Take These Surefire Steps to Elevate Customer Engagement
Large amounts of money spent on marketing won’t make a difference if a customer has a bad experience or is unhappy. Here’s how to keep them satisfied.
Delivering positive customer engagement will benefit security dealers in many ways, but it’s crucial for generating and retaining RMR. Companies spend millions of dollars on building brand awareness and name recognition to sell their business; however, this could all be for nothing if the customer has a bad experience or is unhappy.
Above the quality of your installs, the experience your customers have with your company is going to make you stand out above all other alarm companies. The customer experience creates brand loyalty, generates organic growth through word-of-mouth referrals and can boost your social media and other online presence.
Turn Inconveniences Into Caring Outreach
Believe it or not, one of the largest opportunities you have to enhance your customer’s experience is right after an alarm. Your central monitoring station should make it easy for you to get a morning report of all the customers who had an alarm in the past 24 hours.
Regardless of whether they had a false alarm or an actual emergency, give them a call to check in. If the customer’s alarm was a true emergency event, make sure everyone is OK and ask them if they need anything from you to send to their insurance company to help expedite their claim. If it was a false alarm, find out whether it was a problem with the system and if they need a technician to come out to perform service.
The point is, nothing bad happens when you proactively reach out to your customers. At the very least, you are showing them that you are concerned and care about their well-being. If you do have to go out on a service call, be aware that this is more than likely going to be an inconvenience to your customer, and that they will be evaluating your company.
Oftentimes they will have had to cancel plans, take time off work or make other arrangements to stay home to meet with your technician. Let the customer know you value their time by making sure your technician is punctual. If he or she is running late, have someone from your office call the customer and let them know when to expect you.
If they want to reschedule, be sure to ask what time works best for them. Once the service call is completed, have your technician clean up after themselves and then test all of the system functions to make sure everything is 100% working.
Afterwards, brief the customer on any problems that the technician found, inform them of any new upgrades made to their system and offer to give them a quick tutorial to answer any questions that they have. As your technician is leaving, make sure they know to replace any faded signs and decals and thank the customer for their business.
Lastly, have someone from the office follow up with the customer over the next few days and engage in a quality check call: Was your technician on time? Did they offer to review the system with you? Do you have any other questions or concerns that we can help address? Again, all of this shows that you care.
Online Presence Poses Ongoing Opportunities
It’s also important to understand that your customers have an experience with your online presence. Your website and social media pages should clearly list your contact information and you should be responsive when your customers reach out to you online. Solicit as many reviews as you can, and make sure to respond to any negative messages.
Consider designating an employee (or employees) to monitor your company accounts (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to ensure comments are brought to your attention and then responded to quickly. All of your social media accounts should be set up to send the “Contact Us” messages directly to an employee who is able to respond in real-time, or as quickly as possible.
If your customer is contacting you to complain, employees should find out what has prompted dissatisfaction and work to find a mutually acceptable resolution. Once you have satisfied your customer, ask them if they would mind going back to write a retraction or amend their review. Bad reviews should never be ignored or left unattended because one could spiral into many.
These practices are just the tip of the iceberg on building a positive customer experience. Think about what you’re doing currently and how your company can evolve and scale these practices to create more engagement. Customers who have a positive experience and understand that your company cares about maintaining the relationship are less likely to move to another company and leave negative reviews on their way out.
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About the Author
Ron Bowden
Ron Bowden is Director of Sales & Dealer Development at UCC, with 35+ years in the security industry in a variety of roles.
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