Most businesses choose a commercial cleaner on price, discover the problem around month four, and switch. The switching is expensive — new keys, new alarm codes, a fresh deep clean, and a month of your office manager's attention. Almost all of it is avoidable at the quoting stage, because the things that predict a good long-term cleaner are visible before you sign.
Ken Carfagno has run Carfagno Commercial Cleaning out of Harleysville since 2005, and has quoted a great many buildings across Montgomery, Bucks and Chester counties. This is what he would tell you to ask — including of us.
1. Start with whether they actually do your kind of building
Commercial cleaning is not one trade. A company that cleans warehouses at scale is solving a different problem from one that cleans a twelve-person accounting suite where a client sits in reception at 8:55 every morning. Ask directly what proportion of their work is offices your size, and ask which of their current buildings is most like yours. A firm that cleans your building type daily already knows where your floors wear and which surfaces your visitors touch first. One that does not will learn on your building.
2. Ask what happens in month four
Nearly every complaint about commercial cleaning is the same complaint: it was excellent for the first quarter and then quietly declined. The service did not change its price, it changed its attention. So the question is not "how good is your cleaning" but "what system holds the standard once the novelty is gone." Ask who inspects, how often, what the inspection covers, and what happens when it fails. If the answer is a person rather than a process, the standard will follow that person out the door.
3. Get the insurance in writing, with the numbers
"Licensed and insured" is a phrase, not a credential. Ask for the certificate of insurance and read two figures: general liability per occurrence and aggregate, and workers compensation. If a cleaner is injured in your building and the company has no workers comp, the exposure can land on you. Ask for the certificate before the first clean, not after, and ask whether it names your building. A company that is genuinely covered will send it the same day, because they send it constantly.
4. Find out who is actually holding your keys
Ask whether the people cleaning are employees or subcontractors, and how they are screened. Subcontracting is not automatically wrong, but it changes accountability: the company you signed with is not the company in your building at 9pm, and their screening standard is not necessarily the one you were sold. Ask what background check is run, who runs it, and whether the same team cleans your building each visit or whoever is available that night.
5. Refuse the phone quote
A price given over the phone from square footage is a guess dressed as a number, and it is almost always revised upward once the work begins or the quality quietly drops to fit the figure. Insist on a walkthrough. What you are really testing is whether they notice things: the perimeter dust in overhead vents, the film building on hard floors from previous chemicals, the bases and backs of toilets. A company that walks your building and only discusses square footage has told you what their cleaning will be like.
6. Read the contract for the exit, not the entry
The clause that matters most is how you leave. Long lock-ins exist because they protect the cleaner from the consequences of declining quality. A terminate-at-any-time agreement puts the risk back where it belongs: the company has to earn the work every week. Check the notice period, whether there is an early-termination fee, and whether the price can rise mid-term without your agreement.
7. Ask what they will not do
A company that says yes to everything is telling you it has no specialism. Ask what work they turn down and who they refer it to. An honest answer — residential, restaurants, industrial — is a stronger signal than a services list with thirty items on it. Specialists refer work away constantly, and they know exactly who they refer it to.
8. Check that the reviews are about the thing you care about
Star ratings are close to meaningless on their own; a company with eleven reviews and a company with forty are not comparable. Read what the reviews are actually about. Reviews praising responsiveness and consistency describe an operation. Reviews praising a one-off deep clean describe an event. And check the dates: a cluster of reviews from three years ago and nothing since tells you more than the average does.
9. Establish who answers the phone at 7am
The single most common frustration with commercial cleaning is not the cleaning, it is the silence when something goes wrong. Before you sign, find out who you call when a toilet overflows overnight, what the response commitment is in hours, and whether that person has authority to act or only to take a message. Ask what happens if something in your building is broken or damaged by the crew — a company with a real answer has a process; one without will improvise at your expense.
The short version — take this to your walkthrough
- What proportion of your work is offices like mine, and which current client is most similar?
- Who inspects the work, how often, and what happens when an inspection fails?
- Can I see your certificate of insurance — general liability and workers compensation?
- Are the cleaners employees or subcontractors, and how are they screened?
- Will you quote after walking the building rather than over the phone?
- What is the notice period to end the agreement, and is there a fee?
- What work do you turn down, and who do you refer it to?
- Who do I call at 6am, and what is the response commitment in hours?
- What happens if something in my building is damaged by your crew?
How we answer these ourselves
We clean professional, financial and medical offices between roughly 2,000 and 40,000 square feet, and we turn down residential and restaurant work. Our crew of thirteen are employees, screened through KnowMyHire, not subcontractors. We carry general liability through Erie Insurance at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate, plus workers compensation at $100,000 per accident with a $500,000 limit, and we provide certificates at onboarding. Our agreements terminate at any time. We quote only after Ken has walked your building, and we are on site within three hours, around the clock, when something goes wrong overnight.
If that is the kind of arrangement you are looking for, ask us for a walkthrough. If it is not, the nine questions above still work on everyone else.