I think that it is a no-brainer that client success should be a driving factor for any company. One desired result, for example, is repeat business and customer referrals. So, what can you do to ensure that you are making your clients successful? Let’s take a look.
1. Professional Development
We’ve talked about this before. Not only does professional development provide you with knowledgeable employees and keeps you at the ‘front of the line’ in your industry, but you can also provide training to companies who desire the most current approach to their business needs.
2. Create Premium Content
Whether they are whitepapers, ebooks, slideshows, or perhaps something else, providing clients with helpful tools that they can eventually learn to adapt and reuse not only allows them to save money, but also empowers them. Of course, it also lets them know that they can trust you when the time comes to expand their company, since you have been offering them the means to get there every step along the way.
3. Have Heart-to-Hearts
Calling clients to check in on how they are doing not only assures them that they matter to you, but it also reminds them that you, too, have a stake in their success. Offering them solutions to meet their goals, and then planning the best way to reach them together, becomes a team-building exercise between you and your client and further forges bonds.
4. Think Outside the Box
Okay, this sounds like a cliche; but grabbing an opportunity to create a solution for your customers is why you were hired in the first place. Use your imagination. Try a novel approach. Finding the best way to accomplish the job in a timely and cost-effective manner can make you a superstar – especially if it was considered an ‘unattainable goal’ in another place and time.
5. Devote a Team to Customer Success
With a show of hands, how many of you are already at the point of being overloaded when it comes to calling all of your customers regularly? Yup, I see quite a number of you. With new clients coming to you daily asking for your attention, how then can you keep in touch with your current clients? It might be time to allocate specific resources for just that purpose. By setting up a devoted team of individuals to work on maintaining contact with them, a team of first-responders in essence, it proves to your current client base that they are just as valuable to you as new customers. After all, they’ve been there with you through good times and bad. Waiting days to get the basic requests of your clients fulfilled, due to your workforce being too busy with other work, would become a thing of the past. While there are many ways to get this accomplished, ultimately it will be up to you on how best to make it work within your current company dynamic.
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” ‘îHenry Ford
It is important to practice what you preach, and we recognized our own deficiencies. CommonPlaces has been fortunate enough to be able to provide our clients with four of the five points above prior to March 1st, and all five of these points thereafter. As the newly appointed Client Success Specialist, and head of the Client Success team, my goal is total client satisfaction in every process that is initiated. We take customer success very seriously, so it was time to up the ante, and prove it.
