By George Ralph, RFA – How do firms retain 100% of their clients? Firstly, when clients have put their trust into your business and agreed to work with you, that’s just the start of the journey. Many businesses see winning the client as the end goal. Instead see this as the beginning of a long partnership and take a systematic approach to onboarding new clients, which means less errors, and a professional service delivered both before and after the client signs up with you.
A specialist should work through a set of steps starting with initial data gathering, to create a runbook of the current state of the technology infrastructure. This clear picture is essential to the smooth running of the client’s account.
A dedicated project manager will be key to planning and defining the project. The project manager outlines the Statement of Works and sets project timescales, goals, and key milestones, consulting with the client along the way.
The next step is to deliver the project and undertake any migration from current systems. Bring in the Quality Assurance team to identify if there are any wrinkles to iron out, or processes that need to be tweaked. At this stage, run user training to ensure they are confident in using the new systems and accessing support services.
Then the big GO LIVE! Pass clients on to their account manager and support engineers and commence business as usual. This doesn’t mean back off and let them get on with it.
Keep monitoring, keep applying quality assurance and testing to make sure the client is still receiving the best service possible, 2 weeks on, 2 months on, 2 years on.
If you can carefully guide your clients through the onboarding process, utilising your specialists at the right points, you can instil confidence in your clients, garner their support and transition them from a new client, to a happy client, to your best brand ambassador.
