UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGES IN CHANGING PUBLIC PERCEPTION The evidence speaks for itself over 4,500 members of the public have visited the petition page on the clean4life.net website since it was launched in September 2010. The clean4life campaign is a unique research tool which provides valuable feedback about what real customers think about important issues in the context of roof cleaning. The feedback can be viewed in either a positive or negative way. The negative view is that the public clearly does not like toxic chemicals like chlorine used to clean their roof, the positive view is that it indicates that the public is ready for a better solution than chlorine soft washing.

How did we get here?
Have you heard the saying that good news travels fast but bad news travels faster ? The negative public perception of chemical roof cleaning has not come out of thin air, it is there because thousands of customers have had the same bad experience and spread the word to their friends.

Something clearly has been going wrong over a period of time for the public to have such a strong negative opinion of soft wash chemical cleaning contractors.

So why has the chemical roof cleaning industry allowed so much bad publicity to be heaped on itself ? and is the negative opinion of the public justified?

Did the people leading the industry honestly not care what the public thought? or is what they thought more important than what the customer thought?.

These questions demand answers, as long as the Industry refuses to see a problem they will never find a solution, public relations will not improve and the negative view will prevail.

The industry needs to have a clear and focused public relations campaign that is informative and addresses the real problems that customers have experienced. The clean4life campaign has made us all aware that what the customer thinks is the most important aspect of this debate,

A very successful businessman warned me when he said that humility is a currency which brings massive rewards and arrogance eventually puts people out of business. In my book the customer is king and the customer knows best, so therefore my job is to give the customer what they want.

The key question is "What do customers want"?

If you work out what the customer does not want you will eventually get to what the customer does want.

They do not want their plants killed, their health affected or their environment damaged by roof cleaning. They want their roof clean, not necessarily cleaned but clean, there is an important distinction between clean and cleaned.

(clean) means in a clean condition (cleaned) means having toxic chemicals sprayed onto it so it becomes clean.

If it is possible to maintain a roof in a clean condition without killing customers plants and without adversely affecting their health or the quality of their environment then that is the ideal target for us to be aiming for as far as changing the perception of the general public is concerned.

What conclusions can we draw.
The cross section survey that clean4life have undertaken provides valuable intelligence for anyone in the roof cleaning industry. This information has never been available before so take some time to consider how it may affect your business.

I know what I am doing with the information from clean4life, the question is do you