Create The Movement Podcast Episode #17
Liz Montgomery, Create the Movement: Welcome back to the Create the Movement podcast. I’m Liz Montgomery, and I’m here with Brad Post.
Brad Post, Create the Movement: Good morning Liz. How are you?
L: I’m good. Today we’re going to talk about one of our favorite topics, and favorite, I think elements of our business for both Brad and I. And that is customer service. And why we do it here, and how we do it, that, I think, sets us apart.
B: Yeah. I believe so, too. I think customer service is huge in any company. And that’s something that you and I, and the team around us, has really thrived off of in the past is customer service. And that’s a core part of our business. Is good customer service. Right?
L: ‘Good’ customer service!
B: Not just customer service, but good customer service.
L: Because anyone can say that we have customer service. But they can’t guarantee you what type of service. But for us, yes, good, if not excellent customer service.
B: Right.
L: We actually like to surpass the standard, or expectation, of what a client thinks they’ll get from a company.
B: Yeah. We’ve kind of got four main points we’re going to go over. And I think, like you said, what separates us is, you know, a lot of times, people have had, or businesses have had a website, or had an IT department, or had, you know, somebody doing something for them. And they’ve experienced bad customer service. Right? So, sometimes going into a client, a new potential client, they’ve got pain points, issues that they’ve had with their previous company. “They didn’t listen to me.” Or, “They didn’t, you know, build the site like I wanted.” Or, “They don’t respond to me in a timely manner.”
L: And, you know, let’s maybe say a couple of example of bad service. What does bad customer service look like? We’ve all experienced it in different areas. But, you know, in our industry what that looks like is, you know, I just added a – we have a lot of clients that are attorneys. So, they might say, “Hey, we just added a new partner to the firm. We want to make an announcement on our website.” They send that information over to their website provider. And it’s like three or four weeks go by.
B: Crickets.
L: No response. No confirmation they got the email, you know. And then it’s a month latter and the new partner is like, “Hey, why haven’t you even announced this on the website yet?” Well, their marketing firm didn’t follow through. Or, saying they’ll do it, and not doing it.
B: Yep.
L: Or, saying that they can do things like – we have a client who was with another company. And they we’re really into writing blogs and articles, and it was just some really great content for their industry – for the practice area that they were in. And they had, they were putting up, you know, three or four blogs per month. Well, their service provide went in and broke the blog and lost all their content.
B: Oh, wow.
L: And it was like, and this was after layers of just administrative errors that they’ve had. So, it was just a person who just didn’t know what they were doing. You know?
B: There’s also those big companies where if you have an issue with your website you sit on hold for 45 minutes.
L: Right.
B: You know? Before you actually get somebody on the line. I think there’s a lot of big companies out there, where they’ve grown so big, they can’t handle the
L: And it’s not built into their business model as something that’s important.
B: Right.
L: You know? At some point, we might be an even larger company, but we’re never going to lose that as a standard. As one of our core, I guess not really core value, but as one of our – what we lead with.
B: Yeah, in the standards.
L: In the standards. We want to lead with that because we’ve just seen so many other businesses, yeah, that that drops off after a while. Do we have a contract? Are they paying us every month? Well, who cares if we took care of them every month? You know?
B: Right. So, kind of, our first bullet under this is really just follow-up response time. And we have a standard, whether it’s a 24-48 hour response time. Usually, if it’s just a response or, it’s resolved like you said. And it’s, you know, we say 24-48 hours, sometimes it’s 15 minutes, sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes it takes a little bit longer depending on when we get the request.
L: What the need is.
B: Or, what the need is. And then,
L: But the idea is that we’re communicating with you. So, we’re at least going to get back to you and say, “Hey, thank you so much for submitting this request. And we’re working on it.” Or, “We’ve resolved it.” We’re going to give you an answer so you’re not just hanging in the balance.
B: Whether it’s a phone call, or an email, or a text message, or anything like that. We respond.
L: We hear you.
B: I think one of the main things for us that holds us accountable is that we don’t do long-term contracts.
L: Right.
B: You can cancel at any time. And so, if we don’t respond to them, then you know, that could be an issue where they do cancel.
L: Yeah. And first, and most important, is that we’re, you know, they’ve been dissatisfied with their service. Or, unhappy with how we’ve taken care of them. And that can eventually lead to them cancelling their service with us. You know?
B: Exactly.
L: So, if someone does leave we don’t want that to be the reason.
B: Right.
L: And the no long-term contracts keeps us accountable to them. They know that, too.
B: Yes.
L: They know that there is a level of trust there. That we go, you know, “Here’s the work that we’re doing for you. And if it doesn’t work out, then you can make a change.”
