Most cleaning businesses run on a lot of little things they just know. Mrs Patel has a dog that mustn’t get out. The office on the high street pays late. The Hendersons found you through a leaflet and have carpets that need doing. That knowledge usually lives in someone’s head, until they’re off sick or the business grows past it.
Customer tags put it on the customer record, where everyone can see it and you can act on it. A tag is just a short label, but used well it can organise your rounds, tell you which marketing works, find extra work, protect your cash flow and keep customers happy.
How tags work
You add tags when you create a customer, or from the Tagging tab on their profile. A customer can have as many as you like, and you make them up yourself. Once they’re on, you can filter, sort and count your customer list by any tag, and pick a tag as the audience for a marketing email.
That’s the whole mechanism. The value comes from what you choose to tag. Here are the ideas that work best for cleaning businesses.
Organise the work
Service type
Tag each customer with what you do for them: Regular clean, Deep clean, End of tenancy, After builders, Carpet, Windows, Oven. When a carpet machine is free next week, you can see in seconds who’s had carpets done before and might want them doing again.
How often they book
Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly and One-off tell you what your recurring base really looks like. Count your Weekly customers each month and you’ve got a simple health check on the steady income the business runs on.
Area and rounds
Tag by town or patch, like Maidstone, Canterbury or North Kent. It makes planning tighter rounds easier, helps when a cleaner can only cover one area, and means a “we’re in your area on Thursday” email only goes to the people it’s true for.
Domestic or commercial
Homes and businesses need different emails, different pricing and often different paperwork. A Domestic or Commercial tag keeps the two apart, so an office manager never gets your spring clean offer for houses.
Property and access
Some things every cleaner should know before they arrive: Key held, Pets, Parking permit, Alarm on site, Fragile items, Shoes off. Tagging them makes them easy to spot on your customer list and lets you pull up a list of every home where you hold a key, which matters if you ever need to check them all.
Keep the details themselves (the alarm code, where the key is kept) in the customer’s notes, not in a tag. Tags are for spotting things quickly, not for storing anything sensitive.
Grow your revenue
Where they came from
Tag every new customer with how they found you: Google, Facebook, Referral, Leaflet, Checkatrade, Repeat. After a few months, count each tag and you’ll know which marketing actually brings in customers, and which you’re paying for without much back. It’s one of the most useful tags you can add, and it costs nothing.
Extra work waiting to happen
When a cleaner mentions the carpets are stained or the oven hasn’t been touched in years, tag it: Carpet interest, Oven interest, Windows interest. Next time you’re running an offer on that service, you’ve got a ready-made list of people who already need it.
Seasonal offers
Tag customers who booked a Spring clean, Christmas clean or Summer holiday clean. Next year, they’re the first people to email when the season comes round, because they’ve already shown they want it.
Winning customers back
When a regular cancels or drifts off, tag them Lapsed (or Moved away, if that’s the reason, so you don’t chase them). A friendly “we’d love to have you back” email to the Lapsed list every few months is often the cheapest new business you’ll get.
Your best customers
A VIP tag for the customers you’d hate to lose means you can thank them now and then, give them first pick of busy dates, and check in personally if anything goes wrong.
Look after customers and cash flow
Reviews and referrals
Tag customers who’ve left you a review as Reviewed, and happy ones who haven’t yet as Ask for review. Your review requests then only go to people likely to say something nice, and nobody gets asked twice. The same works for referrals: tag your biggest fans and they’re the first to hear about any refer-a-friend offer.
Payments
Pays on account, Card on file, Pays late, Deposit required. A quick filter before a big job tells you whether to ask for money up front, and a Pays late tag stops a new team member from booking in more work for someone who already owes you.
Customers who need extra care
Some customers need a little more: a recent complaint, a fussy finish, an elderly customer who likes a call before you arrive. Tags like Recent complaint or Call ahead make sure the whole team handles them the same way, not just the person who took the original call.
Cleaner preferences
If a customer only wants the same cleaner, or has asked not to have a particular one, tag it: Same cleaner only. It saves an awkward phone call when the rota changes.
Match the right cleaner to the job
Tag your team by experience too
Customers aren’t the only ones you can label. Every staff member in ProCleanerUK has an Experience Level: Trainee, Standard or Experienced. Set it on their staff profile and it starts working for you straight away.
When you book a job, each available cleaner shows their level as a badge, and you can filter the list to just Trainee, Standard or Experienced staff. Your VIP customer or that tricky after-builders clean gets someone who’s done it a hundred times, and a simple regular clean is a good place for a trainee to build up experience.
The booking screen can also show you who has worked for the customer before, and how many jobs they’ve done at that address. It’s perfect for customers tagged Same cleaner only, or anyone who’d rather see a familiar face.
Experienced staff get one more perk: they’re the only ones notified when a job for a first-time customer is broadcast to the team. A new customer’s first clean is the one that decides whether they book again, so it goes to your best people first.
Two tags ProCleanerUK handles for you
Subscribed is added automatically when a customer agrees to marketing in their Customer Portal. You can’t add or remove it by hand, because consent has to come from the customer, so you always know that group genuinely asked to hear from you.
No nudge is one you add. ProCleanerUK can suggest customers worth emailing when they haven’t had a clean in 30, 60 or 90 days. Tag someone No nudge and they’ll never be suggested, handy for a one-off contract or anyone who’s asked not to be chased.
Keeping your tags useful
- Decide your tags up front. Agree a short list with your team so everyone uses the same words, and “VIP” doesn’t end up as “Vip” and “V.I.P” too.
- Combine them. The real power is in two tags together: One-off plus Carpet interest, or Lapsed plus Maidstone.
- Tag as you go. The best moment to add a tag is when you learn something, on the phone or straight after a job. Tagging a whole customer list in one go rarely happens.
- Tidy up now and then. Every few months, remove tags nobody uses and fix ones that have drifted.
- Nothing sensitive. Codes, card details and personal circumstances belong in notes or nowhere, not in a label anyone can filter by.
Start with three
You don’t need all of these on day one. Pick three that would help this month, perhaps where customers came from, how often they book and their area, and start tagging. Within a few weeks you’ll be finding customers, planning work and sending emails in ways that just weren’t possible with one long list.
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