Bringing award winning washrooms to the masses
August 1st 2006 Winning awards for regional customer service, Essex-based Albany Washroom Service now seeks to further its geographical horizons, says marketing manager Ian Glover
Deciding to focus fully on the growing washroom services market in 2005, Albany is winning awards for its approach to the sector and now hopes to take its offering to a national audience. It already has several big-name clients, including the Royal Opera House, the RFU at Twickenham and Citigroup, as well as numerous well known FM and contract cleaning companies.
The company's approach to customer service led to its winning this year's Essex Countywide Business Award for the Business 2 Business category, reflecting ongoing investment in customer care. This includes information capture systems, training and the appointment of a new CRM Director. The result is a customer retention rate currently running at 94 per cent.
However, while the company is happy with its accolades, it believes there is huge scope for washroom improvement on a national scale: Washrooms are still low down the on the priority list of many companies. According to Albany, the growing trend to corporate social responsibility, shareholder value, employee relations and consumer satisfaction mean organisations increasingly need to take a more holistic approach to the washroom services they provide.
In plainer terms, the company also claims better washrooms could save companies money through reducing staff absenteeism.
A recent CBI report highlighted that the cost of staff absence to the UK economy rose to over 13bn in 2005. This totalled 164 million days.
Though it was admitted perhaps 13% of absence was staff 'throwing sickies', the rest were believed to be genuinely ill. Interestingly, though a third of overall time lost is attributable to longer periods of absence (over 20 days), the remaining two thirds was as a result of short term sickness.
The nature of this sickness was not divulged, however Albany claims the conclusion could be drawn that a proportion of this is likely to be as a result of stomach upsets, diarrhoea, or vomiting all illnesses linked to poor washroom standards or hand hygiene. It was calculated that the cost of absence, which includes covering salaries of absent staff, paying overtime and providing temporary cover, rose to 531 per employee in 2005.
Investing just a fraction of this amount in providing better quality, fresher, cleaner and more hygienic washrooms would, Albany believes, pay very quick dividends impacting on where many businesses are judged profitability.
Enhanced reputation is a much softer benefit, but extremely important. All companies receive visitors to their buildings whether investors, the media, customers, prospects, business analysts or prospective employees it's the one part of the building almost all guests will visit. Poor washrooms can often undo all the good work that smart reception staff, pleasant office environments and state of the art presentation facilities create.
Albany believes that educating customers, the marketplace and consumers in general is the only way to highlight that washroom service provision is an investment, not a cost to the business.
Service package lowdown The business is based on a range of washroom contract washroom and floorcare services. In essence, Albany's customer service model is built on a minimum of 13 customer service visits per year, on a known service day, with a dedicated criminal records bureau checked customer service representative.
Some services are more frequent than every four weeks, reflecting customer requirements and the products being serviced. However three year contracts cover the following broad offers: - Feminine hygiene providing manual, foot pedal and sensor feminine hygiene bins.
- Air & water purification providing air fresheners, including a the TCell, which is battery and aerosol-free. Albany also provide digital sanitisers. Its new water management system can help achieve significant savings in water costs (as well as helping the environment by reducing water usage).
- Hand care Handcare range includes soap dispensers, cabinet roller towel cabinets and cotton towels, as well as paper towels and other contract linen items such as bath sheets.
- Product dispensers including dual and multi vend systems.
- Clinical waste Albany incinerates all waste, including feminine hygiene, nappy and sharps units.
- Personal hygiene products from hygienic seat wipes to discrete feminine hygiene disposal bags.
- Floorcare reflecting the growing trend for logo mats and the health and safety benefits of dust control and anti-trip mats.
Albany also provides the replacement consumables including soaps and air freshener fragrances as required by the customer. More articles from Albany Facilities Limited: | 
