During a town hall meeting today, a senior leader told a couple hundred people that the biggest reason clients leave us is due to a change in their service rep. I couldn’t disagree more. That’s only painting half the picture, isn’t it? Transitioning to a new representative is typically just a symptom, not the cause.
Over the course of an ideal and successful partnership, a service representative (regardless of what you call it – account manager, client success manager, service rep, solution center consultant) will have built a great relationship with the client. Traits such as: understanding the client’s business, consulting on underutilized/unknown features that will grow their business, being proactive and working issues with urgency, and overcommunicating status, go a long way in building trust with the client.
You can easily tell when you’ve built that trust. Adjectives will gush from the client (real life examples of recognition I’ve heard about my team):
- …been the driving force
- …speaks our language
- …lucky to have her
- …worth his weight in gold
- …incredible at what she does
- Wonderful, fantastic, amazing – I think you get the picture
So what happens when this person needs to be replaced? There are a myriad reasons it might happen, ranging from a promotion, to maternity/paternity leave, or leaving the company for a new opportunity. What’s the client’s perspective? Put yourself in their shoes. We just had this amazing partner … and now you’re giving me an unknown. Will s/he ‘get’ us? Will they be able to step in immediately with no service quality drop-off?
Let’s think through some hypotheticals:
- You soft transition to the new rep. The trusted outgoing rep doesn’t leave right away but allows the new rep to burn-in slowly and build rapport before an official departure date or a soft fade into the background.
- A hard cut over to the new rep. The new rep doesn’t know the status of the account, feels ‘green’ (a lack of training), doesn’t resolve issues in a timely fashion, etc.
In both situations, you’re putting a new rep on the account.
Back to our town hall meeting earlier today. Based on his synopsis, you’d assume the client would be looking to terminate the relationship in both instances. That’s obviously not the case. In scenario #1, while I may miss my old rep, I feel like I’m in good hands. In scenario #2, I feel like you don’t care about me, and yes, if the situation doesn’t get addressed soon, I may start looking for a new vendor. The issue here isn’t necessarily transitioning to a new rep but a lack of adequate training and preparation. A symptom not a cause.
There’s also the negative situation where a rep is being replaced due to performance issues. However, if a client is leaving based on this experience, ask yourself why you didn’t know about it sooner and/or why you didn’t do enough about it. As a service leader, you need to have a firmer pulse on the satisfaction of your clients. Once again, transitioning to a new rep is a symptom, not cause.
You aren’t always afforded the luxury of lead time when talent is going to leave your organization (exactly why you need to invest and develop in these high performers). But a change of rep doesn’t spell doom. Plan ahead and think through what you need to do to maintain the high expectation of service quality and excellence.