We recently connected with Carol Silveira and have shared our conversation below.

Carol, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

We were looking for a business that would require more sweat equity and less capital to start. So we looked at different businesses to find which area would give us the greatest opportunity to be successful. We decided on a maid business because I had experience working with my mother when I was young. I knew that we would be successful because we gave our customers a better service for the money than anyone else was doing. Paulo and I were the only employees at first so we were able to set the standards for our company. The maid business was going very well and we began hiring additional people to assist us in our growth.. Of course our main priority during our growth was always on customer satisfaction. We kept growing based upon great employees and wonderful customers. I am very hands on and talk to each new customer to set the expectations of what they will receive from our company. All of my customers have our business number and I am available to them on any issue they may have. The next stage to growing our business was joining Angi’s website and advertising in that site. Our growth before joining them was mostly word of mouth. Thanks to this growth we have become the company we are today. Currently we have 20 full time employees that do the service for the customers. Our main goal was to have a business that would allow us to have time with our children while they grew up. We knew that we wanted to be our own boss. Because having your own business and being successful is the American dream.

Carol, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got started in maid services working with my mother at first. It was with this knowledge that I came up with my brand and decided what needed to be done to be successful. The core of my company is customer service and to give my customers more than what they expect. Our ladies work on cleaning their houses with the understanding that our clients are the backbone of our business. Without them we would not have a job. Many of our clients have been with us for many years. We still have clients that my mother and I started with. We have been a family business since the beginning and we treat our customers like family. All our customers have my number and I work hard on getting to know them because they are like extended members of my family and we care about each and every one of them. I will always do my best to accommodate all their requests. The thing that I am most proud of is we have a very high retention rate among our customers. Because of our employees working very hard to help build our brand based on customer service and exceeding our customer needs we have grown our business every year since we started.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I believe your reputation is the part of the business than can make or break you. We started out with just a few clients and built our business with just me and my husband at first doing all the work. Then as we grew we had to hire employees to help us grow the business but we made sure they too wanted to follow our guidelines. As we continued to add employees I spent more time being the face of the company and handling the customer service end of the business. Our customers know to contact . me on any accommodations they may need. Because we have worked hard to exceed our customers expectations we have been very successful at keeping our clients along with having a great reputation in the community.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for us as been word of mouth amongst our clients. Our customers have told their friends and those people called to give us a try. We have used Angi and social media as well to help grow our business too. I believe that you have to use multiple sources to get your company name out in the community. Of course the most important strategy is once you get a customer you exceed there expectations so they remain a customer and that will bring in more business because they will tell their friends as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.benchmarkmaid.com
• Instagram: @benchmarkmaid
• Facebook: @benchmarkmaid