When you're cleaning someone's home, you know everything about them. Sometimes you know they're pregnant before their mother does. That level of intimacy requires a level of operational excellence that most cleaning services never achieve, but Laura Christian wasn't interested in being like most cleaning services.

The problem: Growing pains were causing real pain

Before Missive, All Star Cleaning Services was facing the universal problem of growing companies: communication chaos.

"We were in Gmail and it's like everybody kind of had their own email," Laura explains. "I just had a client call me and she'd been emailing my scheduler for a month with no reply. The girl had just been trashing the emails."

For a business built on trust, where you literally have the keys to people's homes, this wasn't just inefficient. It was existential.

The issues were piling up:

• Emails getting lost between personal inboxes
• No visibility into customer history
• Team members working in silos
• Zero accountability for responses
• Customers talking to different people every time with no context

Laura knew something had to change.

The turning point: Transparency as a superpower

When Laura discovered Missive about seven years ago, it fundamentally changed how her team operated.

"The turning point with Missive was now we are all working out of the same program and we can see everything," she says. "It shifted our culture into one of transparency and accountability and teamwork."

The transformation wasn't just technical, it was cultural. Laura's team could now:

• See all customer communications in one place
• Collaborate on responses in real-time
• Comment and ask for help: "What do you guys think I should do about this?"
• Maintain complete context across every customer interaction
• Route messages to the right people automatically

"We love that there are layers to it," Laura notes. "My personal email, I'm the only one who sees it. But the office email, everybody can get to."

Overcoming the big brother myth

Many business owners worry about transparency feeling like surveillance. Laura sees it differently.

"Everybody is so like, 'Oh, I don't wanna be a big brother' or 'I don't wanna micromanage,' but I'm like, it's not though. It's not if it's the norm, if it's how we operate, if this is the job. We all work together on this."

Her team makes fun of her for being in Missive even while standing on top of a mountain in Peru. But that's exactly the point.

"It's not because I don't trust them. It's because I'm a part of the team. I can see if they need help and see what's going on."

This philosophy has real business impact. All Star is now one of the largest cleaning services in the nation with 55 employees—and they're still growing.

The book that changed everything (and how Missive made it possible)

Laura's entire company culture is built around a book called "Hug Your Customers" by Jack Mitchell. Every office employee reads it. They book club it regularly.

The core principle? Deeply personal customer relationships require centralized information.

"If you call or email us and you're talking to a different person every time and they have no idea what the previous conversation was like, that feels really impersonal," Laura explains. "House cleaning is really intimate. We know our clients are pregnant before their mothers know sometimes."

Missive makes this philosophy operational:

• Complete conversation history visible to the entire team
• Context preserved across every interaction
• Customer relationships maintained regardless of who responds
• New team members can immediately understand customer history

"We can see all of that history. That's what has allowed us to scale at the level that we have."

Building a movement, not just a business

What started as a way to manage communication has become something bigger. Laura now teaches other cleaning services about using Missive as a cultural foundation.

She's taught classes to nearly 80 cleaning company owners. Her husband coaches over 100 cleaning companies generating more than $1 million annually. They both evangelize Missive as a cornerstone of operational excellence.

"I view it as being a really integral part of my culture, not just how we're managing our communications," Laura says.

The impact extends beyond operations:

• Team members collaborate instead of working in silos
• Young employees learn professional communication in a supportive environment
• The company maintains an exceptional reputation in a competitive market
• All Star can focus marketing budget on community giving instead of traditional advertising

The technical setup: Simple but powerful

All Star's Missive setup isn't complicated—and that's the beauty of it.

Who uses Missive:

• 5 office staff members
• Laura and her husband
• Their marketing coordinator

Key integrations:

• Dialpad for phone system integration
• Maid Central for scheduling (they actually switched phone providers specifically to integrate with Missive)
• Zapier for custom workflows

"We switched to Dialpad because of Missive," Laura admits. "I was like, I'm not going anywhere else, so we gotta figure out how to make this all work with Missive."

The results: Culture as competitive advantage

After seven years with Missive, the results speak for themselves:

Business growth:

• Scaled from solo operation to 55 employees
• Became one of the largest cleaning services in their region
• One of the bigger operations in the nation
• Maintained growth even during family health crisis

Cultural impact:

• Created safe, inclusive workplace (large LGBTQ+ staff who say they've "never been anywhere that was so safe")
• Team collaboration is the norm, not the exception
• High employee retention in an industry known for turnover
• Young employees learn professional skills in supportive environment

Customer experience:

• Maintained personal touch at scale
• Zero missed communications
• Consistent experience regardless of contact
• Reputation for exceptional service

Why it matters: You can grow without losing your soul

Laura's story isn't really about email management. It's about maintaining humanity while scaling a business.

"A lot of these kids can relate to my story. I had a really crappy childhood. I came from nothing and I just kind of clawed my way up. But I did it by being really good to people," she reflects. "It's not like you have to be cutthroat to get ahead."

Missive enabled that philosophy to scale. It let transparency become an asset instead of a liability. It turned communication from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage.

"I can't imagine my business without Missive. It's like our cornerstone," Laura says.

For cleaning services, or any business built on trust and personal relationships, that's exactly what you need: a cornerstone that holds everything together as you grow.