As a new-ish employee at CPS, one of the things that attracted me to the company was the retention rate. There is very little employee turnover. Also, as a salesperson, I understand how important it is to build relationships with clients and what a bummer it is when the person you are accustomed to working with leaves. Most importantly, our low turnover benefits our customers, and for us, it is our biggest competitive advantage.
Before I worked for CPS, they were my direct competition. I heard a lot of things about them in the marketplace, and the majority of it was positive. The comment I heard the most was how everyone likes Tom. Once I came in, I realized that the partners at CPS understand that having the face of our company be reliable and likable has never been more important for us to differentiate from other LF Partners. The difference is that we’ve always had Tom as our face and now we purposely guarantee that his reliable and likable style is extended to our frontline team.
One way that we ensure our team stays with us is that we treat them as well as we treat our clients. This is because we understand that high turnover in client-facing positions can put customer relationships in jeopardy. Not every customer will be as attached to who they work with but they will notice high turnover. Just because someone doesn’t care who is solving their problem, doesn’t mean they want to go to someone new whenever they need that problem solved. For example, how many times would you want to explain your digitization goals to one of your Laserfiche Service Providers? Even if the disruption from turnover requires very little load on the part of the client, this inconvenience can be more than enough to get customers in a see-who-else-is-available frame of mind.
Humans like doing business with people who they like, who they trust, and with whom they’ve done business previously. While you, our clients, do business with CPS as a whole, you are actually interacting with the Joes and Josephs. For most of our clients, the face of CPS isn’t necessarily Tom, it’s the person on the phone when they need support, it’s the go-to guy on the other end of GotoWebinar during a training session.
Our marketing consultant used to purchase enterprise marketing software for her clients. When making a purchase evaluation, she would always check LinkedIn and Indeed for employee reviews. She reasoned that she didn’t want to buy from an organization that didn’t treat its staff well because it would ultimately negatively impact the customer/vendor relationship.
If your Laserfiche Partner is experiencing high turnover in customer-facing positions, regardless of how nice and helpful seeming the new person is, they’ll still need to regain your trust and that takes time and requires you to be patient with them as they come up to speed. With so many partner options out there, sometimes it’s the personal touch (and secret sauce) of that trusted engineer that transforms an ordinary solution into one you can trust. A single company representative can be a big factor in any company’s connection with dozens of clients, simply because they’re likable, reliable, and are known by customers for quick, painless solutions.
The next time you are evaluating a Laserfiche Partner, I suggest you check references, talk to the references at length and check the partner’s employee retention. You’ll be glad you did.
