Issue No. 2     September 1996

QUEST

Helping Q-1 customers succeed in their mission
with quality cleaning services.

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The following is provided to you as part of Q-1’s on-going customer service
effort. You are welcome to distribute the pages to your staff, employees,
property and facility managers for their review.

     As a premium janitorial service company, Q-1’s mission, one might think, is just cleaning well. It seems simple enough. But that is only half the game. The ultimate mission of Q-1 is to help our clients succeed in reaching their goal—be it facility management, banking, lawyering, accounting, engineering, etc. How Q-1 differs from the rest of the pack is in how we care for you, our clients. We think of your interests when we face a situation—be it trash handling or carpet cleaning, floor care or recycling.

     Let’s say a customer repeatedly requests a certain type of service noticeably more than other similar facilities. For example, a bank branch requests their lobby carpet be extract cleaned once a week. The branch is located in an urban location with no unpaved roads nearby. If the cleaning contractor responds by cleaning each time they get the request, bills the customer for the service and makes money, one might think the customer would be happy (because they get their service as requested), and the contractor should be happy (with the extra revenue). This is clearly a lose/lose situation. The customer lost money from unnecessary cleaning, and the contractor failed to help their customer succeed. The true service should be to clean the carpet when needed, but more importantly, to prevent the carpet from becoming dirty. A simple, more economical solution might be installing mats to arrest dirt tracked in by foot traffic. The carpet will have longer life, saving customers even more expense.

     Another example: a retail outlet customer plans a promotional event in April. In Alaska, April is not the ideal month for floor maintenance due to weather conditions. But the customer requests an expensive and special floor stripping and waxing service. Instead of blindly responding to such a request, a good contractor like Q-1 would first find out how to deliver what the customers needs instead of what the customer thinks they need, then suggest alternative solutions at less cost. In this case, it would be a light scrubbing with touches of refinishing. Their regular full blown stripping/wax operation would be saved for May, especially in Alaska, when the weather permits the costly service to sustain through the Summer season.

     So what do these experiences have to do with you and your desktop computer? Let’s say you are a facility manager with 10 different building sites where several hundreds of people work. When tenants have requests, such as temperature of the room is too hot/cold, janitor missed a trash bin, light is flickering, elevator too slow, restroom is out of supplies, refrigerator making noise, roof leaks, sun’s too bright, etc., etc... the list goes on. Your typical morning routine is to field the E-Mail or voice mail riddled with various complaints, and responding to the requests costs you half your work day. Does this sound too familiar? Let’s go on. Someone calls you to register a less-than-subtle complaint saying s/he complained about the same issue two months ago, three weeks ago, one week ago and now. You feel inept, incapable, or not cut out for the job. You as the person in charge vaguely remember dealing with the same problem sometime ago, but cannot quite remember how long ago, nor its resolution. Your days are just too short for a myriad of requests and complaints that are a threat to your routine. How do I know this? Simple. I’ve been there. During the peak of good economy in the early 80’s when just about all the walkable (whether workable or not) souls were hired off the street for high paying jobs in construction and oil related fields, Q-1’s workforce had such a hard time keeping up with the requests and complaints. Simply coping with the delivery and performance of the service was a formidable challenge. When a customer called me and asked when was the last time she asked me to do a special request work on a certain floor of her building, it would be a lucky day if I did remember she asked for such a service. Now with the advent of a desktop database system that Q-1 developed, Success.MDB, we can report to the customer instantly who, when, what, where, why, and even how it was resolved.

     So, what does this mean to you? WE CAN PROVIDE THIS SOFTWARE FOR YOU. It’s yours for the asking. How can you use it? Each time you get a call/request/complaint from your customer—be it internal (your staff) or external (your tenant)—you or your assistant can simply log the information into a custom-made database form. It is network-ready and any one you designate can use the same database from his/her computer simultaneously. After putting in pertinent information, you click your mouse on a button in the screen, and out comes the work order for your own designated staff or service contractor. You can fax (or E-Mail) the work order to the designee for appropriate response. When work is done, they fax (or E-Mail) back the resolution of the issue and you log the information into the same database by clicking a few buttons. You can use this for many different work types: elevator, hvac, parking lot, landscaping, painting, plumbing, repair/maintenance, lighting maintenance, first aid kit maintenance, etc., etc. As time goes on, you can review the history of a particular building’s unique set of challenges and resolutions without having to shift through thousands of pages of work orders and phone messages. It also provides an instant report on how many different tasks you dealt with in a given time period by however many different breakdowns you want. You can also review repeat patterns and detect symptoms that could foretell a major problem—and help avoid it.

