$100=$6000! How to Boost Revenue With Customer Satisfaction

Hey weary traveler

I'm Utkarsh Sharma , founder, SiteRecon, and you're reading my newsletter - The Friday Cut!

I was doing some math recently on how customer service can become a revenue engine and this is what I came up with.

$100 = $6000

No, no, don’t count me among the crazy ones yet. I’ve got an explanation. ??

Correct me if I’m wrong but from what I’ve seen, companies mostly adopt a sales-first approach to meet revenue targets.

And this is how the cycle usually looks like:

Then you go look for more customers and the vicious cycle continues - on and on.

It’s like digging a well every time you feel thirsty.?

It’s like walking a tightrope over a pit of fire.

It’s exhausting. It’s dangerous. It’s stressful.

So that made me wonder, should we be betting all our chips on sales all the time or is there a better way.

Well, there is.

When you look at successful companies, companies like UIPath, their initial $400k customers ended up paying them $27 million within 4 years!

Roughly, it means the guys who were paying them $100 in year one paid $6000 in year 4. Imagine that for a second - your existing clientele is your main revenue engine. In fact, off all the new revenue that UIPath has generated in the past couple of years, 75% has come from existing customers.

They were able to do so by ensuring customer satisfaction.?

Benefits of having high customer satisfaction

High Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) has a lot of benefits, namely:

1?? Higher revenue from already acquired customers

2?? Free word of mouth marketing: If you go back and perform a thorough analysis of all your accounts, you’ll notice that many of the bigger ones either came through direct referrals or word of mouth marketing. When you deliver exceptional customer service, your customer will be more likely to mention you when one of their peers say they’re looking for landscaping services.

3?? Less churn: It takes seven times more money to win a client than it takes to retain one. A company cannot allow a client to go. Repeat customers have better lifetime value.

3?? Second-order revenue: Second-order revenue is sales that come from existing customer referrals, as well as from customers changing employers and buying the product again at their new employer. This represents a significant increase in the lifetime value of a customer. (kind of a big topic on its own so not diving into it here but if you want to talk about it, shoot me a reply).?

A gap. An opportunity

You could be thinking here, Utkarsh, why aren’t we talking about a landscaping company that has leveraged customer service to grow rapidly?

Why are we talking about UIPath?

To that I’d say, EXACTLY!?

I work with 300+ landscaping companies and I haven’t seen many who are proactively leveraging customer satisfaction to grow. Now, don’t get me wrong here.?

There are companies like Rockaway Inc., Koehn Outdoors, Level Green Landscaping, Mulhall’s, Greenscape, etc. who are doing a great job at establishing good customer relations - but as far as I’ve seen, most companies are missing the infrastructure that can help measure and leverage customer satisfaction to boost growth.?

That sucks but that is also a silver lining. If you can be the first to build that infrastructure that’s missing, you’ll have the first-mover advantage.?

In an industry like landscaping where most vendors deliver - more or less - the same end product at the end of the day, customer service is the only differentiator for you. You know how to take care of the property. If you can pioneer customer service, you’ll be unstoppable.

Bare minimums of customer service

Now, customer service does not come naturally, it’s something that has to be practiced. The management has to instill it as a culture of choice. To do that, one must commit to these crucial minimums:

1?? Develop a customer service policy

2?? Train the staff and keep them updated

3?? Arm the team with the right resources, tools, and gear

4?? Show them by example how to serve customers

5?? Measure and strive to improve customer satisfaction metrics

The last point is the most important one here.?You’ve got to measure your customer satisfaction metrics. They’ll help you identify the areas where you’re lacking and need to work.?No more shooting arrows in the dark.

Now, you might have these basics nailed down already. If you haven’t, you’ve got to. If you have, then let’s see how you can build on this foundation and improve your customer service even more.

How to measure customer satisfaction

1?? Send survey forms:?Send out survey forms asking your clients to rate you on different parameters. You can?use email marketing tools like Mailmodo for high response CSAT and NPS surveys.?They’re not sponsoring me or anything, I just like that tool.

2???Active social media monitoring:?Make sure you’re active on different social media accounts. It will give you an idea of what your customers are thinking about you.

I get so many replies when this newsletter goes out. Many of them are guys simply asking something about the product that has nothing to do with the topic of the newsletter. But that’s great too!

You cannot force your customers to talk to you on a specific channel.?Be available everywhere, so they can talk to you on the channels they are comfortable with.?Some would prefer talking on social media, some would like to do calls, some would prefer meeting in person. If you’re making sure you’re available everywhere, you’ll inevitably run into their feedback - which is what you’re looking for.

3???Monitor churn:?Take a look at the accounts that churned with whatever data you have on your hands right now.?Try to identify the telltale signs of when an account is likely to churn so you can be proactive and prevent that from happening.

Look, some accounts just wouldn’t be a right fit and they’ll churn eventually so there’s no point dwelling on those. Look for accounts that churned because you messed up.

4???Review, optimize, repeat:?Once you start measuring your customer satisfaction metrics, you’ll know which areas you can improve on.

So the process would look something like this:

Collect feedback => Analyze => Make optimizations => Repeat

How to improve customer satisfaction

1?? Communicate better:?I know I’ve said it before but Property Managers like being kept in the loop about things.?Create an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for keeping the PMs updated about the work progress on the job site.?Account Managers from companies like Level Green Landscaping, Rockaway Inc., Mulhall’s, Greenscape, etc. have been able to do so with SiteRecon’s mobile app.

It lets you document site conditions on the map. You can then export what you’ve documented in the form of pdf reports with one click and share those reports with the clients daily or biweekly or weekly depending on your client’s needs.

2?? Establish that you’re a customer-first company from the get-go: Show, don’t tell. When you send in a proposal, send a SiteRecon site inspection report along with it. It will set the precedent on how you’ll communicate with the client once you onboard them.

3?? Justify your pricing: In the back of their head, the customer will almost always wonder if you’re overcharging. I’ve heard so much about this from Facility Managers while I was attending Connex 2022.?

In a nutshell, ditch guesstimates and go for scientific estimates. Measure every square feet of the property accurately before you calculate your estimates. If you want fast, accurate takeoffs, SiteRecon can help.?

When the PM sees that you’ve mapped their entire site tightly and based your estimate on the accuracy of your measurements, any doubts they may have about you overcharging them will be nipped in the bud.?

One of our customers in Seattle actually won a $1,000,000 dollar HoA contract despite bidding 10% higher than the competition simply because they were able to justify their pricing.

Woah, we went through a lot of big items here. If you’re finding it difficult to get started, feel free to write to me at Utkarsh Sharma . I’ll try to find some time to point you in the right direction.?

Alright, that's it for today. I'll see you here next week. Until then, Cheers!

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