Building services contractors consider workforce management and customer retention as their primary challenges. 

In Aspire's 2025 Commercial Cleaning Insights, a state-of-the-industry report based on a survey of more than 1,000 companies, 63% cited employee recruitment and retention as a primary concern. Customer retention ranks second, listed by 58% of participants.

They also consider driving revenue the top goal, listed by 61% of respondents.

Aspire’s Emily Nickel and Matt Budnick highlighted challenges and solutions during a presentation at the BSCAI Executive Conference in Hilton Head Island, SC.

Nickel, manager for client success, owns 12 years of front-line experience in the trades, primarily in sales/account management and operations roles. Budnick, an Aspire account executive, is an 11-year veteran of the commercial maintenance industry specializing in janitorial and day porter services. 

Among the insights shared by Nickel and Budnick:

Retaining customers

Customer retention presents the second most significant challenge at 58%.

Nickel: "Matt, from your prior experience working at a BSC company, what is one way you overcame the retention challenge?"

Budnick: "We looked to technology to give our clients real-time information on the sites we serviced. The easiest way for us to do that was to utilize the site audits function within Aspire.

“We used this as a multipronged tool: Created an audit of what the property looked like the day we took over the contract. These monthly reports were ownership-ready, branded and in PDF, to provide proof of service, and lastly, as an internal document that could create checklists for our crew to complete on their next visit. All of this added up to a 24% increase in retention, leading to a company record."

Driving quality control

Workforce management emerges as the primary challenge today, with more than 63% considering this the largest risk.

Nickel: "Increasing communication with clients improved your retention. But having good information to share starts–and in a way, ends–with your onsite employees and supervisors. As a CSM, I often see adoption of inspection processes or new technology as the first hurdle that many companies can’t overcome to provide inspection reporting. Our survey said that workforce management emerges as the primary challenge today. What was your secret sauce to getting the team on board?"

Budnick: "We crafted our employee compensation to drive the outcomes we wanted. Yes, everyone wants to have better retention rates, but we created a compensation plan around the completion of site audits in conjunction with retention. The completion of your required monthly audits even impacted the percentage of extra work commissions you could earn. Our choice to incentivize the behaviors to achieve the outcomes we wanted was a game-changer."

Nickel: "Can you share what metrics, technology features, or reports you used to drive accountability?"

Budnick: "The dashboards within Aspire’s homepage were all customized to track the most critical items that we believed would contribute to our long-term success with clients. At any given time, I could see by branch, service line, or area manager which sites had been reported on and which ones were incomplete. I could track these metrics via my phone, tablet, or computer at any time, and we displayed these dashboards at our offices for complete transparency."

Grow top-line revenue with site audits

Nickel: "Site inspections resulted in some considerable upsells for you. Can you share statistics of how impactful that may have been for your company?"

Budnick: "In our first year of adopting Aspire and harnessing the power of site audits, our extra work sales increased by over 19%. This added over half a million dollars to the top-line revenue in that first year alone. And while the top-line revenue boost was significant, when coupled with the retention, it led to record sales and profits for the organization."

Nickel: "Please share how you used Aspire’s tools to streamline the upselling process."

Budnick: "The answer is quite simple: when creating the site audit, the user can also create a work order or proposal simultaneously. This eliminates unnecessary steps, such as sending information to someone in the office and having them recreate the process from scratch. From there, we created tiles on the Aspire dashboard to track all work orders generated by any individual and the work orders sold. At the end of the month, we would follow up on unapproved work orders to generate even more revenue."

Nickel: "How did you see this positively affect customer retention?"

Budnick: "Customer retention increased as our communication increased. Aspire’s ability to streamline communication, optimize workflows, and track issues in real-time gave us a competitive advantage. We were more agile as an organization and were able to gain key insights into the client’s assets more quickly than ever. Client often stated we were 'the eyes and ears of the property,' and that increased our stickiness."

Increasing client retention through site audits and KPIs

Nickel: "Data is everything, and many of our clients expect reporting to support proof of service. Can you share what data you used internally to ensure you were proactively working toward retention? Or, what were your leading indicators monitored internally?"

Budnick: "We created nurture lists, which are groups of clients that require attention at a specific frequency. We then set up dashboard tiles to track when they were last contacted, and this formed the foundation. Those tiles and the dashboard were displayed at every branch. We could even track the time it took to close an open issue, and that alone drove increased retention. We could get the time from the open issue to the closed resolution under 72 hours."