Deptive’s approach to fostering long-term customer success

By Jason Barlow, Lead Customer Success Manager, Deptive.

After lengthy stints at IBM and Vodafone in a range of account manager and service and product delivery roles, it’s great to be part of the relatively small Deptive family.

My early conversations with customers have revealed just how much they love working with Deptive’s team of technical experts. We prefer not to simply have a transactional relationship with our customers, but to engage as true partners.

That’s been a breath of fresh air coming from large IT and telecoms providers where customers can often get lost in overly bureaucratic processes or succumb to a one-size-fits-all approach to service that leaves customers frustrated.

As a boutique services provider, Deptive has the ability to be flexible and to work at pace.

We aim to be communicative with our customers from the start, setting up the right expectations around what the customer service experience is going to be, and then holding ourselves accountable to delivering it.

Making time to talk

We aim to positively impact our clients’ end-users, driving customer loyalty and fostering IT service growth. We run regular Net Promoter Score surveys to gain feedback on our customer service. But I’ve found over recent years that customers are suffering from a sort of NPS-fatigue. They are typically asked to complete surveys for a number of vendors.

A better method, in my opinion, is actually investing the time to have regular conversations with customers. That’s when you gain the insights into what’s working and what isn’t and can ask the questions that will not only tease out issues that need addressing, but open up new opportunities for collaboration.

I love it when a customer shares a business-related problem they need to solve. We’ve often had experience tackling the same problem for another client. We have a wide range of technology partners that might be able to help. If it results in a new sale for Deptive, that’s great. But offering advice and being a sounding board for customers is key to us having a genuine partnership with a customer.

If you are one of those customers, you’ll be hearing from me on a regular basis. Let’s grab a coffee, and talk about what you need, and what your customers need.

In the meantime, here are five key priorities that underpin Deptive’s philosophy to achieving customer success:

1. Clear business goals: This is why outlining your needs, and the needs of your customers is so crucial. By doing so, we can understand your objectives and formulate a plan to help you get there. We’ll also be upfront about what we need to make the partnership work.
2. Flexibility to change: We do not believe in ‘set and forget’ contracts and service plans. We are willing to work with customers to change processes if it will help deliver a better outcome. That’s the beauty of working with a specialist IT services provider.
3. Constant learning: We see it as our responsibility to make sure everybody is talking the same language, because a lot can be lost in translation between technologists and business people. We offer ongoing support and training for customers, so they understand and can best utilise the tech platforms, services and applications we offer. At Deptive, we are constantly learning and upskilling ourselves too.
4. Working at pace: Our customers love the fact that we are responsive. We consider fast response times to our project delivery and support services as integral to Deptive’s success. So why would it be any different for our customers? The significant change underway in the business environment demands this approach.
5. A genuine partnership: What does success look like? It’s a bit of a cliche in the business world, but it’s as important as ever. We are not in business simply to grow our roster of clients, along with our revenue and market share. We know that genuine partnerships lead to long-term – and mutually fruitful-partnerships. Those are the kinds of relationships we seek to foster at Deptive.

If you are an existing Deptive customer or are interested in finding out more about how we can help you make the most of technology, get in touch – the coffee is on me!