SHEcorporated One Step Empire

How to create an EPIC customer experience (and increase your profits too)! Ep 8 Season 2

February 23, 2022 Kristy Carruthers Season 2 Episode 8
SHEcorporated One Step Empire
How to create an EPIC customer experience (and increase your profits too)! Ep 8 Season 2
Show Notes Transcript

How would you like your business to be 95% more profitable? 

Did you know that increasing your customer retention can increase your profits by 25 to 95%?

It sounds crazy, but think about it – It costs 5 times more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one and then the success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70% better than selling to someone new.  So your marketing cost savings alone are enormous.

So why don’t we spend more time taking better care of our existing customers?

Jacqui is with us today taking us through the importance of creating an epic
client experience which  really becomes the tool that makes your customers stick with you through thick and thin, and generates referrals and testimonials as well.

 

We are going to cover:

  • 5 steps in the customer on-boarding journey.
  • Systems you need in place to make it simple.
  • How to use on-boarding to WOW your clients.
  • The importance of off-boarding (you probably aren’t doing this but you should)

 

You can catch up with Jacqui and get both of her resources, the 5 steps we talk through on the episode today as well as her Bootstrappers Guide to all the best free tools for your business!

 

Free 5 Phases of an Epic Client Experience:

https://virtualduo.co.za/shecorporated-5-phases

Free Bootstrappers guide to running your business on a shoestring budget:

https://virtualduo.co.za/shecorpotated-bootstrappers-guide

Get our Buyer Persona's FREE workbook to find your ideal clients and make your marketing 10x more effective: 

https://www.shecorporated.com/buyer-personas-workbook


Visit SHEcorporated main site: https://www.shecorporated.com/

Ready to SMASH Your Goals?   We're here to help!

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CLICK TO:  BOOK MY DAY



How would you like your business to be 95% more profitable? Did you know that increasing your customer retention can increase your profits by 25 to 95%? It sounds crazy, but think about it. He costs five times more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. And then the success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70% better than selling to someone new. 

So your marketing costs, savings alone are enormous. So why don't we spend more time taking better care of our existing customers? Well, Jackie is with us today, taking us through the importance of creating an epic client experience. Which really is going to become the tool that makes your customers stick with you through thick and thin and generate referrals and testimonials as well. So today on the podcast, we're going to cover the five steps in the customer onboarding journey, some systems that you need in place to make it simple. 

And the importance of offboarding you probably aren't doing this, but you should. And we're going to tell you why. So [00:01:00] let's get into it. 

Kristy: We are so fortunate to have Jackie money with us today. And yes, that is her real last name. And it's perfect for what we're going to talk about as well. Jackie is half of the virtual duo and she's a systems automation and tech expert, a tiny house in. And she specializes in making tech simpler and creating automation in your business, which frees up your time for the million other things that you want to do.

So today Jackie's going to take her expertise and really hone in on one specific part of the process. That's so critical for every business and that's the importance of client onboarding and really creating a VIP experience for your clients. So it is so great to have you here, Jackie. 

Jacqui: Thank you so much.

I'm so, so excited 

Kristy: to be here. It's great. Well, I gave a bit of an intro, but I would love it. If you could tell us a bit about why you started and kind of your journey and then what you do now. 

Jacqui: so we actually, my husband and I were both working day jobs and we decided we wanted to move to the countryside and build a tiny house.[00:02:00] 

So we had to figure it out kind of like, what are we going to do for money and all of that and make it location independent. So we decided to start our own. And, fast forward about three years and we've actually built out Tommy Haas and we're living in it now. And so that's, that's kind of like our journey in a nutshell.

and we started off doing VA work, but we've kind of pivoted into taken automations, which we absolutely. 

Kristy: we spoke about this earlier, how you, you always have an eye to budget, because you had to because of exchange rates. Right. Which is interesting. Cause I mean, it's, most of us, you know, women entrepreneurs, we don't have two things we don't have a lot of is generally time and money.

but your, your story is slightly different as to why you always had an eye to a budget. 

