2020 altered the way we live both personally and professionally. Business travel came to a halt, and companies dove into the deep end of remote work — utilizing tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams to stay connected.
We recently sat down with members of our client services teams to discuss how they have maintained client relationships while working remotely and how they will use what they learned for all future relationships. Here’s what they said:
Communicate Intentionally
Scott Duncan
I think that the best way for us to keep the relationships with our clients moving forward is through regular communication. They’re all experiencing the same things we are inside their organizations. The folks that I work with every day haven’t been in the office and are at home, as well. I think keeping the lines of communication open, being on daily and weekly calls to discuss everything going on and having easy access to one another goes a long way in keeping those relationships healthy.
Michele Evans
COVID hit all of us pretty hard, and we’ve all been working remotely since. Keeping the client relationship going when you can’t be close to the client or visit them physically was definitely a transition. But we have Microsoft Teams, and we use that quite a bit. There are lots of virtual calls. The key is you must intentionally stay in touch with the client, and that’s what we do. It’s been a couple of years now since the pandemic, so I feel as though it’s become more comfortable to have virtual calls and chat that way for everyone because it has become a habit, something that we are used to doing now. I’m in touch with the client pretty consistently each week, as are my colleagues, for different reasons and for different things that we’re working on.
Justin Clifford
A lot of phone calls and video meetings. Everyone does things through emails, back and forth. Once I start to get in a situation where it’s three or four emails, I just start picking up the phone, or I’ll always set up a Team’s meeting because I think when people really hear your voice, they hear the sincerity that you’re trying to help, and they understand that you’re involved in the operation just as much as they are.
Practice Empathy
Geoff Perry
These last few years have been interesting, but there has been growth. Everyone went through the same battles, as far as having to stay at home and not being able to do the regular things we were used to doing. So, through that, I think those relationships have been fostered a bit in the sense that people have become more understanding and empathetic. So, when there are areas of conflict or difficulty, the communication still is there, but there’s a more constructive approach. Even though we weren’t on-site for over a year and a half, we still have several projects going on for different clients. Being on the phone with them during the week has helped build that out and continued to grow.
Embrace Remote Communication and Deployments
Geoff Perry
The credibility around our remote deployments is growing. Sure, there are times when having field services or someone from the field on-site makes sense, but being able to provide the one-on-one help that sometimes the end user needs via video is huge. That way, those folks doing that work — the client support specialists and client solutions specialists — can handle three or four clients that need a little bit of help on something, whereas before, you might send someone there for part of the day or a whole day. It thins your roster a bit. This will also add another layer of support and service for our client. Instead of, “Hey, can you get that video?” then sending it in an email, then getting it into a ticket, and finally getting it to the dev about two hours later, we can pull logs and do a lot of troubleshooting pretty darn fast. It’s definitely helped with troubleshooting and navigating potentially critical issues.
Adapting to Change for the Better
Before the pandemic, remote deployments seemed like a thing of the future. However, the last few years proved that with a strong foundation and mutual trust, our client partnerships will succeed no matter the distance.
Since moving into this new normal, virtual meetings and deployments have been and will remain a part of our offerings to support your terminal based on its unique business needs now and in the future. Excellent customer support is at the forefront of our vision, and we recognize that providing flexible offerings has been a crucial part of maintaining our client relationships.
Tideworks clients will continue to have a designated Client Success Manager (CSM) who will collaborate with them as their terminals continue to evolve to ensure continuous business growth.
