What can dry cleaners do to make their companies grow?

The laundromat and dry cleaning business can be a relatively simple one, in theory. All a company has to do to make sure it has ongoing success is find ways to keep their customers happy with high-quality cleaning services. However, it’s often a bit more complicated than that in actual practice, because nothing goes right 100 percent of the time.

For this reason, it’s wise for entrepreneurs in the industry to make sure they’re taking a two-pronged approach to running their companies, according to a report from American Dry Cleaner. The first of these is on the back end, where companies are looking at things like their bottom lines and the ways in which they’re generating interest and knowledge among potential customers in their communities. This is standard business management practice in many ways, and the businesspeople who do the most to streamline everything they can control will typically be able to make better decisions going forward.

The other aspect
One thing that companies cannot control, however, is how people are going to respond to what they’re doing, the report said. This is an area where many businesses regardless of industry have been known to struggle, because the best-laid preparation a company can make may not always go according to plan, and at least some percentage of customers are always going to have some sort of qualm. When it comes to these issues, the best thing owners can do is have a policy of acceptance for whatever problems may arise.

“Under-promise to your customers and prospects, then over-deliver and shine,” Diana Vollmer, managing director of Methods for Management, an independent small-business consulting firm that specializes in serving the laundry and dry cleaning industry, recently told attendees at a conference in Jacksonville, Florida, according to the site. “When you get a complaint, or any kind of feedback, welcome it as a gift. Otherwise, if they just vote with their feet, you’ll never know why they left and why they’re not coming back.”

Most small business owners accept that many things aren’t going to go their way over the course of a year, and this is as true in the dry cleaning or laundromat industry as any other. But the key is for those companies to find as many ways as possible to minimize the chances that this sort of thing goes wrong, and keep their firms growing.