Keeping key clients happy. BCP disaster recovery planning is part of the equation
Who are the people who will be most affected when your company’s IT systems fail? The people running things in those firms that you consider to be your VIP accounts. You should do everything you can to make them happy, including engaging in regular BCP disaster recovery planning. That means you need to have plans in place to ensure your IT systems are always up and running and meeting their needs. It means you need to ensure that you can back up all consumer data in a safe and effective manner when an adverse event occurs. In this blog, we suggest other ways that you can keep your VIP accounts happy.
The Background
To become more effective as a key account manager, expect to see spillover benefits on each account that you manage. You might need to improve at how you explain your use of BCP disaster recovery solutions to maintain IT systems that affect their company’s clientele or you might recognize that you should listen better to clients. It’s easy to start out feeling excited about a new method for being effective at managing accounts, such as learning a new way to listen better. Once that method impresses your client and becomes a habit, it can quickly lose its appeal. It’s just another element that you’ve integrated into your workday. Once a habit becomes routine, you also lose that verve for it as you use it on a daily basis.
Digging Deeper
As a VIP account manager, you never stop looking for ways to become more effective at planning. You can’t allow yourself to lose your enthusiasm. Be like the best in the industry, those who take pleasure in solving problems and making clients happy. They welcome challenges from the most demanding clients, especially those that require them to seek help from other people within their firm. Dedication and enthusiasm are two personal traits that each of your key account contacts wants to see. These should emanate from everything that you do. All of the frustrations and barriers to making clients happy that might arise in your workday should not be on their radar or in any way affect your interactions with them.
Here, we recommend three habits that you can use right away to become more effective and to strengthen the relationships with each of your key accounts:
1. Be purposeful. The trick to VIP account management is prioritizing the specific contacts who need extra attention. Some of their needs arise from their perceptions, and some are rooted in actual problems. Your prioritization could begin with a systematic account review. You might have to review old emails and customer contact logs to identify issues that clients have had. Even though you resolved them at the time, there might be new techniques you must develop to prevent them from affecting other clients in the future. Customer service problems resulting from inefficiencies in your firm’s practices should go to the top of the list. You also want to identify other clients who have complained about these same problems. Give these issues some of your time whenever you can find it.
2. Remember to “act selflessly at first.” This habit shows that you have a genuine interest in furthering the business objectives of each key account. Be sure to communicate real sentiments and to inspire long-term trust. This might look like offering assistance with a particular issue. At first, your key account contact might decline the help. Down the road, she might ask for that same favor. Even if it is months after you first mentioned it, you will do it swiftly and without hesitation. You won’t complain about the short notice.
3. Don’t rush to provide solutions or to recommend Band-Aid fixes. As you get more experienced in your job, your boss may increase your workload, either at your request or as a logical response to your impressive work performance. This might look like handling a greater number of clients or handling more of the company’s VIP clients. The path to expert account management requires careful planning. It’s easy for you to miss important details as you work on each account. It’s possible to make mistakes if you become overly confident.
Moving ahead in your career as a key account manager requires developing more effective habits. You cannot continue to be effective at meeting client needs if you stop giving them your full attention. It’s important to keep notes about all of your account-related experiences. These are your reference guide when problems occur. They will make the difference between an account that stays within your company and an account that is lost to a competitor.
For more information on how BCP disaster recovery planning and other tips to help you keep your top clients happy, please visit us today.
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