What is a cleaning KPI?
A cleaning KPI is a measure a contract is judged on — audit score, periodic completion, staffing levels, response times or complaint volume — reported at agreed intervals.
Measures that nobody collects data for are the standard failure. A KPI is only a measure if the data behind it is produced as a by-product of the work rather than assembled for the report.
Complaint volume is a poor primary measure, because it reports on tolerance as much as on standards. A client who has given up complaining looks like a satisfied one.
Periodic completion is the most under-used measure and the one that best predicts a contract's trajectory, because it is the first thing to slip.
In practice
A monthly report of four green indicators and an unhappy client.
Audit score, attendance, complaint volume and response time are all within target. The client's experience is of a building that feels tired.
Indicators measure the things that are easy to count, and a set that is entirely green while the relationship deteriorates is measuring the wrong things rather than lying.
The useful question at a review is which number would have moved if the client's actual complaint were true.
What goes wrong in practice
- Measures agreed that the operation cannot actually produce data for.
- Complaints used as the main measure of quality.
- Reports assembled manually each month, so they arrive late and are argued over.