Your clients are literally the lifeblood of your business. If they’re happy, you’re happy ... and probably making good money. In fact, recent trends point toward delighting your customers as the No. 1 strategy for increasing the profitability and ROI for your small- to medium-sized business (SMB).
On the flip side, a dissatisfied customer is like a cancer for your business. Unhappy customers will drive you — and your employees — crazy. And even worse, they’ll become detractors who go out of their way to complain to others about your business.
So what can you do to boost customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and customer longevity? Here are three easy steps for optimizing customer experience throughout your IT services SMB.
Service, Service, Service
As a technology solution provider, service is at the forefront of what you provide to your customer. But how do you keep track of all of the service tickets and orders in order to make sure you are responding accordingly and in a timely manner?
Organizing the SOs is the first step. Even with a single inbox capturing all of the requests, something can fall through the cracks. Instead, automate your service ticketing process to keep things moving.
Consider an IT help desk software solution that automatically converts an email into a service ticket, sets a priority based on clients' service level agreements (SLAs), notifies the right techs and sends a response to your client to let them know you are working toward a resolution. And, should an issue go unresolved for too long, an automatic workflow reminder is sent to the tech.
Overcommunicate
When it comes to client communication, more is better. It's not enough to just do a good job. Most of the work you do is remote and out-of-sight, so make sure your clients are informed of the status of all tickets and projects and solicit their satisfaction feedback every time
Documenting every point of contact — from sales to service to accounting — also will help keep the messaging consistent. Be sure to use your IT help desk, service ticketing or CRM software to keep journal entries of every client interaction so that everyone in your company can not only add a point of contact recap but also see previous interactions.
Integrate Platforms
By themselves, a IT help desk software, service ticketing system and CRM can be great tools. But keeping all of your client communication and tasks in separate platforms creates data silos and increases the risk of a missed appointment, lost invoice, etc.
By integrating your key software solutions — such as email, CRM, service ticketing system and accounting — into a single platform will streamline workflows and communication within your organization in order to not only address your clients' needs but also exceed their overall expectations. The result: an ecstatic customer who is more likely to stick with you long term and champion you to other prospective clients (Hello, healthy sales pipeline!).
Next Step: Contracts & SLAs
Another sound business strategy to ensure customer delight and profitability for your IT services SMB is to set up customers contracts and SLAs. Learn more by checking out the 4 Must-Have Tools to Track, Analyze and Increase Contract Profitability in this webinar.
