Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Ron Turpin, Gibson’s Chief Financial Officer and Fort Wayne Market President. We hope you enjoy Ron’s perspective and wisdom.
My family and I recently traveled to Florida for a family vacation. One of our stops was to a nationally known entertainment venue. During our day there I noticed several things that made me question their focus on customer service. Dirty tables in dining venues, staff who did not greet guests as they arrived, lack of line maintenance management, and numerous other little small things. As I added all of these together it made me ask the question, “do they really want and value me as a client?”
I then compared them with the known “gold standard” in their industry and thought about how this entity would handle each of these situations. I knew this company wanted my business and valued me as a client, they said it repeatedly, and more importantly, they showed it to me every time I was there.
As I contemplated this blog I thought about my industry, one also heavily focused on customer service. Do my clients see me, through the quality of my work and responsiveness to their needs, as the gold standard in my industry? How do I evaluate myself on this?
To answer the question I asked myself 4 questions:
- Responsiveness – How quickly do I get back to clients when they call or send an email? I have a friend who told her clients she would always return a message within two business hours. I don’t have that standard, but I do make it a practice of returning all calls and emails within the business day they are delivered. Clients in the past have told me they are surprised by the quickness of my response and are not accustomed to someone getting back to them so quickly;
- Service – When we are prospecting a new client, I tell them our service differentiates us. I am therefore constantly challenged, with each of our clients, to ensure we deliver the promises we make. We continually look at our service model to ensure the right people in the right positions are providing the service we expect to get when we do business with someone. It’s not enough to say we are good at servicing our clients, we have to live it and prove it;
- Education – I believe strongly one of the most important aspects of servicing our clients is to continually be the best. This “sharping of the saw” can only happen by being on the cutting edge. Am I staying up on the most current trends and ideas in my industry? Am I maximizing training opportunities in my field? Once learned, am I training others in my firm on what I have learned? Is this knowledge being gleaned helpful and therefore bringing value?
- Quality – What am I doing to provide quality? Am I the best in the business at what I do? If not, how can I improve? Who is the gold standard in my profession and how do I compare? How can I be the gold standard and ensure that my clients see me as such?
As you look at each of these areas, how do you stack up? Are you the gold standard to your clients? Are you a leader in the profession? If not, what is your action plan to be so?
If you aren’t the gold standard I would highly encourage you to start on your action plan today. This action plan can begin with a customer engagement survey - how do my clients feel about my service? I would then follow this up with a deep dive into my customer touches - do I have a CRM system that tells me important data about my client? If I do have a system such as this, how am I using this data? Am I touching base with them more than just once a year?
If you don’t take the time to ask these questions and make these touches I can pretty much guarantee someone else is. And just like my example above, you will lose the business.
This content was written and shared by Ron Turpin.
Ron is the Chief Financial Officer and Fort Wayne Market President for Gibson. He is responsible for providing executive leadership as a sales, culture, service, and brand champion to establish Gibson in the marketplace as the dominant commercial insurance, employee benefits, risk management, and trusted business advisor. Additionally, he oversees the ESOP and 401k plans, forecasting and budgeting, developing key stakeholder relationships, and serves as a member of Gibson’s Executive Leadership Team.
Prior to joining Gibson in 2015, Ron was Vice President of Finance at Lincoln Financial Group where he worked for 14 years in a variety of leadership positions in the Retail Sales division. Throughout his career at Lincoln he was recognized for his results-oriented, team-focused leadership and willingness to solve the unsolvable problem while never losing sight of a serve first philosophy.
