Clients love consistency. They like their experience to be the same every single time they use your support.
And the only way that can be achieved is if you design it that way. Because you can’t solely rely on star members of staff to create the client experience you want.
Your receptionist may be brilliant and bring the business alive, but what about when she is on holiday? Does the character of your business change when key members of the team are away?
The successful IT support or IT consulting business puts in place systems that give clients an excellent and consistent experience at every touchpoint.
There are four different kinds of systems you need in your business:
Hard systems: For example, setting the reception thermostat to 20 degrees so the room is always a comfortable temperature for clients
Soft systems: Written procedures for your staff to follow
Automated systems: Things which happen without anyone having to remember to do anything, such as an automatic appointment reminder being sent out by your marketing software
Information systems: The collection, interpretation and useage of information to help the business run better or provide a better, more consistent experience for clients
Perhaps the most important of these are the information systems.
There is simply no better way to retain a client for decades than to make them feel as though their trusted IT support supplier knows them and values them. And the only way to do this properly for every client is with the use of powerful information systems.
I went to see my dentist recently, and came back amazed that he had asked me how my daughter Tilda was. The reality is that the dentist could not really remember me from the thousands of other patients he sees every year.
But his computer could! It reminded him before the appointment what was happening in my life, based on good notes from previous appointments.
Do I feel like the dentist knows me? Yes. Do I feel like we are building a relationship over the years? Yes. And interestingly, this keeps me returning to this dentist even though I moved out of the area years ago and have to travel a long way for a check up.
Can an IT support business do this? Oh yes! In fact you MUST do this. Combined with other information systems, soft systems, hard systems and automated systems; you can consistently give your client the excellent experience they deserve every single time they have any contact.
And the beautiful thing is that you don’t need to be there to oversee it. You just need to get your staff to understand the systems and operate them correctly.
