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Suppose you ask carpet and floor cleaning business owners what keeps them up at night. You’ll hear the same chorus: Costs rising faster than rates, labor that’s hard to find and harder to keep, customers who want premium results at bargain prices, and a market that won’t sit still long enough for you to catch your breath.

In the 2025 Cleanfax Carpet and Floor Cleaning Benchmarking Survey Report, respondents shared their experiences with the challenges they face and the actions they are taking to overcome them. What follows is a candid examination of those pain points and a preview of the themes that will be reflected in the data.

Inflation

The first drumbeat is inflation. Supplies, insurance, chemicals, and fuel—everything is more expensive than it was a year ago.

“Inflation and getting customers to understand price increases,” one survey respondent said. Another pointed to margin pressure coming from every direction: “National companies operating on very small margins.”

The math is brutal and straightforward: If your inputs rise and your rates don’t, your profits vanish. The owners who are staying sane are the ones pricing with intention, building clear scopes, and teaching customers the difference between “cheaper” and “less expensive over the life of the floor.”

Competition

Right behind costs comes competition, at both ends of the spectrum. At the low end, underpricing erodes trust.

One industry professional worried about “operators lowballing who don’t have a clue how to do the job.” At the same time, some customers are negatively impacted by “companies overcharging without the right equipment,” another business owner said.

It creates a noisy marketplace where you can’t claim to be better. You must demonstrate it with documentation, before-and-after proof, measurable outcomes, and guarantees that mean something.

Labor

Labor isn’t far behind. Finding people with the right attitude, training them effectively, and retaining them long enough to become professionals remains the central challenge.

Regarding labor, one respondent said, “getting people who want to work,” along with “not being negative,” yet just “truthful.” Others described the consequences, such as callouts, scheduling chaos, overworked leads, and owners who never seem to get off the truck.

Several respondents believe this year into next will be the year they finally stop being the primary technician. They will hire lead techs, cross-train crews, add a dispatcher, and install a small leadership layer, such as “adding a call center manager, a sales manager, and a director of operations.”

Marketing

Marketing and sales are evolving fast, and many of you are reshuffling the deck.

Some plan to spend more consistently. One respondent wrote that they planned to finally “increase our marketing budget.”

Others are shifting channels toward content and search, such as SEO efforts, content creation, and more targeted marketing to specific demographics.

Some respondents will also return to basics in a few places, such as door-to-door, referrals, and neighborhood service bundles, because nothing beats being visible in the exact areas you want to win.

The solution, according to many, is to show the outcomes, not just the equipment. Speak to building managers and homeowners in their language. Additionally, make it ridiculously easy to book jobs, ensuring customers don’t have to work to get an appointment.

Technology

Technology is no longer a novelty; it’s a lever to be used. On the operations side, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and integrated tools are moving from “nice to have” to “how we run.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to permeate workflow, as well. “AI has been very useful in certain aspects of our business, most importantly time savings with bidding and administrative tasks,” claimed one respondent. Others were more direct: “Implement as much AI as possible.”

Whether you’re using Copilot, ChatGPT, or others to draft emails and proposals, or automating job notes and checklists, the early wins are in tasks you do every day, touch them once, standardize them, and move on.

Service variety

The service mix is changing. Some of you are engaging in window cleaning, grout color sealing, and stone or concrete polishing. Others see adjacent restoration work. “Move more into mold remediation, water damage, and commercial cleaning” are the next logical steps. A few are eyeing air duct cleaning or even solar panel cleaning.

These aren’t random additions, but ways to deepen the revenue stream with existing customers and smooth the revenue curve across seasons.

Just as important, several respondents said their “next move” was internal: “Focus on efficiencies,” “maintain consistent staff,” “new approaches to marketing,” and “hiring more technicians so the owner can focus on sales.”

Educating the customer

Customer education remains a tightrope. With luxury vinyl tile (LVT) replacing carpet in many homes, claims about cleanability and maintenance can be unrealistic.

“Convincing hotels to use our deep cleaning services” is an issue, one pro said, capturing the tension between perceived savings and the real cost of dingy floors, damaged coatings, and failed warranties. The owners who win these conversations bring documentation, such as manufacturer care guides, slip resistance and gloss readings, and clear service schedules that tie appearance to safety, durability, and total cost.

And other industry issues

One pointed this out: “(I am) looking toward retirement, letting the next generation run the business.” That generational note popped up more than once. A few of you are planning exits. Others are grooming new leaders and building systems so the phone can ring without anxiety. It’s all part of the same maturity curve, which includes getting your pricing right, hiring and training deliberately, codifying your processes, then choosing whether to scale, specialize, or sell.

Underneath the tactics runs a simple theme: Margin is a function of discipline. Owners talked about resetting what’s included in the base price, moving furniture, deodorizing, clearly pricing add-ons, and saying “no” to work that doesn’t fit. They discussed the cost of redoing jobs and the value of photo logs, UV inspections for pet issues, and “proof of outcome” to minimize callbacks. They talked about being honest with themselves about their skills, capacity, and the kind of business they wanted to run.

If you recognize your own situation in these quotes, you’re not alone. Others are working hard to carve out some space in the industry. “Standing out and getting customers as a newer company,” was a big issue that one respondent admitted was a challenge for him.

In the pages that follow, we’ll share the survey data behind these stories: Where the money’s coming from, which services are growing, how teams are staffed, which tools are being adopted, and what’s changing in pricing and procurement.

What we have seen in 2025 compared to last year is that your peers tested more AI, shifted toward commercial, pulled owners off the truck, sweetened benefits, widened their service radius, diversified cleaning methods, added window cleaning and other services, bought more online, grew team sizes, and shifted marketing to LinkedIn and short-form video.

But don’t panic. You don’t need to copy everything. Pick a few moves that fit your goals and turn them into routines. That’s how you make 2026 a winning year, without overcomplicating it.

Download the entire report at the link below!

About this report: Survey data is based on results from email solicitations to carpet-cleaning contractors from Sept. 15 to Oct. 7. Results are self-reported and not based on audited financial statements. Percentages in graphs and charts are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Download the entire report at the link below!