Broadly Q&A: Gwyndows Window Cleaning

Broadly Q&A features our local business partners. This week, we are sharing our conversation with Robin Hall, who owns and operates Gwyndows Window Cleaning in Austin, Texas:

How long have you been in business? How did you get started?

This started as a summer job for me. I was working my way through school, and I started window cleaning. The owner, Gwyn, hired me. I worked for her for six years, and she decided to become a Buddhist nun. She had to sell all of her possessions, which included the business. I was in a position to buy it, and I ended up buying the company from her in 2010.

Was it tough to learn the ropes?

I pretty much knew all of the things about the business before I decided to buy it. We are a really small company – so it wasn’t hard to take over. I’ve got 13 on staff today.

Why do people choose Gwyndows?

They look at our reviews. Our customer service is pretty much #1 in the industry in Austin. It doesn’t get better than us, as far as customer service goes. We are probably the biggest locally-owned company.

How has Broadly worked for Gwyndows?

We had amazing reviews before using Broadly. Broadly made them better. It’s seamless, it’s awesome, I love it. When I started with Broadly, we had 5 Google reviews. It saves me a lot of hassle and worry about getting my guys to ask customers for reviews – I don’t have to do that anymore. I know it’s performing well.

How else do you market Gwyndows in Austin?

We hardly do any print advertising anymore, and we don’t do any gimmicky coupons. Most people will say they saw us online, and I think that really means Google. We get a lot of our business from Yelp. 100% of our marketing is online, although we don’t do advertising, per se. We do a lot of branded things, we run AdWords campaigns. If you Google window cleaning in Austin, we come up.

Have you learned anything new from your customers through online reviews?

I haven’t necessarily learned anything new, but I think that I have a better understanding of them. People are more willing to give me feedback.