3 Ways to Make ‘Last Wash” easier with technology

“Last Wash” – our posted time by which with hope to prevent any more loads of laundry starting so we can – hopefully – get out somewhere near closing time.

Inevitably this can be a time for conflict – customers trying to get an important chore done by the end of the day and your employees (or you) trying to get the tasks done so they can get out on-time and get home to their own families.

No one likes being told “No” or “Hurry Up” – no matter what words or how friendly our attendants say it. They become the enemy, when in reality they are just enforcing the policies that we set.

We thought it would help to put a big A-board sign out in front starting a few hours before close…but people just breezed by that.

So we turned to technology to help give our attendants some aircover. There is still the occasional conflict and the customer who needs to stay late to finish their folding - but this seems to have created a better experience for our employees and our customers.

Digital Signage. We have digital signage on a number of screens in the store. (We use Yodeck but here’s some more options). A couple hours before close – we schedule the signage to shift over to message to just share our closing timeline.

Automated Announcements. We installed an Alexa speaker and used Alexa Routines to make closing announcements every 10-15 minutes during the last hour. It is amazing how having the “voice of god” say the same things your attendants were saying dramatically reduced the number of interactions our attendants needed to have. Reducing conflict and freeing them up from being interrupted as often during end-of-day cleaning tasks.

To learn more about Alexa Routines click here.

Schedule your card readers to turn off. Obviously this isn’t an option for everyone.But if you have a card system like Laundoworks you may be able to turn off the readers.We have set our readers on our washers to turn off 15 minutes after last wash and the readers on our dryers stop accepting payments 30-minutes before close.

To do this go in to the Laundroworks Laundroportal and click on the location and then Time and Day of Week Pricing

Then click on +Add Pricing Rule and you will see the following dialog box. Under Pricing Mode choose “Payment Disabled” and choose your preferred start and end times.