BSC Survey Identifies Facility Image as Top Customer Concern

Building service contractors (BSCs) looking to grow their business must meet the needs and understand the challenges of their customers. The No. 1 challenge of BSC customers is to improve their facility’s image, according to respondents of CMM’s 2023 Building Service Contractor Benchmarking Survey Report, with 85% of the respondents choosing it as the top challenge impacting their clients.

Other top customer challenges the respondents identified included: the health, safety, and security of their buildings and tenants (73%); reducing overall cleaning costs (71%); preserving assets (56%); and retaining tenants (53%).

The survey respondents also identified their own business challenges as BSCs, the top being recruiting and retaining staff, chosen by 47% of respondents. Other top BSC business challenges included: maintaining profitable margins (31%), winning new bids/contracts (30%), retaining customers (28%), and validating cleaning results (25%).

In line with the last business challenge, 68% of survey respondents plan to adapt cleaning validation programs/technologies in the next 12 months. Other technologies respondents plan to adopt within the year include: autonomous equipment/robots (37%), internet of things (Iot) smart technologies (29%), UV disinfection systems (14%) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems (11%).

Most respondents (74%) are looking to add additional commercial facilities to their client list in the next 12 months. Other facility types they are targeting for revenue growth include: healthcare (37%), industrial (32%), education (31%), and government (27%).

To view the complete survey and learn more about BSC challenges, plans, and trends, visit cmmonline.com/2023-bsc-survey.