Jacqui: Yeah, I definitely do. the thing is with our exchange rates, it's 15. Uh, of our currency to $1. So everything is, hugely expensive for us. So when we [00:03:00] started art, it was, it was looking at as many free tools and things that we could do for free to get ourselves started as possible.

And so we've got, always got an eye on, can we do something for free or for limited? 

Kristy: budget. there's so many tools now, too, that have really generous, free tears. So, and we'll talk a little bit more about that after as well, as far as the client onboarding process goes and why this is important, I looked up some stats because we all know it's important, but if you're not convinced that you need to take better care of your new and existing customers, here's, here's a wake up call for you.

It costs up to five times more to get a new customer than it does to, keep an existing one. The success rate of reselling to an existing customer is 60 to 70% or as a new customer is only five to 20%. So you're much more likely to sell a new product or resell something to an existing customer.

And then according to [00:04:00] I looked this up on outbound engine.com. Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase your profits by 25 to 95%, which is amazing. So making your customers stick with you, not only helps with your word of mouth and your Goodwill and all of those things. It is really critical to making your business more profitable and making your life easier.

so really important. So, so where do we start with this, Jackie? where do we get the baseline for where we're at now and then move forward with our, customer onboarding process. 

Jacqui: So. W we were struggling with our customer onboarding. At first, we thought it was, we were attracting the wrong kind of clients.

That's what I genuinely thought was happening. And then I kind of started digging into my, my client onboarding and the whole process actually from when you first. Meet the lead all the way to the offloading. That's what I considered to be canned onboarding as a whole experience. And, I realized that there was some issues.

And so I started digging [00:05:00] deeper and that's kind of like what got me very interested in client onboarding. and so I realized they were kind of. Main phases to kind onboarding and, just, very quickly that there are the need to clients. So when the lead first contacts you to, when they become your plant and then the actual onboarding, which is what most people look at, and that's kind of where people do stuff and then.

Don't look at the rest of the processes, so the, third phase is the actual obtaining assets from the client. So if you actually doing one-on-one work with a client, you need feedback from them. You need assets from them. You need some kind of prep work from them. this is a hugely problematic area.

I found with clients. And then, the actual part where you doing the work for them. And then of course the off-boarding, which is just as important as the onboarding. So if not, 

Kristy: And I think from, from the way you've described the five steps, I think most of [00:06:00] us focus on definitely one getting the customer, changing them from a lead to a customer.

And then probably most of us do a little bit on the number two, even if it's just a series of welcome emails or that sort of thing. We probably don't do that as well as we should. And then the rest of it is just downhill from there. 

Jacqui: And so what you're going to find is you are either going to have mediocre testimonials from your class or no testimonials at all, or even at the extreme unhappy clients.

Because you haven't communicated your, boundaries. You haven't told them what to expect, what you expect of them. And so it's just going to go downhill. 

Kristy: So if we look at each of those steps and Jackie's actually got some great resources, she's going to give us at the end here where it takes you through all different tools that you can use, as well as the steps and a bit more detailed.

But if we just take a couple of best practices from each of those steps to share with everybody today, so. a couple of things that we should be looking at in, in number 1, 2, 3, 4, and five. 

Jacqui: with a lead to client,[00:07:00] phase, I look at that as more of a non automation phase.

This is where you actually need to personalize things, personally, chat to people. If you, if you're getting on calls with people, practice your sales practice, your script practice, how are you going to communicate? With him cause that's hugely important. Or if you selling your service in a DM, what are you going to say?

You know, I have something that you're going to say, to that client. Right. And not just off the cuff stuff then in the client onboarding phase, that's when I would start. Adding automation into it. So, because you don't want to be sending out emails and follow up and welcome sequences manually because the busy It's okay. When, when you've got two or three or four clients, when you start growing and getting more clients, you're going to find. You are the bottleneck in the whole scenario, 

Kristy: it makes it impossible to scale. And those systems are really the best if you have them in [00:08:00] place from the beginning, if you can, right.

