Identifying a recent trend in Client Services, Management Centre Europe is now offering workshops on leading and implementing Integrated Client Service teams. The Integrated Client Service Model looks to improve upon the old client service paradigm wherein unspecialized greeters merely welcomed clients, identified their issues, and routed them off to another department, forcing the client re-explain their problem. The Integrated Client Service Model takes a flatter approach in an effort to build accountability, security and customer relationships. After all, customers shouldn’t be made to feel like they are merely problem tickets.
At Firmex, we have seen the benefits of the Integrated Client Service Model, first hand. By treating the client holistically and providing a team of highly knowledgeable representatives empowered to handle whatever situation comes their way, we have earned our clients’ trust. This can be seen in our 99% score on internal client feedback surveys. This success is possible because our CS team is not only educated on our software, but also the business processes and platforms we support. With an Integrated Client Service Model, the burden of responsibility to solve the issue is shifted away from the customer, and onto our CS team – where is should be.
This level of knowledge and accountability has enabled our customers to develop a relationship of trust with Firmex. It is not uncommon for our customers to know the individuals that make up our client services team personally. This intimacy has had positive impacts on our business – allowing us to deliver more value and unleash our clients as a referral service. These relationships would not be possible if the main point of contact for our customers was divided into a functional silo.
As a SOC2 compliant provider of SaaS-based secure services to the investment, legal and corporate community, the Integrated Client Service Model offers another real benefit: security. By having a single point of contact for servicing a client issue, we maintain a tighter leash on who is accessing our clients’ data rooms. Given that the majority of our clients are storing highly confidential documents on the Firmex Virtual Data Room, this security is of the utmost importance. More than a simple product benefit, our sense of client security is a SOC2 compliance necessity.
The members of our CS team are inspired by the opportunity to foster this close relationship. We feel a flat structure increases both our engagement with the work and our sense of accountability to our clients. While we have an endless stream of exceptional NPS scores and survey results to quantify the success of our support model, the truest evidence for the team’s success is fundamentally qualitative in nature; it comes from our strong and trusting client relationships.
