Head of UK Customer Delivery shares how sales-i has guided businesses out of the unknown.
Article written by Maria Harrison, Head of UK Customer Delivery at sales-i.
During these difficult times, there is a level of customer acceptance that things just aren’t as they normally are. However, businesses that manage this crisis by supporting their customers will ultimately be the ones that come out of it with an enhanced, if not at least protected reputation with their customers.
Preserving and building customer relationships has always been central to what we do at sales-i and so we understood that our Customer Success Team needed to adapt quickly to the varying needs of our customers.
So, the question was: How is best to manage this ‘new normal’?
Taking a prioritised approach to the challenge, based around getting the ‘basics’ in place first and then making more strategic, longer-term choices has been the key throughout lockdown; not only in maintaining our customers’ experience but more importantly ensuring our customers’ ongoing sales-i success.
Proactively communicating with our customers has and will always be our number one priority. We, like many businesses, had reduced capacity in several areas, however, decided to increase capacity within the Customer Success Team. We understood that for many of our customers their world had upended and so it was extremely important that we were fully armed to provide guidance and support.
Our Customer Success Managers focused their efforts on reaching out to every one of our customers, to not only to provide transparency of where we were as a company, but to get an understanding of the effects COVID had on each of them, enabling us to respond quickly and appropriately.
The financial impact of COVID was obviously the main concern for customers. Reduced revenue saw businesses needing to cut costs. We realised that the only way for all to be able to weather this storm was to forge a partnership with customers and work together. And so, for customers who were facing financial difficulties, we provided payment relief. We temporally froze accounts, provided discounted monthly subscriptions and reduced user costs and in return, our customers were happy to extend and renew contracts.
Whilst many customers had a plan in place, not all of them planned for the total closure of their facilities and the imperative for their people to work from home. This has been an operational challenge for many due to the nature of many businesses and had to look to alternate ways to drive revenue. Our Customer Success Team, having 24 years’ worth of sales-i knowledge between them, have been providing hours of 1-1 consultative calls for our customers and – by interrogating their data within their sales-i platform – have illuminated countless sales opportunities. From these powerful insights, customers were able to take full advantage of the market now, and more so as businesses begin to open.
Our Customer Success Team’s customer-centric attitude and improved awareness of business requirements allowed us to support and strengthen the relationships we have with our customers throughout this pandemic. The increased transparency and communication that has recently satisfied our customers have become a permanent improvement that will not only cultivate long-lasting relationships but ensure they stay satisfied in the future; instilling confidence that things aren’t as they normally are, they are better.
Maria Harrison
Head of UK Customer Delivery
mharrison@sales-i.com
