ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Russian correspondent Oleg Popov of Cristanval looks at the situation in the private services sector.

The Yandex.Master project started up in September 2014. The service by the national search system set an ambitious goal for itself – removing unscrupulous household services providers. Yandex is the brand people trust most, but even it could not change the emerging practice of ordering services directly from craftsmen, rather than from companies. The logic is simple: ordering services directly is cheaper and cleaners are invited to people’s homes based on the recommendations of their acquaintances.

The household cleaning market must undergo major changes before people start using such services on a massive scale. The interests of the client must be put first in order for that trust to come. Meanwhile companies are being compelled to learn to structure their business processes in such a way that they are servicing many clients at once in a cost-effective manner. This is how the perfect service is supposed to be: you have the opportunity to try the service at a reduced price, gain confidence that its quality is high and at the appropriate time reap the benefits of discounts and a loyalty program. Currently not a single company has combined all of those services.

Major investments in marketing must be made. It’s not enough just to emphasise your standing in internet search results. Many Muscovites just don’t notice Yandex.Master is there, same as they didn’t notice its withdrawal from the market. More than 70 per cent of Yandex’s income comes from targeted ad sales, but it is constantly testing new services. Some of them, Yandex.Taxi for example, are gaining ground while others fail to meet the level of success that was originally hoped for.

We see small-time startups closing up all over the country. Despite this investors continue to say intermediaries for cleaning services that take on the job of attracting clients have a lot of potential and they invest in them. This not only refers to cleaning services, but also services providing home personnel and all housework services. Meanwhile the factors are being exposed that influence this segment, such as threats to the services’ reputation. One bad review on the internet is like a stone thrown into the water and it reaches a large audience.

We often mistakenly think of start-ups as if they are mature businesses. In reality this is just a test for the particular business model. If it is running top quality services it may survive, grow, and be fruitful, but in 97 per cent of cases it will just die out. Exiting the market is the most natural road for young projects and there are a many reasons for that.

Russians and Muscovites alike have not yet become accustomed to handing off their household responsibilities to other people. We can all do everything ourselves and save on our home budgets. What’s more important for the market is for new start-ups to appear and new business models to be tested. Whatever happens, young businessmen will give it everything they’ve got and someone or other will definitely manage to get a successful business going.