not, most of us associate the cleanliness of restrooms with the overall quality of the store. That translates to all of the other offerings, especially food service. Would you order a pizza from a place with a “frat house” bathroom? Yeah, neither would we. Restroom cleanliness affects many other areas of your business. Never give your customers a reason not to stop, and not to shop.

 

Clean Bathrooms Can Be Your Differentiator

If you’ve worked in this industry for long enough, you’ve learned or observed first-hand that you are dealing with a variety of need states in your customers, especially regulars. And you try to hit them all, but so is everyone else. C-stores have come a long way since the mom and pop days. You can get a hot pizza, a customized soda, and fresh fruit just about anywhere you stop now. So, that puts your differentiators in the details – short lines, helpful staff, and you guessed it, clean restrooms!

 

Set the Expectation, Give the “Why”

It’s very hard to reach a standard that has never been set for you. That’s why it’s important to show every employee what the expectations are for a clean, fully stocked restroom. It should be clear that sign off on restroom duty shouldn’t be requested until that standard is met.

 

It is also important to give the “why” or the context of the importance of this task. How do restrooms affect the bottom line? What role do they play in creating repeat customers? What metrics do we use to gauge our success here? This elevates the importance of the task as well as the buy-in from the employee. They are now working toward a higher, more important goal rather than simply cleaning a restroom.

 

Provide the Tools

You value the importance of clean restrooms, you’ve established buy-in, now how do you ensure follow through? You have to provide the right tools. Aside from your obvious cleaning tools, we’re talking about a system, process, and information hub that helps ensure timely and effective restroom checks.

 

  • Checks should be run on a timer that alerts the proper employees.
  • The employees should be provided with a checklist.
  • There should be a log of each check including the who and when.
  • There should be a sign-off process, meaning someone should check and sign off on the clean bathroom and include notes on quality.
  • These checks should be tracked to highlight consistent improvements as well as uncover the areas that are suffering.

 

It sounds like a lot, but it’s not at all with the help of the Action Card app. Action Card adds a level of efficiency that you and your employees will embrace. When follow through is built into each process, you can free up your energy to work on the next improvement. Let’s talk about how Action Card can transform your customer experience today. Sign up for a quick demo.