Team Communication Workflow for Service Businesses: Best Practices to Improve Customer Retention
Ongoing service businesses need strong customer retention rates in order to grow and scale. Learn how team communication workflow contributes to the client experience and how you can implement the best practices for continuity with your service.
Running a recurring revenue model service business with a team of providers is a human-based industry, no matter your company’s area of expertise, or specific product. It is an industry rich with person-to-person interaction, communication, and dynamic scenarios based on your specific clients’ needs.
In this world of ongoing services, a company’s revenue relies on maintaining a consistent subscriber base and foundation that can be built upon with new customers…and more clients and subscribers…and so on.
If you have run a subscription service before, you know exactly what I am referring to first-hand: your existing clients are just as important – if not more important – than those who are incoming and new. Maintaining their business is the only way to generate new business, so more care is needed in all aspects of the engagement.
The challenge for subscription service businesses: maintaining a standard of quality across the board
This aspect of continuous service and the importance of maintaining the quality of the ‘product’ going out at all times is what sets ongoing services apart from other industries. The initial “close” and acquisition of is just step one; you have to keep this customer in your web in order to grow further, which presents a challenge for owners of subscription service businesses.
Your existing subscriber, client, member, etc. is continuing to ‘buy’ from you every month, as a typical billing frequency. To keep serving, what you provide over time must be of quality, or of use for the long-haul…well beyond the initial sale. Better yet – it can also increase in value over time.
With a one-time sale, a failed fulfillment of a service may lead to no repeat buys, or disparagement of the brand in general. But in a recurring revenue model business, you are reliant on your existing clientele to remain happy customers who continue to engage in your service.
Therefore, if you cannot deliver consistently on a quality product that provides value, you – my friend – are screwed in the subscription service game. What you provide must lead to long term buying commitment from your customer.
Any service business scaling its operation to a clientele larger than the owner can carry (as a solo provider) will need to build a team of providers who expand their capacity. In other words, their team.
For many entrepreneurs, this is an exciting stage of development, but it has a learning curve: the owner will need to develop effective systems for managing this staff of service providers. Clear guidance and standard processes between team members will ensure an entire subscriber base is getting the same level of service, care, and “product” as the next client.
Why are service businesses challenging for team communication workflow? Diverse experience, skills, and working styles…all in one organization
Achieving a standardized level of consistency between team-members is more of a challenge than most business owners realize when they start to scale. The problems that can creep in with delivering the same service across different people – serving different people – are obvious. What each professional brings to the table as their default is different than the next provider. By entrusting your business to a member of your team, you must believe this individual will carry out the same service-product you committed to deliver originally and define that effectively.
The good news is that with a skilled team for your primary service, delivering excellent results to your clients is a given – even if you have not done your due-diligence as an owner to give them a clear standard to work towards. And yet, the result of good service from individuals with no connection to their company is equally bad for the owner and maintaining a strong organization and mission.
The two sides of the spectrum you can see within a service team are the individuals and groups who have low skill sets, but high commitment to the organization, as well as the inverse: high skill, low commitment to the company.
These are extremes on the spectrum, and in reality, most teams and individual staff members will have varied levels of skill and commitment that could affect their overall output. They fall somewhere in the middle of these extremes on the spectrum, but still benefit from guidance.
The key as a business owner and leader of a service team is standardizing their product, or deliverable, with clear team communication workflow, ownership of duties, and continuous administrative support.
How to streamline team communication workflow in a service business
Ultimately, so much of a service team’s success within the framework of a brand is dependent on the guidance they are given by their company and the communication they receive. Even a strong staff providing a service could be terribly misaligned with their brand, mission, and operations simultaneously. This creates another slew of problems for owners that are outside of a typical staff relationship in retail and non-service-based industries.
Remember that the goal is presenting a consistent level of service to your clientele. As a first step, defining what you need your team to do clearly and reinforcing the messaging and concepts thoroughly with them – more than once – will ensure the information is learned.
This is another concept that sounds simple in practice, but we see many leaders missing as a by-product of other work that needs immediate attention day-to-day.
We often see business owners outlining service-points, or how the service should be administered with a client, and this is given to the team members as part of their onboarding. Sometimes, incoming team members are even assessed through quizzes over their understanding of operating procedures.
