Maintain the relationship. I would say the most important thing is keep in touch.
Don’t just assume that once you have the client that you’re going to have them forever because you don’t. You want to, but the client has to stay engaged.
It’s like any love relationship, you can’t say, ‘Oh, I have a girlfriend,’ and go visit her once a month. You really have to have a daily enamored feeling with your client so they know that you’re there, they know you care and that you’re responding to their needs.
There are also times when you have to follow your client on Twitter or on Facebook or on LinkedIn just to find out what they’re talking about, what they’re doing, things that maybe even after you’ve signed the contract with them to make sure that you maintain a live connection with all of the changes that they may not think of telling you but really would make a difference in us helping them.
Solve problems. Everybody has a problem once in awhile with their service or product. It’s not so much that you have the problem; it’s how you resolve it that makes the difference. Everybody understands that nobody is perfect, nobody can sell perfection, but you can say, ‘Hey, listen, if you have a problem, don’t wait to get mad, come to us and we’ll resolve it in the most satisfying way necessary for the particular issue.’
We give them absolutely the chain of command in resolution and how their problems are going to be taken care of, and we give them a report of what we did to take care of the problem. Whether it is an interpreter issue or a hardware issue or anything like that, we have an absolute resolution plan so that they know what we’re doing.
It’s not like they complained and nobody heard. We give them a response and an action to every single complaint or issue.
We don’t like to have many, believe me, and we learn every time we have an issue. We learn how to avoid these other issues that come up.
Making sure that when you have an issue that they feel comfortable that their issue was resolved in a proper way that you don’t say, ‘Well, this is what we can do,’ and if the customer isn’t satisfied with you saying, ‘This is what we can do,’ then you go and never give them (what they need).
Just say, ‘Are you satisfied? Is this what you wanted to see? We have learned from this issue with our resolution, we’re going to see to it that this isn’t going to happen again.’ Just reassure them.
How to reach: Language Services Associates Inc., (800) 305-9673 or www.lsaweb.com