Because then it's happens in your sleep just before 

Jacqui: exactly. obtaining assets. Now this is the part where you actually have to clearly established boundaries with your clients and as well as. Very clearly show them and tell them what you expect from them. So for example, if you're a web designer, you are going to need, photographs, copy for websites, all of that.

And if you don't clearly tell the client what you need, they're not going to know. And so this phase I find with a lot of my clients that I help through this process, I find that this phase is the. most problematic, they finding that plants are not getting back to them, Tommy SB, they finding that time.

So not giving them the assets that they need and all that kind of thing. And it's something Don too. You need to tell your client what's expected. 

Kristy: I like that. I, I'm going to guess that most of us do a terrible job of that. And I actually, one of my companies does, promotional products and printing and [00:09:00] that sort of thing.

You know, what? We don't reach out to them and get, we should get all of their logos as soon as they become a client because, we can do our job better for starters, and we're going to serve them so much better because we will have what we need on hand all the time, instead of having to constantly chase them and, and try and get that information.

And I think. It's not something where you're necessarily getting assets like that from the client. You know, if it's, testimonials or what other kinds of assets would you say that if people need them, they should be doing at this stage? 

Jacqui: I would say that anything that you need to ask your clients for in order to do the work for them, that you need to do whatever that is, is what, uh, you know, for that, for where designers, it's obviously photographs and stuff, but for, copywriters, it might be, Something like, what is your tone of voice?

Send me a couple of written emails that you've written, you know, just so I can get to know you. and I'm finding, that a lot of clients get stuck at that stage. And so that stage should also kind of be [00:10:00] automated in a certain way. and that's what I did. I went in an automated, all of that.

And also when, when you asking clients for feedback, they they're already saying to themselves, I'm paying this person to do the work for me. why do I have to do work? Also got to make it as simple for them as part. that's kind of what I did. I, create memorable courses for clients and the amount of work that I need from them or information I need from them in order to put their course in member vault is quite significant.

And so I needed to give them little bite-size pieces of information. And say, okay, I need this. Okay. Now I need this, you know, and going down, 

Kristy: it's so daunting when they look at the whole yeah. Cause you just, it's hard to get started when it's so much stuff. 

Jacqui: Exactly. 

Kristy: And even if you're doing, surprise and delight kind of stuff. So we, in one of my companies, when it's customer anniversaries, the anniversary of doing business with us, [00:11:00] or when it's their birthday, that sort of thing, we send little surprises out. So that's the kind of information you want to ask at this stage to get their birthday, get their, their address, whatever it is that you need from.

Jacqui: So what's the way we work. We do VIP days. And so in my intake form, I say to the clients, what's your favorite drink? What's your favorite snack. And, they don't think about it when I ask the question, cause it's an intake form, but then when we have our VIP 

Kristy: day, I have 

Jacqui: Uber eats, deliver a coffee, and a snack and they like deliver the exact right thing. You told me what it was. 

Kristy: That's great. I love that. I might start doing that. I'm gonna steal that from you. then number four would be the actual part where you, you do the work.

Jacqui: and so I work in VIP days and, on the VIP day, I will send them a snack and a coffee cause. The 20 I'm sitting and I need the time available for the whole day so that I can get feedback from them. So, that's my way of just saying thank you for just being on standby [00:12:00] for me.

Kristy: So that's number four. And then number five was the outgoing. Oh 

Jacqui: sporting. Yes. what I usually say to clients is that the offboarding is just as important as the onboarding and people tend to neglect.

So a little, thank you. Note goes a long way, asking for a testimonial. Don't expect a client to just give you a testimonial, ask for the testimonial, make it easy for them to give you a testimonial. And then. At the end of it, something a little something to say, thank you. You know, thank you for being the client.

also asked for a referral. 

Kristy: And I think that creates the good feelings on the way out. Right? I mean, even if they're not going to be your customer anymore, they may have other people that they want to refer. And you're right. I don't know very many people that do that at all.