     Many of our clients’ job descriptions include facility maintenance issues only as a small part of their position. With the help of Success.MDB you can efficiently handle routine work flow and work smart. You can be more effective on other more important job duties. Can this make you more contributive to your employer’s success? YES. Would this help you succeed in your own career advancement? Another emphatic YES. Can this help Q-1 succeed? YES. Q-1 believes we can succeed by helping you effectively contribute to your employer’s mission. That is the bottom line object for Q-1 and we are here to meet the challenge and grow with you. Let us help you succeed. Just call Chuck Kim at 1-800-303-0031 or send an E-Mail at ckim@Q-1.com. Q-1 cannot give you more hours a day, but we can certainly help you achieve more in your given work hours.

     The July issue of QUEST dealt with an imposing question of Indoor Air Quality issues. The question of Feds regulating the IAQ in public buildings is definitely an open one. Will the Fed regulate IAQ? Definitely YES. When might this occur? Probably not until way after the ‘96 election. If the private sector does not improve the indoor air quality in public buildings and the general public is affected negatively with enough conclusive evidence linking the problem to IAQ, the Feds will be forced to regulate it. Regulation will most likely begin at child care centers, schools, retirement homes, etc., as old and young age groups are more susceptible to IAQ problems than workforce age groups that occupy general office buildings. I don’t doubt a bit the Feds will eventually do this. But I don’t think the syndrome is strong enough now to compel the Feds into immediate action. They have enough problems of their own—budgetary shortfalls, lack of manpower, and change in personnel in high command, to name a few.

     Regulating IAQ would pose such problems to general business and building owners—it could be devastating. Such a sweeping decision would have a profound impact on political popularity of the Administration. I simply don’t think EPA will impose regulation anytime soon. They probably wish to see the private market naturally force the issue to be dealt with. Buildings with good IAQ control will attract better paying tenants which would then encourage more economically viable manufacturing of related devices. This series of events would save EPA from becoming the bad guy. EPA would avoid being the bearer of another bit of bad news for the business sector.

     So, the IAQ issue is here to stay with building owners, for good or for bad, no matter what the EPA will or won’t do. The invisible hands of market force will constantly influence the actions or non-actions of building owners. Those of us who deal with the issue of IAQ head-on far enough in advance will enhance the attractiveness of buildings to tenants and occupants and come out ahead of the pack, regardless of EPA’s actions. I hope all of Q-1’s clients are winners. Good Luck to each and every one of you! Those of you who are BOMA members can get pertinent and updated information through that organization. BOMA Anchorage (c/o Alan Kajikawa 907-265-6809) dealt with the subject in detail in the August issue of their newsletter.

     Q-1 has its own Home Page on the Internet so that our clients can do business with us there—we’ve already received suggestions from some of you—mainly for sending and receiving E-Mails, avoiding playing phone tag with Q-1’s representative who many times is in the field when you call Q-1. Needless to say, as a matter of routine practice, Q-1 took your ‘suggestion’ as a ‘command’ (or ‘demand’) and promptly designed a Web Page—http://www.q-1.com. Since we are new to the Web world, we invite comments on how we can design it to serve your needs better. Clearly E-Mailing will be the most frequently used feature of the Internet system. Can you suggest what else you would like us to provide through the Web page? Some ideas that come to my mind are:

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QUEST is a free publication of Q-1 Corporation-providing 20 years of quality janitorial service. Q-1’s QUEST is to help your business succeed by providing a clean and healthy work environment for your building tenants. Chuck Kim, CEO • Q-1 Corporation 1414 130th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98005-2246 • 206 637-0031 (phone) 206 637-9726 (fax); ckim@q-1.com (email) http://www.q-1.com (internet home page) Corporate Headquarters: 1441 West Northern Lights Boulevard, Anchorage, AK 99503 • 907 562-4468 (phone) 907 563-6301 (fax). Member: BSCAI Building Service Contractors Association International; BOMA Building Owners and Managers Association ©copyright 1996. Unless otherwise noted, no part of this publication may be copied without the written consent of the publisher. The opinions expressed in this publication are for general information only and are not intended to replace counsel from competent financial, legal professionals, or government advisors. September 1996 issue: Managing Editor: Chuck Kim; Designer: Louise Holder, Kirkland WA; distribution: Pamela Rosenow, 206 637-0031.