We recently appointed Pandora Vignaud as our new Customer Service Manager. She has taken over from Jennifer van der Schans who has gone travelling for a few months. Everyone at Calls2Account wishes her the best in her adventures!
When interviewing for Jen’s replacement it got me thinking about our ethos for Customer Service, how we approach it and what we believe we deliver. I found myself speaking very passionately about what we have implemented from a customer support perspective, what that says about Calls2Account, the way we do business and the client relationships we have developed.
It is obvious to say that our customers are the most important thing about our business. Without customers we have no business. It is amazing how many businesses seem to forget that basic ethos in the pursuit of new clients and more money. New isn’t necessarily better. In fact I believe it is more important for us to keep a client long term than it is to win a new one.
We do that by delivering an excellent pro-active service. Our role is to make our customers’ jobs easier by giving them tools that are easy to use and to understand. Once they have those tools we are genuinely interested in making sure that customers get the maximum benefit from them. This isn’t purely altruistic. The more a customer uses our tools, the more benefit they get, the more likely they are to continue working with us.
We have a very low cancellation rate and a part of that is because our customers get the support they need from us in a non-sales orientated environment. We pride ourselves on reacting quickly and positively to customer requests. But on top of that we regularly pro-actively contact our customers to ensure they are getting the maximum benefit from our systems. This is also a great opportunity for us to gather feedback which helps us shape our products going forward.
We all see examples of bad customer service every day. Last night my wife Janine and I were in the pub whilst her parents babysat for Baby Jude. We were playing pool when two gentlemen came in who didn’t speak great English and asked if the pub did food. The barmaid was extremely dismissive and rude and just pointed at one of the tables and said “Over there”. The gentlemen were obviously confused. Janine got annoyed with this and walked over to help them. She took them back to the bar, handed them the menu and explained that they could order what they wanted at the bar and the food would be bought to their table shortly. Basically she did exactly what the barmaid was too disinterested to do.
When Janine came back she said “I can’t understand how people can be so rude. It really annoys me when someone is so unhelpful”. Why is that relevant? Janine was our first Customer Service Manager.