Fantastic customer service is something most organisations aspire to, and lots claim that they deliver. However, the point that is often missed is that you don’t get to decide if you deliver fantastic customer service. Your customers do. That is their gift and privilege. There are a number of different ways to measure and improve customer service, from simple client surveys or proven metrics like Net Promoter Score to external review platforms like Trustpilot.
At Ultimate Finance we have developed an extremely effective customer service model, with the ambition of delivering best in class service and is based on two core principles:
- Delivering the fundamentals really well
- Delighting customers
The first point means that we strive to deliver exactly what our customers have signed up for and expect from us as their funding partner. This model works across all our products and is differentiated as demanded by the type of relationship the customer wants and need from their funder.
For example, in Working Capital where the funding is ongoing in nature, a key element of our model is centred on our local relationship management network, with dedicated relationship managers working closely with their customers every day. Their role is to ensure that our customers receive the best service we can deliver and is designed around the concept of our customers’ ability to dictate how much contact and interaction they want with us, rather than us deciding on their behalf. Each relationship manager builds a bespoke contact strategy tailored to each business we fund, so they can see as much or as little of their relationship manager as they want. It’s not rocket science, but it works!
The second point is driven by the philosophy that part of delivering a fantastic service is delighting your customers from time to time. At Ultimate Finance we run seminars, webinars and have empowered our relationship managers to be creative in how they delight customers – send cakes on a key business anniversary, know your customers so well that you know when they need or deserve a little boost. Again, it’s not complicated, and it definitely works. There’s a great book on this called ‘Power of Moments’ by Chip and Dan Heath if you want to find out more about the philosophy.
However, we also realise that we don’t always get it right. Sometimes we make mistakes. Our commitment is that when that happens, we will own our mistakes and do everything we can to correct them. We have a crystal-clear complaint process that provides the reassurance that we take this type of thing seriously.
I started this article by explaining that it’s our customers who decide if we deliver outstanding customer service, so we benchmark our performance with their feedback on a regular basis. How are we doing? In our most recent NPS survey the Working Capital business scored 79, which is a very strong number when the average in Financial Services is 44. That dovetails nicely with our market-leading 4.9 score on Trustpilot.
As you would expect we are extremely proud of these numbers. The challenge for us is to build on them and not because it’s great to have a high number (which it is) but because it reflects exactly what our customers think of us.
I’ll leave you with some recent reviews from our customers, and you can find all of them on our Testimonials page. If you’re thinking this is the approach you want from a funding partner, get in touch today!
