Caring about your customers’ experience is crucial to business growth

Imagining how the customer would feel is paramount to the success of managed service provider Croft, which has grown from 16 staff members to over 200 in three years. CEO Mark Bramley talks to Sarah Dale.

Providing the personal touch to customer service is essential to keeping happy clients returning again and again, says Croft CEO Mark Bramley.

The company was established in 2006 as Mobile Account Solutions but four years ago, Mark bought out one of the founding partners and they rebranded to Croft moving from a purely telephony business to a managed service provider.

Croft is a member or Patron of several Chambers of Commerce across the UK. Mark is a Patron of Hertfordshire Chamber of Commerce, which was the first one the business joined.

“It’s important to me to be a Patron,” said Mark.

“We joined Hertfordshire Chamber of Commerce four years ago. It embodies our approach of ‘Think national, act local’. Although we now have 13 offices with over 200 members of staff, our Hertfordshire office is our headquarters and having local exposure and local referrals within the Chamber is important. The Chamber is a great forum for like-minded people to get together.

“Some of our clients are also members. It is a tremendous community for disparate businesses to talk about common problems we have. It is also great exposure and an opportunity for people to mingle. The social events are not only a pleasant way to spend time, but they are informative and enlightening.”

Mark says the biggest challenge affecting running and growing a business has been the change in the way workforces work, with more people working from home or having a hybrid model.

“It makes it harder to ensure quality control,” he said.

“It’s, of course, important that we have a team that can work from wherever, but it makes it harder to ensure that the correct message is reaching the customer. It’s hard enough with 13 offices but if we have 50-70 people on any given day working from home, how do we ensure that they have all got the help they need and when they need it?”

To counteract this issue, Croft has “invested quite heavily” in its intranet and Teams to ensure people can reach each other quicker and more efficiently.

“One of the other challenges is if you are in an office and overhear someone saying something wrong, you have that instant ability to help and teach,” he added.

Mark’s advice to people starting out in business is ‘obsess about your customer’ to ensure you are always considering the client experience when providing a product or service.

“We have grown from 16 people to over 200 in three years; that’s a ridiculous amount of growth, so we are always thinking about how we can keep the personal touch,” he said.

“Do they feel that we care about them and their business and their problem? Will they put down the phone at the end of a call and feel like they have had a good customer experience? Every new business should be able to answer why their clients would choose them.”

Mark is “extremely confident” that Croft will continue its growth trajectory.

“We need more connectivity and more technology to make our lives better,” he added.

“I am extremely confident that as long as we continue to care about the customer experience, we will continue to grow.

“We continue to look for acquisitions around the UK – we have made 22 acquisitions within the last three years – and we have some more lined up for the next couple of months.

“When businesses grow, they can depersonalise but it’s important to keep the personal touch as you scale up. That’s how we differentiate ourselves.”