New technology is changing the Laundry Business too, according to Brian Wallace, CEO of the American Coin Laundry Association. Not only will it make laundry services easier for customers, reduce costs for the laundry owner, create new revenues, and make management time more efficient, he also foresees technology solutions that enable more advantages and business success.
First of all, digital marketing and social media will be needed since they prove to be the cheapest and most effective marketing tools ever. Then the smartphone has made communicating with employees and customers easier. The full-service laundry to wash/dry/fold with pickup and delivery services will become more popular,as the washers and dryers with larger capacity and more water and energy savings that are now available. New competitors – the “digital natives” – will be able to adopt the new technologies quickly, as will the majority of laundry customers since they are also millennials. Finally, the future of payment is to change drastically from cash payments only to hybrid systems with credit cards, loyalty cards, coins and mobile wallets. But what changes most of all is, that customers will increasingly demand Social Responsibility of the companies they do business with every day. Community engagement makes a difference, according to Wallace.