PATRON NEWS
KEEPING YOUR CUSTOMERS DURING THE FINANCIAL SQUEEZE With high interest rates and inflation still rising, businesses need to ensure they weather the storm and ensure they keep their customers happy, rather than lose them. Helen Christian, Head of Service Delivery at Face for Business, our strategic partner, and the UK’s favourite telephone answering service according to Google reviews, talks on the measures they have implemented to ensure they have kept clients through rocky times. Helen explains, “Several years ago we realised that whilst it is always hard and expensive to get new clients on board, it’s easy to lose them especially when challenging times hit. Customers have choices and don’t want long-term contracts; they want to be with you whilst you add value and offer flexibility. In our opinion, if you don’t add value and offer flexibility today, they could be someone else’s client tomorrow. We wanted to focus on keeping our clients closer than how other call handling providers do. In order to do this, we made several strategic decisions to keep clients close.”
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Give clients something they don’t get with your competitors. We decided, early on, that clients would benefit – not only to see a notification of the transfers made or messages sent – but also from being able to listen to our PA’s doing the job for them, so, we allow all our clients to listen to the recordings easily, at the touch of a button. Talk to them, ask for feedback. You can often nip challenges in the bud rather than lose clients without knowing why, or, understanding when it is too late. All our clients can give feedback on any message or transfers they listen to, by simply clicking on the feedback button. This feedback is always replied to within 12 hours. Additionally, every lead PA agrees with clients how often they want us to contact them, so it’s not at our pace, it’s at the client’s.
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Ensure your price is fair and remember, no one likes extra charges, especially when times are tough. Our pricing has always been transparent; we don’t charge for transfers to mobiles or landlines and we never charge for extras, like evening or weekend call answering. During Covid, we introduced ‘bill optimisation’, that ensures our clients are always on the best tariff. Of course, if they have a quiet month, it can be disappointing for us, however it would hurt more if they decided to leave altogether, likewise, when they are busier, we will still be working with them.
We hope, by sharing these strategies, they help you think about your own and assist in possibly keeping clients for the long term, not the short.
Helen Christian – Head of Service Delivery Face For Business - the UK’s Favourite Telephone Answering and Live Chat service.
“Several years ago, we realised that whilst it is always hard and expensive to get new clients on board, it’s easy to lose them, especially when challenging times hit. Customers have choices and don’t want long-term contracts; they want to be with you whilst you add value and offer flexibility.”
