CHICAGO — Dry cleaners who don’t adapt to changing conditions and new technologies run the risk of falling behind their competition, but there are age-old standards of customer care that shouldn’t be tossed aside. 

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at the importance of maintaining positive connections and interactions with customers in the ways they desire. In Part 2, we explored the roles of trust and company culture in running a company that’s built to last. Today, we’ll conclude this series by looking at the balance between automation and customer service and ways to stay relevant to customers’ lives.

Neither Gary Maloney, president and owner of Nu-Yale Cleaners in Jeffersonville, Indiana, nor Andre Lobato, vice president of La Nouvelle Fine Cleaners in Denver, Colorado, are against technology. Maloney uses kiosks. Lobato uses a customer app and updated POS systems. But both draw a line between efficiency and automation that strips away what makes their businesses distinctive.

Lobato sees it most clearly in the final step: packaging.

“Our packaging is who we are,” he says. “When a client comes in and picks up their gown and it’s on a bust form, stuffed with tissue in a big bubble of air, it has an impact. I think we could cut some costs by getting rid of that, but it would degrade who we are. Final packaging in an industry of automation could cause a real downfall.”

The broader concern, he says, is that over-automating erodes the responsibility that customers depend on.

“It just makes the accountability fall and the trust erode,” Lobato says. “As soon as that’s gone, you’re in trouble.”

Maloney learned his own lesson about automation the hard way. Years ago, he installed baggers that sealed the bottom of the poly bag, thinking the airtight package would protect garments and look more polished.

“I thought, ‘Wow, this is great!’” he says. “It really packages the stuff up and keeps it from getting dirty.”

Then a customer called to say his starched garments were sticking together. Maloney dug into it and realized that garments coming off the press still carried trace moisture. In a standard open bag, that moisture evaporated harmlessly. In a sealed bag, it had nowhere to go.

“It made a little greenhouse,” he says. “Just enough moisture there to cause problems. Good idea, but you can’t do it.”

The changes in the customer base over the years are real and must be factored into a dry cleaner’s processes, but the fundamentals in serving those customers haven’t moved. Clients want someone who knows what they’re doing and can be trusted to do it right.

Maloney has seen the baby boomer generation, his traditional core, decline in volume. But younger customers are filling part of the gap with different items: comforters, wash-and-fold, household goods and alterations.

“The product mix is changing,” he says. “And then I get a fair amount of business stuff where they just want solutions. They want somebody to take care of their problems.”

Lobato has noticed something he didn’t expect. As business attire has become more casual since the coronavirus pandemic, the expensive casual pieces are now coming in for cleaning.

“We weren’t the jeans cleaner previously,” he says. “But now, very high-end jeans and polos that naturally wouldn’t have come to us before are showing up. It just shows me that the customer still values what we do and wants those items cared for.”

When asked what he’d tell an operator who is struggling, Lobato’s answer circles back to his root beliefs and fundamentals.

“Go back to the basics,” he says. “Make sure your consistency and your quality are there, that you have good communication through your staff, and that you’re delivering to your client the expectation they’re expecting.”

Maloney believes that having a firm foundation allows his business to survive and thrive in uncertain times.

“When we went through COVID, I said, ‘I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what we’re going through,’” he says. “But I knew we were just going to keep going until we got to the other side. We might make it out before we realize what happened. And we made it. We’re here. And a lot of the others are gone.”

“The loyalty of our customers is a blessing, and it’s a reflection of our loyalty to them and the service we provide,” says Stathi Afendoulis, owner of Afendoulis Cleaners in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “You reap what you sow. That’s the advice I would give anyone in our industry. Never stop caring, in a personal way, about your customers and what you can do for them.”  

For Part 1 of this series, click HERE. For Part 2, click HERE.