Keep clients coming back · Every business
How Cleanliness Shapes What Customers Think of a Business
Customers use what they can see, a restroom, a waiting-room table or a work area, as evidence about what they can't, and surveys and experiments put numbers on how far that judgment travels.
At a glance
- In a Harris Interactive survey of 1,011 U.S. adults, 77% said they would avoid a health care facility in the future after a dirty restroom, and 79% said the same of restaurants and hotels.
- In a peer-reviewed study of restaurant restrooms, 73% of customers said a restroom shows what the kitchen is like, yet inspection data from 54 restaurants found no link between the two, so customers are judging the business on a signal that may not reflect the work at all.
- For an illustrative salon with 300 regular clients, a cleaning check that costs about $900 a year in staff time protects roughly $2,700 in annual client value.
The number and where it comes from
The broadest figure comes from a telephone survey conducted by Harris Interactive for Cintas, a facilities services company, in June 2011. It reached 1,011 U.S. adults, weighted to match the national population, and asked whether an unclean restroom would make them avoid different kinds of businesses in the future.
The pattern in the exhibit is the useful part. The businesses at the top are the ones where customers put something into or onto their bodies, food, sleep or care, which describes salons, barbershops, med spas, dental and medical practices and gyms as well, and those are where cleanliness counts for the most. A 2017 online survey of 1,008 U.S. adults, run by Ipsos for Procter & Gamble's professional cleaning division, found the same weight in another form, with 74% saying they would be more willing to overlook slow service at a business that was noticeably clean.
The restroom study deserves a closer reading, because it shows how the judgment works. Researchers surveyed customers, audited the restrooms of 54 restaurants with a 39-item checklist and compared the results with county health inspections, finding no significant relationship between restroom condition and kitchen violations, even though most customers treated one as evidence of the other and more than 70% of women and more than 60% of men said they had chosen not to return to a restaurant after a restroom visit. For a salon or practice, that means a customer may form a view of the work from the waiting area before seeing any of it.
Cleanliness also seems to change how people behave. In experiments published in Psychological Science, participants in a room lightly sprayed with a citrus-scented cleaner returned more money to a partner in a trust game, an average of $5.33 against $2.81 in an unscented room, and 22% said they would donate to a charity, compared with 6% in the unscented room.
A worked calculation
The calculation below sets the staff cost of a twice-daily cleaning check against the value of clients who might not return after seeing a dirty restroom or station. The share of clients who notice a lapse and the share who leave are assumptions, set below the survey figures, since a survey answer is not the same as a lost client.
| Regular clients (Assumption) | 300 |
|---|---|
| Share who meet a visibly dirty restroom or station in a year (Assumption) | 3% |
| Clients affected (Calculated (300 × 3%)) | 9 |
| Share of those who don't return (Assumption (below the 77% to 79% stated in the Harris survey)) | 50% |
| Clients lost (Calculated (9 × 50%)) | 4.5 |
| Annual value per regular client (Assumption) | $600 |
| Client value at risk per year (Calculated (4.5 × $600)) | $2,700 |
| Staff time for a cleaning check (Assumption) | 10 minutes a day |
| Days open per year (Assumption) | 300 |
| Hourly staff cost (Assumption) | $18 |
| Cost of the routine per year (Calculated (10 ÷ 60 × 300 × $18)) | $900 |
Illustrative example; replace every assumption with your own numbers.
How you compare
- The restroom check: customers in the restaurant study rated a clean restroom as important when choosing where to go, at 3.8 on a five-point scale; a timed check at opening and at midday, signed on a sheet, is a reasonable standard to start from.
- Where to look: in the Ipsos survey, 91% said they would view an independent business more negatively if its public spaces were unclean, so the waiting area, the restroom and the check-in counter come before the back room.
- Your own baseline: walk in through the customer entrance at three different times this week, sit in the waiting area for five minutes and note everything a first-time customer would see.
The next step is a two-line cleaning sheet on the restroom door, opening and midday, initialed by whoever checked.
About this research: This article draws on a 2011 Harris Interactive survey of 1,011 adults commissioned by Cintas, a 2017 Ipsos survey of 1,008 adults commissioned by P&G Professional, a study of customer perceptions and restroom audits at 54 restaurants published in the International Journal of Gaming Hospitality and Tourism and experiments on clean scents in Psychological Science. The two large surveys were commissioned by companies that sell cleaning services or products, and both report stated intentions rather than observed behavior, so the worked example uses lower assumptions. The worked example is illustrative.
Sources
- QSR Magazine. Dirty Restrooms Kill Repeat Business. 2011. Reporting a Cintas survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 1,011 U.S. adults, by telephone.
- FMLink. Cleanliness Tops the Reasons That Clients and Customers Return to a Business, Finds P&G Professional Survey. 2017. Reporting the P&G Professional Consumer Cleaning Insights Survey conducted online with Ipsos Public Affairs, 1,008 U.S. adults.
- Scarcelli, J. and Almanza, B. Restaurant Restrooms as They Relate to Kitchens: Customer Perceptions vs. Inspection Scores. International Journal of Gaming Hospitality and Tourism 1(1), 2021. Customer survey with 178 usable responses; restroom audits at 54 restaurants.
- Liljenquist, K., Zhong, C.-B. and Galinsky, A. D. The Smell of Virtue: Clean Scents Promote Reciprocity and Charity. Psychological Science 21(3), 2010. Summary via ScienceDaily.
Related reading: The First Five Minutes: How Arrival Shapes the Whole Visit · Small Touches That Make Customers Come Back: A Checklist by Business Type · Front Door Audit: The Salon Edition · How to Check Your Own Front Door in 15 Minutes (Free Checklist)
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