Making our customers’ and cleaners’ lives easier and happier is what we strive for at Helpling. We love to hear and share your experiences, like the stories of our happy and successful cleaners. Your positive Helpling stories make for some big smiles in our office!
Today we’re sharing the story of one of our happy Helpling Singapore customers. Writer and consultant Richard Hartung put his way with words to great use by writing this article. He shares his journey through stroppy teenagers and broken vases before finally finding Helpling.
Helpling Heals the Cleaning Conundrum
For more than two decades in Singapore we had struggled through a multitude of helpers and cleaners who assisted us with looking after our condo.
In the beginning, after moving here from Tokyo, it was great to have full-time help to take care of the household and look after our young children. Finding the right person with the right chemistry was a challenge, though, and we engaged a series of helpers in two-year stints to assist us, with increasing levels of frustration.
Making the switch
After about a decade, when our children had become teenagers, we also saw the other side of what having helpers had done. When a relative complained about clothes dumped on the floor, beds unmade, dishes left on the table and a carefree attitude that someone would take care of everything after our children went to stay with them, we finally realized that our children took helpers for granted everywhere. It was time for a change. And it was then that our second round of challenges began.
We figured it would be easy to find someone to come in and clean once or twice a week, leaving the children to learn to pick up after themselves the other days. No such luck. Sometimes the cleaners showed up, and on other days they were on “MC”, ill with an unknown disease. Other times, as we heard foreign accents, we worried about being taken to court for hiring illegal workers. A treasured vase broke when it was accidentally knocked over. For another decade, we made do with the cleaners that we struggled to manage yet couldn’t live without.
A simple solution
Only in the past few months have we finally found a solution that actually works – online services. Sure, we’d become earlier adopters of online shopping for everything from books to clothes. What we hadn’t found until recently, though, was online household help that we also needed. When a newspaper ran a story about Helpling providing cleaners via simple online bookings, we figured we had nothing to lose and decided to try it.
Sign-up was easy, all online. We scheduled a cleaner at a time that would work for us. She showed up and did a great job – those bathtubs have never looked so good. And payment was taken care of online.
Then, cleaning got even easier when we signed up to have a cleaner come in every two weeks, even when we’re not at home. Since Helpling has an insurance policy, we had no hesitation about giving a key to the house to the cleaner we’d met earlier. Now, she shows up when we’re at work and we come back to a spotless condo.
We only wish that online cleaning services had come to Singapore a decade earlier.
Thank you, Helpling.
Richard Hartung, Managing Director, Transcarta
Richard is a freelance writer for Today, gtnews, Challenge, OOSKAnews and Efma Journal. He is also a consultant in banking with more than 20 years of experience, primarily in Asia. Richard has a BA from Pomona College and an MBA from Stanford University. He volunteers with Metro-YMCA and other organisations.
A big thank you to Richard for sharing his Helpling experience with us. We’re happy to have made a difference!
What about you – what brought you to Helpling? Have we had a positive impact on your life like Richard? Whether you’re a customer or a cleaner, we’d love to hear about it!