And that's, that's a huge, huge, missed opportunity. and before we do any of these things, of course, we've got to kind of map out that customer journey for, for our own business and sit down and say, all right, what does this look like? Where do they find me? You know, how, how do we start what that journey looks like?

So really sit down [00:13:00] and go through any tips as far as how to do that customer journey and things that they need to look for and, and people tend to miss. So 

Jacqui: that's what we've done with. Customer onboarding. And so we decided to teach that in a workshop. And, we've created a mapping tool inside of our favorite tool, a table and it's free.

But the Tufts I would say is just figure out where your sticking points off, where our clients getting stuck in that journey is that in the, in the lead phase, then you need to tighten up your sales process. Is it in the obtaining assets phase, then you need to talk about how you communicating with the client, how you're communicating your boundaries, how you communicate.

getting whatever assets you need from the client. So you need to understand where the sticking points are before you can try and fix them. And usually what I say is, if you think that the issue is downstream, like say the obtaining [00:14:00] assets work look further upstream as well, because it generally starts further.

Kristy: And I suppose customer feedback is, and client feedback is probably a huge part of that at the beginning. Just getting, cause we can assume all day we know what the problem is, but they can tell us pretty quickly. 

Jacqui: Yeah. Yeah. and, you know, I had very honest dialogues with my clients. I said to them, I'm trying to fix my whole client experience.

I know that that it has issues. Please. Can you tell me what you didn't like, what you did like, and they were very honest and that allowed me to type everything up. 

Kristy: And even bad feedback is amazing feedback. Actually bad feedback is sometimes the best feedback They have to be ready for that and wanting that negative feedback so that you can fix it.

Cause you can't do anything. You don't know. So, if we have limited resources, either time or money, then what are the top three things we should focus on to get started on sorting out our customer journey and our steps. 

Jacqui: If you've got, limited money, then you're going to [00:15:00] have to up-skill yourself in order to, figure out where to automate what tools to use, and all that to tighten up your onboarding process.

If you've got limited time. Outsource find somebody that can help you with us. 

Kristy: you are also besides helping founders and women founders, you are also a woman founder yourself. So, how about you give us a little advice maybe related to onboarding, maybe not as far as your, your best advice for newer women founders, that might be listening things you've learned along.

Jacqui: would say my biggest stumbling block in the whole process and not particularly onboarding itself, but is, that thing that we all have to deal with is imposter syndrome. And I find it more in women than in men. And I think that has been the single most important thing for me to overcome. 

Kristy: I agree.

And I [00:16:00] don't know that we ever, I don't know that it ever really goes away completely. I think we just get better at dealing with it. I mean, anyone I know anyway that you think, oh, they, they would never have that problem. It just, it rears its ugly head, but you get better at dealing with it. 

Jacqui: Somebody actually told me once that, you are ahead of. The person behind you and you have value to offer to them. doesn't matter how, you feel that how much you feel like an imposter. There's always somebody that's behind you that you can teach and how. 

Kristy: So you have some great resources for everyone listening, who is a building their business on a budget because you've done the same thing. And then also who wants to build out that customer journey and, fix their processes. So can you tell us just a little bit about that? And we'll put some links as well on the.

Yes. Yes. 

Jacqui: I put together a beach strep has got, to running an online business and those were all the tools that I could find that you can get started for free. And so I put them all [00:17:00] together in a little PDF that I've given you a link to you to download. And then the other one is the five phases And what I've done in that PDF is given you some questions to ask yourself and things to think about at each phase. so that you can start thinking about your journey. 

Kristy: we'll have this in the show notes and if you're, if you're listening on a platform that doesn't show our show notes, some of them don't, you can always just go over to one-step empire.com and that's the.

homepage and all of the shows and all of the show notes and all of the links and all of the things are there. So that's one step empire.com and you can get all of the links to these wonderful things that Jackie has been so lovely to provide for us. So I just wanted to say, thank you so much for joining me today, Jackie, this was really great information and I really appreciate it.

Jacqui: Thank you so much for having.