One of my proudest metrics is our client retention rate. Since I have been in business dating back to the mid 90s, I have retained 98% of my clients year to year. Typically, if the client leaves it is because they are going out of business, have a family member who wants to try their hand at web development and design, or have received a deal too to be true elsewhere. We all see these free websites, and packages that sound too good to be true. In the long-run companies grow to resent these companies, as their service is slow or is non-existent. (Funny, people go for bait and switch and deals that sound too good to be true and are disappointed when these fly by night companies don’t deliver quality service or products…)
I believe that you support a client until the last second of the last day they are paying you.
This was evident on New Year’s Eve. (Yes, we work on New Year’s Eve) A client I had for about 15 years or more decided to go with a new company to build a new e-commerce site. My estimate (which was tiny) was too high for her. (she forgot that I had grandfathered her in at our late 90s rates, and never raised her fees and charged her next to nothing for hosting and maintaining her site…) But, it of course is her prerogative and we wish her well. But, wait, it gets better……..Late in the day on the 31st, she sent a request to do some things to her website. Now I think I should tell you the new website was supposed to be ready by now and she had given me notice. But of course the developer had excuses and it was not done and probably won’t be done for months. (Red Flag anyone? Bueller Bueller Bueller) So she decided to pay me and continue with my service for a few months longer. Now 99.9% of the people out there would’ve made her wait till after the new year and probably a few days to a few weeks just for spite. But I made these changes after 5 o’clock on New Year’s Eve, because of that is how we do business. We support clients until the last second of the last day they have paid us for service. That is what customer service is all about, that is what RooSites is all about.
In conclusion: Looking back at 2014, it was our best year ever with great new clients coming on board, and 98% coming with us into the new year. We will always strive to keep our clients happy, and want to retain all our customers (well, maybe not all ;-). Now we know this is not a realistic goal, but by offering the best support in the world, we will continue to stay in the high 90s for client retention.
Happy New Year to you all, may 2015 be the best year ever for you, your families and your companies!
A few years ago a client came to me. I won’t mention his name, but will tell you a little bit about the project. He is an artist and wanted a site to display his works. Great, I could use WordPress and one of the many gallery plugins. BUT, he had very specific needs. He really wanted to have the images speak for themselves, and didn’t want any of the normal features of most galleries (and the things most people ask for). For instance he didn’t like light-box effects. He didn’t even want any borders around his images. Make a long story short, we built him a custom theme and fulfilled all of his needs.
Problem: We really had to re-write a lot of the gallery plugin. So we really couldn’t upgrade the plugin or we’d lose all the customizations. This wasn’t an issue for a couple of years. But then changes to the WordPress core messed up the file upload. We could no longer upload 40-50 files at a time which is the main functionality we needed. Adding images one at a time wasn’t an option. So what do I do? Should I bill him for 8 additional hours to bring his site up to date? (his maintenance plan included 2 hours and the project would take 10.)
Solution: Sometimes you just have to suck it up. I didn’t want to bill the guy $1,000 dollars, and not sure that he could afford it. So, I did the work myself which required me to set up a staging area, update the plug-in and then go through the process of again customizing the functionality and CSS. Fortunately, now the plug-in is improved to the point where my customizations would be stored in a separate area that would allow me to always upgrade the plug-in as needed. So the client would be much better off for years to come.
Bottom Line: I won’t get back the 10+ hours, or make any money for my troubles. But I know I did the right thing, and karma is definitely on my side. Going the extra mile has to be your normal behavior if you are managing websites if you are to stand out in the crowd. I believe we do.
