Your company strives to distinguish itself from your competition. Whether you sell a product or provide a service, your clients have the awesome power to keep you in business, or not. Committing to an ongoing client retention program with Telcare puts you back in the driver’s seat. Knowledge is power, and Telcare specializes in obtaining that customer satisfaction knowledge for you in a high quality, simple, but low cost way.
Just ask Jacqueline W. Vlaming, Senior Vice President/General Counsel of Coverall Health-Based Cleaning Systems. They provide commercial cleaning services to all types of businesses including retail, medical and general office:
“Telcare’s surveys of our national accounts give us the feedback we need to provide better service to these important customers. Their survey agents are great at obtaining detailed specifics from our customers, which we are alerted to by Telcare’s Hot Email service, allowing us to quickly react to our customers’ issues. Coverall is especially impressed with Telcare’s striving to utilize disadvantaged people as survey agents. We really like that they try to put people to work that might otherwise not have that opportunity.”
We’ve split most companies products and services into two categories, Single and Ongoing transactions. The following describes what we mean and offers you great retention ideas that get you that all important knowledge while promoting referrals and repeat business. The results of the surveys can be easily cross-tabulated by product, salesrep, store, region or any other demographic or product/service specification to show you exactly where the improvements need to be made and which staff need coaching or rewarding.
Single Transactions
If your company mostly sells a product or provides a service once as a single event, but hopes that the client will eventually return to buy more, and even better, to refer their friends and associates, Telcare recommends the following customer retention program:
- Hand-signed Thank You card upon completion of purchase or service with a referral reward
- Appropriately timed short telephone survey to see if their experience was positive
- Hand-signed Holiday card (Thanksgiving, Winter Holidays) just to say you appreciate them
- Hand-signed card or letter to invite them back in several months or a year with a repeat business reward
Ongoing Transactions
Ongoing service transactions can include offerings such as equipment / home / appliance maintenance contracts and other business and consumer services such as payroll, communications, delivery, laundry, uniforms, supplies, etc. Most of these arrangements are contractual in nature and have a specific time period element and require renewal at the end of the time period. The initial contract and the renewal are the keys to the following client retention program:
- Hand-signed Thank You card upon initial contract signing with a referral reward
- 90-day check in short telephone survey to see if their initial experience has been positive and uncover any problems quickly
- Comprehensive survey performed one month before renewal opportunity (phone, mailed, web) – survey preceded by one-week with a custom card or letter announcing the survey
- Hand-signed Thank You for Your Renewal card or letter, possibly citing some of the improvements planned as a result of the survey along with a referral reward
- Hand-signed Holiday card (Thanksgiving, Winter Holidays) just to say you appreciate them
To obtain a quote for either of these great programs, please contact Telcare today.