B: Absolutely. I think the second thing is just making sure that we’re keeping the clients informed. You know? They’re paying us a monthly service, you know, whether it’s SEO, or social media, or anything. They’re paying us a monthly service, so we give them reports, you know, give them updates, check in with them.
L: Yeah.
B: We’ve got some clients that want to have a monthly call, and that’s totally fine.
L: We just schedule it and keep them updated. Maybe walk them through those reports that can get really, like ‘down the rabbit hole’ in technical information.
B: Yes.
L: But, we can walk them through and say, “This is what this means, this is what this means.” You know?
B: Exactly.
L: So, they really understand, and they can see the evidence of the work that we’re putting. This is really effective, too, like when someone has, like on our video websites. When someone has video up there. And we do heat-map tracking that tells us, you know, when a video’s launched, or when a video’s posted on a site, we can track how much of the video’s being watched, and how frequently it’s been viewed. You know? If it’s being, if everyone’s dropping off at a minute and half, you know. What’s happening at a minute and a half that maybe we need to change it? So, just watching and gathering that information, we can go back and say, “We need to re-edit this.” Or, “We need to change this so it’s more effective.” But that‘s a monthly service that someone could say, “Well, I’m going to put a video up on your site.” It’s going to be a great video, but then not having that data on the backend. Or, the follow-through on the monthly service. You don’t even know how it’s performing for you.
B: Right. Right.
L: And we want to make sure that whatever tools we’ve given you to market that they’re being successful.
B: Like visits to the site, and their bounce rate, and how many pages they’re looking at, and what’s the time on site, and stuff like that. We can explain that to them. And, we can also offer solutions. “Hey, here’s what we recommend that would help with that number.”
L: Right.
B: Which kind of feeds into our third
L: Our next one – open communication. So, just keeping that line of communication open. As little, or as much, as they want. Because some businesses, they’re just like, “Please handle all of this for me! I’m too busy to even get involved.”
B: Right. Right.
L: Unless, there’s a problem, then they just want it taken care of. But then, you know, other business owners are, they are maybe savvy to how they want their marketing, and how they want their approach. And we love that. It adds a personal touch.
B: Right.
L: But that open communication with them it’s like sure, let’s be collaborative on this effort. You know?
B: Right.
L: So, through that, since we are the experts on websites, and marketing, and how to show your online presence, we want to be sure to share new trends that are happening. Because Google is constantly changing what it wants to pull up in search results. And, depending on the business, there are different areas where it’s like, “You know, let’s do more blog writing on this topic because it’s a really hot topic right now.” Maybe a personal injury firm, or something, and there’s a high rate of car accidents in there city, in a certain area that’s happened in the last month. Okay, well, let’s write some more blogs, and let’s get connected in that conversation online and help promote your business.
B: Right. Yeah, and then, just new products, I mean, when you and Dominick came on I knew that we could effectively do videos.
L: Yeah,
B: There’s new products that we can offer that helps with those trends. And then, what’s the last one?
L: The last one? Okay, so, really focusing on why did the client give us their business in the first place?
B: Right.
L: Something that I’ve seen, just in other companies, is a disconnect. You know? Where our relationship specialists bring on a new client. And that information gets passed on to development. And the project management begins, and the website launches. But, if that isn’t communicated internally to the team, to the development team. You know, they might say, “Hey, I only want five pages of content on my site. I don’t want tons of extra verbiage up there.” Or, for whatever reason. And we say, “Okay, great.” So, we tell development five pages of content. But we make sure and point out, “Hey, this is one of the reasons the client gave us their business. Another company they were with wrote them 50 pages of negligible content that just wasn’t helpful to their SEO, or anything. So, let’s make sure we really focus on optimizing those five pages and making them excellent.” And having that, even internal, communication it really reflects on the backend. So, the development teams says to the client, “Hey, I want you to know that we spent some extra time on these five pages. Optimizing them for you to make sure.” And they’re going feel warm and fuzzy about that. You know? Because their voice was heard.
B: Yup.
L: And they said, “You know, I signed on with you guys. I gave you my business because of these few things that you did differently. And I knew you could be successful for me.” And so, to hear that across the board, like from everyone in the company, we know why you’re with us and we want to honor that.
B: Right.
L: I think that’s essential, and I think it’s something that slips through the cracks in a lot of other marketing companies.
B: Absolutely. Well, awesome. Anything else that you can think of?
L: No, this is just one of my favorite topics! I really love taking care of – meeting the needs of what the client – meeting the client’s needs.
B: Absolutely. Well, thank you for joining us for Create the Movement podcast. Join us for next edition.
