A few months ago, BearCom’s President, Joseph Jenkins, was asked to answer the following questions by an Editor from Contracting Profits magazine. BearCom’s client retention increased by 300% since implementing CleanTelligent. From the answers to the questions provided below, Joseph was quoted multiple times in a recent Contracting Profits article, which you can read at this link http://www.cleanlink.com/cp/article/Inspection-Software-Contributes-To-Customer-Satisfaction-Retention–12156. Below are the full answers to the questions in order to give you a better insight into how and why BearCom does such a good job at retaining our clients. To find out more about BearCom Building Services, Inc. or to receive a free estimate for the cleaning services at your facility, call us at 801-569-9500 or click on this link, fill out the form and submit it http://www.bearcomservices.com/offer/?offer=pricing.
- Question: What contributes to client retention? Answer: I believe client retention is the result of influencing clients to feel good and think positively about your company. We can influence our clients by meeting and exceeding our contractual obligations, cleaning services and our client’s expectations; but surprisingly this isn’t enough. We must also prove it. We can prove it by performing quality assurance inspections, and by quickly resolving deficiencies we find. Another way we can influence our clients to feel good and think positively is through effective communication. We must make it simple, easy and effective for clients to communicate with us. When our clients contact us they need to know that they are always getting to the right person that can help them. We also need to make sure that a negative feeling, resulting from a complaint, is quickly replaced with a good positive feeling of knowing that we are taking care of them. The faster we do this the better. If a client has a hard time communicating with us, or is unsure that the message is received or given to the right people, then the client will be left to stew and fester; then their negative feeling will grow and become worse, and it will be harder to help them have positive feelings about us. We must also send our clients positive messages on a regular basis as a form of branding our company and letting them know that working with us is a positive experience.
- Question: What features of the software, specifically, are so important? Answer: We use CleanTelligent, and it has been fantastic. The main features in CleanTelligent that we use that helps us with client retention are 1) Communications Portal, 2) Inspections, 3) Tracking. Let starts with 1) Communications Portal. The communications portal gives our company the simple, easy and effective means of communicating with us. Our clients are set up with an icon on their desktop which links to our communications portal. We also use the icon and it’s description to send a positive message about us to our clients – thus branding our company. Then when our clients submit us a message using the portal, they know that the message gets to the upper management of the company and those who are responsible for taking care of them. And my company, BearCom, is committed to reply to those messages within 5 minutes, that way our clients know we have received the message and we are addressing it. We also use the system to perform inspections. Then we track complaints we receive through the communications portal and we track the deficiencies we find through the inspection tool. We use the tracked data to create reports and graphs that allow us to discover our strengths and weaknesses, and work on continually improving our services to our customers.
- On the flip side, what contributes to client attrition? Answer: I believe what leads to client attrition is not performing to client expectations, not communicating effectively with clients, not branding your company and showing your clients the value you bring, and not giving your clients positive experiences and feelings about your company.
- What about inspection software appeals to customers in a unique way? Answer: Clients know and understand the importance of accountability. They also know that performance not measured cannot be improved. Client’s like the idea of cleaning companies performing inspections at their facilities because they want to make sure that when they pay their check, they are receiving what they were promised when they signed up.
