Expert Talk: Jeff Ford on Client Experience
How can a company improve the quality of the service they deliver to customers? For Jeff Ford, Vice President of Client Experience this is one of the concepts he focuses his day-to-day around. He heads several teams under the Service umbrella, which includes in-person and remote service, supported by a growing team of field network managers and service technicians. As he’ll tell you, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to create a positive experience and maintain strong relationships between clients and a company.
In this video, he gives insight into his role, shares ways Impact’s support teams monitor and maintain high customer services scores and discusses some ideas around how to improve client experience.
About Expert Talk
This thought leadership series features different managers and executives across Impact, who provide insights into their roles, departments and respective industries.
This video features Jeff Ford, Vice President of Client Experience in Bolingbrook, IL.
Enjoy the rest of the Expert Talk video series.
See more of Impact’s world-class Service team in action:
Essential Workers | Celebrating Our World-Class Service Teams
Service Technicians Go for Gold at the Annual Impact Service Olympics
Video Transcript:
My name is Jeff Ford and I’m the Vice President of Client Experience here at Impact.
What does a typical day at Impact look like for you?
A typical day for me is really monitoring our performance and our initiatives. My job is to work with our department heads to make sure that we’re achieving our goals and make changes where necessary. Also, I like to go out on our quarterly business reviews with our clients, and even compete for new business.
What current trends are you seeing related to the industry?
Really what’s changed in the industry in my 30 years is from analog to digital, or really the copier to the multi-functional device. With remote monitoring, now we’re able to see condition-based maintenance. We’re able to identify predictively what type of service the equipment’s going to need and be able to do that proactively.
What are some challenges that arise with the changing industry and what is your team doing to overcome them?
Industry challenges are the speed of technology, really, and being able to identify what new technology customers can best utilize to benefit their workflow and their business environment.
What are your goals for the upcoming year?
Goals for 2020 is to continue to grow and through that we’re focused on our employees’ career path, employee development and succession planning.
What are your expectations for members of the Client Services team?
The expectations of my team are really the same expectations I have for myself, and that’s to continue to strive to be the best at what you do. Be serious and focus on what you need to do to achieve success.
What is the Net Promoter Score, and why is it so important for your team?
The Net Promoter Score is a survey process that we have for our clients to be able to provide feedback. That feedback is a rating score of one to ten. Net promoter, or a promoter score, is when a customer gives us a nine or a ten, which means they’re extremely satisfied and most likely they’ll do business with us again. When we look at a seven or an eight, that’s really kind of a neutral score, and the client may or may not do business with you again. And then when you’re looking at a six or below, there’s a client that you have opportunity, that you can go in and try to improve that. Our focus is that for our customers to be at a nine or a ten.
What do you think it means to be a leader?
I think a leader is someone that people can look up to and look for direction, motivation, trust and be able to follow so that they know that we’re on the right path. I take that very seriously.