When You’re Ready to Grow, Finding the Right Partner is Key
Whether you’re looking to scale up a segment of your business or break into new markets and regions, partnering with a nationwide FM aggregator is the ideal solution for winning repeat business and growing service revenue. Here’s what to consider when you’re comparing facility maintenance companies looking for vendors to join their network.
1. Customer Tenure
The last thing you need when evaluating facility maintenance companies looking for vendors is to launch a partnership and get new work orders — only for the relationship to deteriorate before you’re even able to complete the contract!
We’ll explore service considerations and other factors that influence this shortly (and it’s crucial to understand that you as a vendor play a meaningful part in this as well), but understanding the average customer tenure of the aggregator is important because it tells you whether their customers value the relationship.
A weak relationship between the aggregator and the customer puts your revenue stream at risk, while a strong relationship means the customer is more likely to stick around. They’ll be likely to renew their contracts and lean on the aggregator (and you) for service.
2. Employee Tenure
In addition to looking at customer tenure, facility maintenance companies looking for vendors need to have strong teams internally. This applies across every industry: a strong, stable team is more productive, knowledgeable, and successful than a company with high turnover.
Companies that lose employees consistently are likely to have deep cultural issues, workflow and process challenges, and inexperienced or poor leadership — all of which can lead to weaker customer relationships that fail and put revenue at risk.
While you as a vendor are applying to be part of the facility management company’s team, you’re just as empowered to interview them. Ask all the questions you want about their team and processes, and review their listings on recruiting sites to see what employees have to say.
3. Detail Oriented and Responsive
As an aggregator, your partner should have an established process for reviewing all of the various documentation that passes between you, the customer, and their team. This information is crucial — it helps the customer understand the work to be performed, its costs, and its timeline.
When evaluating facility maintenance companies looking for vendors, ask how they handle quotes and estimates. Do they have a dedicated team to prepare them? Is that team available to answer questions about them — both for the customer and your team — so that work can proceed smoothly? Additionally, is all of that documentation centralized in an online system that all parties can access at any time?
Working with an aggregator that empowers you with information and is readily available to support you and the customer creates stronger bonds, prevents misunderstandings, and streamlines productivity across the entire program.
4. Customer Service Philosophy
In facility management, customer service is everything. Customers need to know that they can rely on their partner — not just for ongoing preventive maintenance on their most crucial assets, but also for emergency needs and general questions and requests.
Understand how a potential facility maintenance aggregator approaches customer service. Are they available to support customers (and your team) with any issues that arise before, during, or after work is completed? Are they accessible — not hidden behind layers of tedious self-service processes? Do they give customer service the attention it needs to create stronger relationships?
Additionally, will that aggregator defend and support your work? If customers have a misunderstanding, or if there’s confusion in the field, will they help mediate and clarify to ensure the customer is satisfied and you’re able to continue focusing on execution?
Experience the Growth You’re Looking for with CLS Facility Services
For more than 50 years, CLS Facility Services has been providing preventive maintenance solutions to organizations in the retail, restaurant, office, medical and fitness, and financial industries. Central to our success are the long-term partnerships that we’ve built with vendors in HVAC, lighting, signage, plumbing, and other disciplines, which have helped us to establish an average 12-year tenure with customers and an average 14.5-year tenure with these vendors.
As an aggregator, we partner with vendors like you to provide clients with anywhere from 50 to 400 locations across multiple regions and states with timely, consistent, and effective maintenance solutions. One of the benefits of our model is that all of our scopes are uniform. If you’re contracted to execute a PM program across several locations in your region, the work needed would be consistent — allowing you to focus on what you do best efficiently and without surprises. We also manage all work orders, either on our in-house platform or using any one of the 18+ that we’re skilled in based on the customer’s needs.
At CLS, our goal is to make our clients’ PM programs a lasting success while also building strong partnerships with our vendors and contributing to the growth of their businesses. If you’ve been evaluating facility maintenance companies looking for vendors, we would enjoy an opportunity to connect with you, learn more about your capabilities, and discuss ways we can work together.