Brittany Ferries customer case
How do you effectively meet the needs of a shipping company like Brittany Ferries, which wants a single point of contact capable of coordinating on-board cleaning services across the 4 countries it serves, with common processes and quality standards? Moïse Kerguillec, Onet Propreté Facility Services Contract Manager, has been leading this team for almost 25 years.
Hazards complicate the mission
With its fleet of 11 ships, Brittany Ferries carries 2 million passengers and 200,000 vehicles every year between France, Great Britain, Ireland and Spain. The cleaning service is based mainly on the cleaning of passenger cabins, but this can be disrupted by a number of events.
These changes have repercussions on the work of our waste management teams, and require almost constant communication between our site managers at each port.
The first hazard we face is the cabin occupancy rate, which determines the volume of work to be carried out. This varies enormously depending on the season or the time of the week. But the course of the service is also affected by other contingencies, such as a ship delay due to weather disturbances or technical problems, or in extreme cases, a ship rerouting due to a port strike.
Essential coordination between site managers
A simple delay in a ship's arrival in port has repercussions on the work of our cleaning teams. As ports of call are short, the time available for cleaning cabins is very limited, often between 2 and 3 hours. When a ship arrives late, the intervention time is reduced accordingly, as the ship will leave for its next crossing at the originally scheduled time. In this case, the cleaning team will first clean the cabins booked for the next crossing. But in this case, any work not done will have to be carried out at the next port. As soon as he is aware of this, the site manager will inform his counterpart at the next port of any unfinished work that his team will have to carry out.
Onet Propreté Facility Services manages the entire service and is responsible for ensuring that it is carried out to perfection. Moise Kerguillec ensures that the cleaning teams at each of the 12 ports work together seamlessly. Onet provides services in the 5 French ports and in the ports of Santander and Bilbao in Spain, thanks to the Onet España teams. The ports of Cork and Rosslare in Ireland are serviced by ISS Ireland teams. In Great Britain, at the ports of Plymouth, Poole and Portsmouth, the service is subcontracted to another cleaning company.
Every Monday, a coordination meeting is held by videoconference with the site managers of all the ports. Together, we study the forecasts for the number of cabins to be cleaned on each crossing, as communicated by Brittany Ferries. This enables us to mobilize the staff required for each service at each port. The forecasts of cabins to be cleaned are communicated to us twice a week, and then, as you can see, we adapt according to unforeseen circumstances. Without perfect coordination between all the site managers, the service could not be carried out.
A predominantly relational dimension
Managing a service that is affected by last-minute changes on a daily basis is no easy task, not least because of the repercussions on staff availability. In essence, shifts are short on a ship, but on top of this, the timescales are subject to frequent changes. For many agents, the argument of working with a sea view doesn't weigh much against the need to accommodate their lives with fluctuating work schedules. The talent of site managers therefore also lies in their ability to build teams that appreciate working on a ship, and to retain them through local management and certain benefits.
On each part of the ship, the agents are supervised by a team leader who prepares the necessary equipment and provides individualized instructions. Everything is clearly defined, and team spirit prevails. Special measures have also been adopted to ensure agent loyalty and "secure" service. In French ports, for example, our agents are all Level 2s, and their remuneration is based on 24 hours a month.
We also have to take care of our relationship with our customers on board. Sometimes, short response times mean that we have to make trade-offs and adapt our presence in certain areas. In such cases, our site manager must maintain a psychological dialogue with the purser or hotel manager, who are naturally committed to providing their passengers with impeccable service and comfort.
Finally, Onet is responsible for the relationship with Brittany Ferries, and invoices its customer for all services, regardless of the country in which they were provided. The company is then responsible for paying its subcontractors and managing the relationship with them.
Standardization of tools and methods to guarantee consistent service quality
Brittany Ferries aims to provide a stable and consistent quality of cleanliness on board all its ships, whatever the port of departure. Attentive to passenger comfort and experience, this is a criterion on which the company does not compromise.
We share the same "cabin forecasts" supplied by Brittany Ferries. But we have also established standards for cleaning products, equipment and working methods. This isn't always easy when the service is carried out in several different countries, but it's essential if we are to "speak the same language" and guarantee consistent service quality.
The use of a "verifier", who systematically passes through each cleaned cabin to validate that cleanliness is beyond reproach, is one of the rituals that contribute to the harmonization of service quality standards. The efficiency of this ritual is demonstrated by the significant reduction in passenger complaints observed by the company.
A relationship based on progress
Onet and Brittany Ferries share the same ambition for progress, sustainability and optimization of their carbon footprint. These shared values have undoubtedly contributed to strengthening our partnership for over 20 years. Onet's teams intend to do their utmost to contribute to the comfort of Brittany Ferries' passengers for a long time to come, as the company integrates two new LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) hybrid ships, the Saint-Malo and the Guillaume de Normandie, into its fleet in the spring of 2025. These two new ships, the first hybrid LNG-powered cross-Channel ferries to run on both fuel and electricity, illustrate Brittany Ferries' firm commitment to decarbonizing its business.
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