Driving a great customer experience means poking the sleeping bear and making renewal calls at least once per year. What we have found by launching these calls in countless agencies is that:
- The beginning is hard, you have to learn new things, get out of your comfort zone, readjust your time management, and get used to having different conversations.
- Then it gets good. Remarketing is reduced, account rounds are up, increases are up and retention is moving in the right direction. You feel good, so good you move on to other activities and put renewal calls on auto pilot.
- Then slowly everyone loses focus, the calls become less engaging, and we don’t try as hard. We just put them as a to do in our day rather than driving for a result.
When the leader stops paying attention, the program drives some results but never fully reaches its potential. Very few things are more important than driving retention and account rounds in the agency. But when we feel like it’s all set and perfected is when we need to commit harder.
Just like anything in life when we master something we often start cutting corners. It’s no longer a challenge that needs to be driven and tested. It’s just part of what we do. When it becomes mundane we run the risk of the calls becoming ordinary and flat. These have the potential to become unimpressive and even turn off our customers. In order to continue to drive up the peak of success we need the renewal calls to be ridiculously amazing.
One way to do this is to recommit to the pre-call checklist. This is often one of the most hated parts of the entire process when you are launching. Taking the time to accurately and totally review the account. Preparing for the calls (even when you only speak to 35% of the people) may seem like a waste but you are doing the research for calls to come. It’s necessary and important to prepare for the best call you can have.
When you prepare correctly you find the increases, account rounds and areas for opportunity. You control the call. When you slack on this area you often call and ask, “Has anything changed? No? Ok, good” and click. You are off the call onto the next one with no real impact. That is NOT the point of these calls. Some how, some way you need to reignite the passion for loving and serving our customers.
The pre-call checklist, when used accurately, also ensures that every account is reviewed the same and notes are logged correctly and uniformly. This means next year if you don’t reach them you are ready to go OR if they call mid term you can complete the review right then and there. It’s slowing down to speed up.
The bottom line is you have to make everything you do fruitful, meaningful and powerful. Otherwise these calls will just be a waste of time.
If your team is facing this challenge, call us! We have our new APPX Baseline Retention (Proactive Renewal Calls) launching soon!
