“Mistakes will happen, it’s how you rectify them that matters most”
Everyone strives for perfection. Whether that’s personal or business, we all want to go through life with no mistakes.
The reality is, this is never really possible. Mistakes will occur, but what’s important is how we react to, and deal with, those mistakes.
As a business, it’s vitally important that you accept this, and come up with a solution to ensure any issues with clients, suppliers, staff etc… are dealt with efficiently and effectively in order to maintain or improve how satisfied they are with your service.
In fact, proving just how important this is, satisfied clients are much more likely to stay loyal to a company. When it comes to customers or clients in particular, 96% say customer service is important in their choice of loyalty,and with increased loyalty, profits can also improve by up to 25% as returning customers are likely to spend more with a business, while also giving positive recommendations to friends, family and colleagues.
Having a functional Client Services Team will enable your business to:
- Provide strong account management to clients
No client wants to sign up for a service, and then be left as an afterthought when they’ve signed the contract. Having a team on hand to provide regular updates will leave the client feeling important, and that they really matter to you.
- Provide additional support to your Management Team
When you look at most management/director level diaries, it’s always completely full. By providing a dedicated client services team who can regularly speak to clients, you will be able to relieve some of the pressure on your management team, who can focus on delivery.
- Ensure clients get maximum value
By building long term relationships, you will start to get more of an understanding of your clients’ needs and overall business strategy. This will enable you to present them other opportunities where your company can help. This results in a happy client, and more business coming your way.
- Ensure client satisfaction remains high
Clients will often wait until things go really wrong before speaking up. By maintaining regular dialogue with them, you can ensure any potential issues can be resolved early, before escalating out of control.
How to deliver great customer service
This will only work if your team are well equipped to deliver great customer service.
To do this, you will need to be able to:
- Understand client needs/expectations
If a client expects something to be done in 7 days, and no one explains to them that this will take 14 days, you’re going to have an unhappy client 1 week into their time as a client of yours. Speaking to them at the start, explaining how long this may take, can manage their expectations so they know what to expect.
- Efficient responsiveness to client concerns
As explained , things can go wrong. However, all a client ever wants is for any issue to be dealt with efficiently. A dedicated client services team will ensure this happens.
- Appreciate your clients
Show the clients you care. While not every client will be your biggest, every client should be made to feel like they are. Make time for them, entertain them – a little bit of attention goes a long way!
- Ask for feedback regularly
Questionnaires, surveys, testimonials are a really important part of understanding how your clients are feeling. With this information, you can see where improvement is needed, and what’s working well or not.
At Fusion, due to our rapid growth and expanding service offering, we have launched our own Client Services Team, led by myself, with the aim of ensuring total client satisfaction from all of our clients.
Happy and satisfied clients are key to our continued growth, and I will be ensuring each and every one of our clients gets the service they expect.
