A living wage is the hourly pay needed to cover basic expenses and ensure a modest standard of living after accounting for government transfers and taxes.
In 2024, Calgary’s living wage was announced at $24.45 per hour—a striking 63% higher than Alberta’s minimum wage of $15 per hour. This sharp increase reflects the soaring costs of essentials like food and housing.
One company embracing this standard is Home Spritz, a Calgary-based cleaning marketplace known for hiring the top two percent of cleaners and paying them a living wage.
At the helm is Nick Ross, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. With over a decade of experience as a software developer, Nick has driven innovation in global fintech companies, excelling in launching and scaling products from the ground up.
Calgary.Tech recently caught up with Nick to explore Home Spritz’s unique blend of technology and ethics, and how they’re reshaping the cleaning industry for the better.
What is Home Spritz?
NR: Home Spritz is a cleaner-focused tech company. Our mission is to empower cleaning professionals to streamline and strengthen their client relationships through innovative technology—both now and in the future.
How does Home Spritz use technology to help customers?
NR: At Home Spritz, our platform is designed to make finding and booking cleaners as simple as possible. Our online marketplace allows families to easily find and book an independent cleaner for weekly, biweekly, or monthly services. Clients can browse individual cleaner profiles, view key details about their qualifications and performance, and even try out different cleaners to find the best fit for a long-term relationship. Our customers save time by finding vetted cleaners at reasonable rates who they can trust with their homes and families.
In what ways does Home Spritz leverage technology to support cleaners?
NR: We focus on making technology work for cleaners by building a platform that eliminates common pain points. Cleaners often struggle with administrative tasks like finding clients, managing schedules, sending invoices, and tracking long-term relationships. Our platform handles all these tasks internally, freeing cleaners to focus on their work and allowing them to highlight their unique qualities through personalized profiles. They can showcase their experience, quality, and reliability, making it easier to connect with new clients and maintain relationships with existing ones.
What’s the difference between a cleaning marketplace and a traditional cleaning company?
NR: Traditional cleaning companies operate on a straightforward business model. They hire cleaners as employees who work under the company’s direct supervision. These companies typically offer standardized cleaning packages with uniform services for all clients.
On the other hand, a cleaning marketplace represents a modern, innovative approach, functioning as a platform rather than a traditional service provider. It connects vetted, experienced, independent cleaning professionals with customers. Unlike traditional cleaning companies, marketplaces don’t employ cleaners. Instead, they empower independent professionals by providing them with a platform to find work, often enabling them to earn significantly higher incomes.
As marketplaces operate on inherently low margins, technology plays a crucial role. Task automation, such as scheduling and managing ongoing client relationships, allows us to streamline operations and maximize efficiency at Home Spritz. This tech-driven approach ensures both customers and professionals benefit from a seamless experience.
How does Home Spritz use technology to manage data?
NR: With our platform, we track key data points, such as the quality of a cleaner’s work, customer complaints, reliability, years of experience, and more. This information helps customers make informed decisions when selecting cleaners, so they can choose a cleaner that best aligns with their expectations and unique needs.
At Home Spritz, we also utilize our extensive database of cleaning-related customer service issues and solutions to automate a significant portion of support tasks. This allows our customer service representatives to focus on the more critical aspects of managing both customers and cleaners, ensuring a seamless experience for everyone.
What sets Home Spritz’s approach to technology apart?
NR: As a small company with limited development resources, we have a fairly unique approach to software development. We focus on flexibility and experimentation, and we have to make technology choices that are pragmatic, effective, and deliver the most value with the least resources. We’ve adopted AI tools to help us with development, and are looking to use AI tools to help us manage customers and cleaners as well as remove communication barriers with the use of AI.
Most cleaning companies are mom-and-pop shops that don’t use technology, and few have created their own platforms. Our approach to technology allows us to stay nimble and adapt quickly to the demands of the industry.
What’s next for Home Spritz?
NR: We currently operate in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, and we’re poised to expand across the country, delivering our premier cleaning services to households nationwide.
We’re working on leveraging large language models (LLMs) and pairing them with our extensive database of customer service conversations and solutions. This combination will enable even better service automation, more precise cleaner-client matches, and further streamlining of the booking process. Our goal is to remove as much administrative burden as possible for cleaners and clients alike, creating a seamless ecosystem. All of this reinforces our mission to bridge the gap in the marketplace between independent cleaners and customers, enabled by smart, thoughtful technology.
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