The Secret Benefits Virtual Experience Brings to the Cleaning Industry

Virtual experiences are currently driving sales and customer relationships more than ever before with virtual sales demos leading the way. But why stop there?

Virtual experiences provide opportunities for bettering relationships with clients as well as improving the overall service given by equipment suppliers.

The following lays out the many ways in which virtual demos, training, and even scheduled “troubleshooting” video calls can revolutionize the way the cleaning industry works—making it faster and easier to deploy, maintain, and service cleaning equipment.

What Does Virtual Experience Entail?

We’re defining virtual experience as the act of accessing anything from demos to training to maintenance or service through any video-enabled internet device from any location. The training is done in a different location and is typically in real-time, though the potential for reusing these training sessions, by recording them, is there too.

For example, a client has ordered and received their new Cobi 18 autonomous floor scrubber and is ready to start using it. They can schedule a virtual training demonstration with the ICE Cobotics for a time that best fits their schedule and the schedule of their team.

The supplier prepares for the training at their facility and the cleaning team, managers, and/or operational directors schedule their cleaning teams to join the meeting from a phone, computer, or tablet.

This way, members can join the call from their typical work location instead of having to travel to a specific building for training.

Virtual Experiences Save Time

This saves cleaning teams and managers lots of time and increases the number of workers that can go through the training at the same time.

Traditionally, cleaning equipment training, for example, is handled by the equipment supplier by sending a sales representative on-site for training. This usually means one training session per site or building.

With virtual training, no matter what building or location a machine is delivered to, each person on site who may be using or have an interest in the equipment can tune into the designated virtual training session.

This can eliminate the time BSCs, and managers spend traveling from location to location to make sure their team is trained, or from having to pull team members off-site to attend training.

In this way, virtual training is a service to BSCs and property managers—helping them to more quickly get their teams trained and up and running.

Plus, for an industry that experiences high turnover and labor shortages, being able to rely on virtual training makes it easier to get it done quickly, since recorded training sessions can be saved for future use, or the client could simply schedule training again.

Additionally, ICE Cobotics has a virtual resource center where anyone can access training videos online. It can be tricky to get all the necessary people together at the same time. Having access to a virtual resources center allows team members to view content at any time, which can be helpful in an industry whose hours run around the clock.

Virtual Experiences Provide More Opportunity for Improvement

Since virtual training can be scheduled at the same time across multiple locations, there is a significant opportunity to share knowledge.

More people can join and ask questions that otherwise might be forgotten. Plus, since the trainer is in their home location, if they would like to pull in additional expertise, other employees from the supplier team can join the call as well.

This way, answers to questions and shared knowledge reach a wider group of employees, increasing the amount of knowledge across a company, and decreasing the chances of important tips being missed or forgotten.

The ability to have multiple teams across multiple locations can even lead to more development for team members. For example, if a cleaning team at one building shares a situation they are running into, the answer could potentially be helpful or insightful to all team members on the call—no matter the building they are assigned to clean.

Beyond that, for a supplier, the ability to connect with the customer in that way can help them anticipate unique needs across industries—helping them to build better training programs as they work with different clients.

Virtual Experience Helps with Active Maintenance

It is much easier to have a video call than it is to schedule a technician to come on-site to diagnose a problem.

ICE Cobotics has a Tech Connect team made up of industry experts who are prepared to help troubleshoot from a remote location. During a video call, the technician and customer can establish a working relationship that can lead to diagnosing issues during the call, scheduling a technician, as well as sharing information and tips when trying to determine a solution to a problem.

Not only does this save time for both parties involved, but it also saves money, since for most clients, the typical scenario is calling a technician on-site to determine if the machine needs repairs.

Much of this can be eliminated through a video call.

Access to virtual service and maintenance suggestions by the Tech Connect team can be done in a timelier fashion. ICE Cobotics offers these services as part of their all-inclusive subscription.

Virtual Experience Helps with Reporting and Data

Another great thing about using virtual tools is that clients can reach out to the supplier and set up video calls to walk through any questions they have about reporting and data that is collected through fleet management software.

Team members can connect through things like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or even video chats, like FaceTime.

This can help BSCs, and managers understand the data, get help customizing the reports, and see how the data can benefit their specific business needs.

For example, the service included by ICE Cobotics allows clients to schedule appointments with a Tech Connect member through the virtual resource center or through the website. This gives the ICE Cobotics team member the ability to work directly with the client to analyze machine routes, provide suggestions for optimizing the use of the machine, and more.

Being able to connect directly with clients and answer questions as they are working through the system is a huge customer service benefit and can help eliminate service or maintenance calls for the client, which can save time and money.

How to Prepare for a Virtual Experience

Prepare Questions Ahead of Time—it’s always good to be prepared with questions! One idea is to have your cleaning team, management team, or operations team, split into groups and come up with a list of questions that applies to how they will use the equipment. The questions your cleaning team comes up with will probably be different from that of the management team.

Discuss Site-Specific Nuances—make sure to think through anything special about the building(s) you're cleaning that may impact the use of the equipment. Be sure to bring this up on a training call, so your supplier can give you any tips or special instructions.

Have Equipment Present—Make sure you have positioned yourself near the cleaning equipment so you can show the person conducting training any machine-specific parts or locations you have questions about.

Bring Specific Examples—If you have been working with the equipment and are calling for additional training or support, be prepared to demonstrate or show a specific example. This will help the technician be able to troubleshoot the issue more accurately resulting in a better diagnosis and quicker fix.

ICE Cobotics is a leading technology and cleaning equipment provider specializing in automation and all-inclusive subscriptions. Reach out to our Automation Experts with questions.