Role: Project Manager and Systems Designer
Client: (Client name changed for privacy.)
Headquarters: Connecticut
Industry: Commercial Cleaning / Franchise Operations
Year: 2023
Team Size: 6+ staff members
Tools: Asana
Areas Impacted: Customer Management, Finance, Operations, Vendor Management
Client was a commercial cleaning franchise that manages operations across several locations. Their cleaning teams serve business clients on regular schedules, which creates many coordination challenges. They have to handle complaints, run financial reports, manage tasks such as transfers, cancellations, and inspections, and monitor vendor assignments and performance. All of this ran through a custom system the company built, but it was no longer keeping up.
To get a sense of what that meant in practice, picture a client calling on a Tuesday afternoon. They’re frustrated that the cleaning team missed various spots during Monday night’s service, and it’s happened before. The person who takes the call writes down the details, promises to follow up, and hangs up. Then they email whoever might be responsible. That person forwards it to someone else. Maybe someone reaches out to the cleaning team. Perhaps someone calls the client back. Potentially, the issue gets resolved.
But occasionally the email doesn’t get delivered, or everyone assumes someone else is handling it. Two days later, the client might call back even more frustrated, and no one has a record of what was supposed to happen or who was responsible.
How a client complaint moves through the system.
My first step was to sit down with the Master Franchise Owner and map out how the franchise operated. What was happening when a complaint came in? How financial reporting got done. What the process looked like when a cleaning team needed to be transferred from one client to another. Or when a client requested a new cleaning team
What came out of those conversations was that the franchise had well-defined processes underneath all of these. They knew what needed to happen at each stage, but the problem was that none of it was documented in a way that created accountability or made the next step obvious to whoever was handling it. Things will work when the right person remembers to do them.
Another thing became clear right away: whatever we decided to build had to be simple. The support team didn’t have many technical skills, and the Master Franchise Owner needed a system they could use without lengthy training sessions or constant technical support. This requirement guided every decision we made.
The system was built in Asana across four main operational areas, each covering one of the major functions the franchise was managing.
Customer Management became the place for every complaint and conflict. I created templates to capture incoming issues, using dropdown fields to categorize the complaint type, areas for improvement, scheduling issues, and special requests. The process followed six steps: collect the information, share it with the right people, propose a resolution with a date, perform the task, confirm it’s done, and check back with the client to make sure they’re satisfied. That last step was often missed before, but the new system ensured it happened every time.
Finance brought some structure to all the financial workflows that had previously relied on memory and email. There were templates for generating monthly statements, reviewing credits and deductions, requesting ETAs from accounting, checking draft statements for accuracy, preparing final versions for approval, processing payments, and emailing franchisees. The system also included workflows for the Monthly Corrects Summary required by headquarters, the Quarterly Advertising Expenses Report, and Year-End Reporting.
Operations was the most complex area because it covered so much ground. Extra work requests involved assessing the scope, quoting, scheduling, performing, and confirming. Other areas included deep cleans. The cleaning team transfers, which comprised creating an offering, scheduling the walkthrough, setting the new start date, transitioning access keys, and notifying everyone involved. Client onboarding involved preparing the logbook, confirming the start date, and following up after the first clean to catch any issues early. Cancellations included a built-in retention step before closing the account. New contract onboarding, routine inspections, and performance evaluations were also part of the process.
Every one of these workflows had been happening informally before. The knowledge of how to do them was in people’s heads. The system got it out of people’s heads and into a format anyone on the team could follow.
Vendor Tracking provided a central place to manage cleaning team information, contracts, performance credits, do-not-call lists, and campaign-specific metrics. It also included a project tracking system for both internal and external work, with fields for status, contract type, client type, issues, and related files.
We made a conscious decision to keep the system simple, just like any other design choice.
We could have built a version of this project with complex automations, system integrations, and advanced reporting dashboards. While that would have looked impressive, it would have been hard for a team without technical backgrounds to use on their own. So we didn’t build it.
Instead, we focused on simple templates that guided users through each step. We couldn’t compromise on this since it was the right choice for this team and operation. A system people use is far more valuable than a complicated one they avoid. Always.
Training included live sessions that demonstrated each operational area, including how to create tasks from templates, update statuses, track progress, and use different views for each role. The documentation explained the most common workflows step by step, so the team could refer to it without needing to ask for help. Since moving from a custom system they had used for years to something new was a big change, I provided support for several months as the team built confidence and improved the workflows through use.
That ongoing support period was part of what the Master Franchise Owner had asked for, and it was the right call. Systems like this don’t fully bed in during the implementation phase. This happens in the months after, when people start using it for situations.
Before, the Master Franchise Owner had limited visibility into what was happening across franchise operations. Complaints might have been resolved or might have disappeared, but there was no way to know.
After the changes, all open complaints, the responsible party, the proposed resolution, and whether the client had confirmed satisfaction were all visible. The status of monthly statement generation at each step was clear. It was easy to see which clients were onboarding, which contracts were being transferred, which inspections were coming up, and which performance evaluations were outstanding.
A few months after implementation, the Asana workspace became the base of the franchise’s operations.
