Prospects, as great as they are, have a nasty little habit of leaving the sales process without telling us why.
Yes, it happens to every company. The big influx of customers coming into the sales funnel, unfortunately, is dwindled in numbers down to those precious few actual sales on the other end of the funnel. Business people all over know this to be true, and accept it.
But is there nothing more we can do?
Indeed, this is just the question that Brisbane startup Client Heartbeat is doing something about. The company has introduced a survey tool that lets companies ask their customers a few questions in the hope of getting to the bottom of a conversion problem.
The survey tool (also called Client Heartbeat) allows a business to send out a short survey of only six, highly-focused questions. The six questions let customers rate the company on certain aspects of the sales process. The data collected from the exercise, according to Client Heartbeat, is then measured against industry trends and can even be ‘flagged’ if the consumer seems at risk of bailing out.
In a nutshell, Client Heartbeat helps you:
- Compare your results for each customer from quarter to quarter, to see if their satisfaction remains at the same level or is changing, and…
- Benchmark your results against competitors in your industry.
A man with a vision…
The program was originally devised by founder Gordon Tan as an internal tool for his business. After four years of trial and error, Client Heartbeat ended up being so powerful that the service manager using it within Tan’s business recommended turning Client Heartbeat into a commercial product.
“When people put together their own customer satisfaction surveys, the temptation is to put in too any questions.” said Client Heartbeat’s Gordon Tan. “The trouble is this decreases participation rates significantly. We’ve found, using this as an in-house tool, that stripping the survey down to a few key questions has boosted participation from an industry average of 5% up to 60%.”
“That’s when you get really useful data you can actually use. Add to this the automatic quarterly survey and the industry benchmarking and you have a really powerful tool that can stop you from losing customers, and win you new ones.”
Client Heartbeat also builds in an ‘awards’ program for top performing clients, and the ability to share your awards and victories via social media. What’s more, the company already has clients in Australia and in Europe in the MSP (Managed Service Provider), bookkeeping, accounting and recruitment sectors.
I’m glad someone thought of that
Sounds like some cool, original ideas going on, no?
Any tool that aims to keep customers on-track for sales is a plus, as we already know. Even someone looking for the exit out of your sales process still has value in terms of understanding consumer behaviours and overcoming issues. Save for the invention of a virtual cattle prod to keep customers ‘on-track,’ tools like this might just be our best bet for retaining customers and growing business.
