Welcome to our next method profile on Wash Cycle Laundry! Our previous entry focused on using Transaction Shift in social enterprise. In operating any venture, everything flows from your approach, and identifying a proper method helps you effectively fulfill your team’s initiative.
Together, we’ll be profiling interesting social enterprises to discuss an anchor method in their strive for social good. The term “anchor method” is to express the intentional and grounded nature of the approaches propelling a social enterprise forward.
This post is an outside observation of a company for inspiration in social enterprise initiative improvements.
In today’s post, we’ll look into the clean-cut Wash Cycle Laundry leveraging Resistance Management. Going around on bikes, the laundry service handles linens, and creates jobs to give people a second chance.
Knowing the Company: Wash Cycle Laundry
Wash Cycle Laundry is a commercial laundry management business established in 2010. Gabriel Mandujano, founder and CEO, began the company out of an old laundromat. Laundry was carried around by bike as the service made trips from home to home. Two main principles of their service relate to sustainability for the planet and sustainability in life. Wash Cycle Laundry honors the idea of clean laundry, a clean planet, and a clean slate.
Commitment to a clean planet was built into the initiative. Biking around the local area reduced the chance of harmful emissions. A “custom-designed Truck Trike” became the mode of transportation once the service experienced regular orders from larger clients, like hotels. Inside the Wash Cycle Laundry facilities, the initiative handles laundry with equipment using less water than traditional machines.
The term “clean slates” deals with advocating for a fair chance. The initiative uses a laundry service to offer jobs to persons with barriers to employment. A second chance like the one provided by Wash Cycle helps backgrounds involving incarceration and homelessness be less of a deal-breaker. Through their service, the initiative provides the opportunity to secure a more sustainable life.
With the success in their local city, Wash Cycle opened two more locations along the East Coast after scaling. The initiative operates their laundry service in Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, DC.
Resistance and Friction to the Desired Action
Locate the points of most removable friction to increase the percent of your customer, or client, taking the desired action. Reducing friction is a crucial step in converting a lead to a sale, or closing a deal. Naturally, finding where friction comes in an initiative comes before that step. Resistance communicates that the customer or client is clinging to some form of reasoning against the desired action.
People may question a price, or determine that they don’t have enough information. No matter the reason, the result is the same. Every scenario of mishandled resistance leads to the person not completing the desired action. Since this blocker is detrimental to an initiative, managing resistance becomes a strategy worth developing.
Ideally, aim to address the resistance or eliminate resistance. Most people simply need reassurance or persuasion. Getting to the core of where the resistance comes from is handled through questions. Direct questions to customers are insanely effective, but brainstorming from the customer’s perspective is a sufficient start. An ultimate goal is to eliminate the resistance by completely skipping friction.
Wash Cycle Laundry handles resistance by taking away friction in their process. As the literary analogy suggests, taking away friction allows their operations to flow more smoothly.
Remove Mind Clutter to Eliminate Resistance
While some people love doing laundry, there are people who rather not do the task. Laundry weirdly falls into a category of something people rather not do that they also don’t want to pay someone else to complete. Friction forms in that contradiction, and could stop customers from taking action. Wash Cycle Laundry immediately eliminates the friction when they offer to come to the customer.
A number of people still use laundromats, or live in complexes that require sharing laundry machines. Wash Cycle Laundry provides a service that saves time on travel, time spent doing the task, and most likely gives joy to the customer who no longer needs to worry about the task. While people may understand the value of the service, friction around where to find the service or how to connect with the service could come into play. On their about page, the initiative states the following:
“We got our first customers by sending out an email to the neighborhood listserv and offering pickup and delivery service to local homes and businesses.”
There is no push and pull of marketing tactics. Wash Cycle Laundry went straight to their stakeholders to offer service. Approaching customers directly, yet not in an abrasive way, eliminates the searching and interrogation customers typically do before choosing a service.
The initiative found another way to skip friction after scaling to accommodate hotels and larger businesses. Within their business model, they give their clients the option to rent linens. On their page explaining commercial laundry, the company says, “We’ll wash items you own, or you can rent ours.” For the client, this could be a great opportunity. Instead of dealing with inventory and logistics, the client only needs to purchase a service.
Wash Cycle Laundry skips over friction to have the initiative and offer become less of a headache to customers and clients. Eliminating resistance and friction is essentially a process of reducing the number of choices and decisions made before accepting an offer or taking action.
Applicable Takeaway
An anchor based on Resistance Management helps close the gap in performance metrics by increasing the action of customers and clients. To experiment with this anchor method, discover areas of friction that precede the offer or request made to the audience. Start to question what friction exists and why, so adjustments are built properly.
Wash Cycle Laundry’s smooth Resistance Management completes this profile.
People Helping People Podcast is seeking methods clearly supporting an effective impact. Observations and discussions on happenings in the social enterprise community is a significant part of our contribution to social good. Continue to check-in for more conversation-starting content.