What we don’t see as often is effective and continuous reinforcement of service-points for teams as a continuing education initiative. Many times, the standards for clients are introduced, and team-members apply them under guidance as they are starting and training.
But once fully onboarded, they are left with their understanding of the service and experiences they will gain in time, but nothing more. There is no refreshed, or updated messaging that goes out, or revisiting of service points unless there is an issue…but then, it’s a reaction, rather than preventative.
The best continuing education solution for service teams – a staff and client retention tool
Educating your team is a critical, ongoing task for small business owners that takes effort, planning, and a dedicated spot in your workflow. Like with any learning-task back in your school-days, or college, think about the level of effort needed to retain a new concept. Now, can you imagine a larger scope of knowledge and retention needed – like the kind you have after completing an entire course on a new topic?
Learning a new job, role, and way to provide a service under a ‘company banner’ takes time to get into smoothly – more like a course of study than a single class. Even if a team member has provided the same service before as a professional, your organization could do it differently, or have certain protocols that they need repeat training to learn.
As an example – when I was running a music school and managing our staff, teachers were frequently between multiple venues for their lessons: classrooms, studios, in home, in their home. Going from a stationary environment to an in-home training environment for clients to a school program still required ample training and onboarding for even the most experienced teachers, if they were new to in-home instruction.
For me, the manager and owner, there would be many teachers on staff who would do a beautiful job with the actual instruction itself, but struggle with the billing for lessons, timing, or some other non-musical factor, and we put a lot of attention on working through that, because I understood the importance.
Though these teachers would be an asset and loved, their inability to turn in their weekly session record could contribute to a constant billing problems for a client, that then affects that teacher’s retention rate. There have been cases where I’ve seen amazing teachers unable to keep more than 10% of a studio on for more than a year, and it is stictly because of their professional skills and the guidance they are getting from the top to remedy this problem. This is too big a loss for me to be okay with as an owner.
Ultimately, a client’s willingness to work with the organization is based on BOTH ease of service, as well as the core product.
In a more extreme example, there have been many cases where families would find us to work with a specific teacher they had thorugh another program, because our billing model was much easier for everyone. Clients would find the teacher they wanted on the musical end and would follow them wherever they landed. But keeping their business as an organization meant we had to make the process smooth for everyone and go the extra mile to make that happen.
In this case, the unfortunate reality is that the client found the teacher they liked (i.e. my school), but cut the other company out to pursue an easier solution. Or, they simply decide to go where the teacher decides to teach through. Why? Because the service only is beneficial as long as it is easy to use, and when it becomes tough, the client will leave. In the case of a service though, they could still keep the product and cut YOU out!
To avoid this fate, there is an equally accessible solution…read on!
This is just one example of how ineffective team communication can impact you where it hurts most – your bottom line.
Now the inverse of our music school example: as an in-home provider, we made it a point to build a specially curated staff with well-compensated lessons, and we provided 360 support for any challenges they were having. We revisited the billing protocols with different team members individually and at regular intervals every 3-9 months – based on their specific level of experience – to ensure our staff felt confident if a client puts them on the spot about any administrative questions, but not bombarded in a de-personalized way.
With this program, the fact that our teachers were supported and given the tools to succeed by us in the office allowed them to grow and reach new career heights with ease. We succeeded in allowing their talent to shine.
In our philosophy, we believe an organization is taking on the responsibility of targeted assistance when they build a team and should make sure their standards are retained.
Through an effective support system and consistent attention to team members as individuals, service businesses have the ability to thrive and execute their trade with streamlined success.
What does effective team workflow training look like? Best practices
Here are some of the communication workflow best practices that have been most successful for us:
- In addition to outlining your service points for clients and goals, share why each point is important to you as an owner – and to the organization – with your team.
- Create clear formatting and visual appeal to your training resources. Outline-style instructions, graphics, and other methods of making your guidance more memorable and clear will increase understanding.
- Your training should be paced at the speed of concept-retention and learning within your team, not the speed you would like for your team to learn the material. The two are not the same. Make sure to check for understanding-markers from your team – like being able to repeat back processes, or steps of service.
- Monitor your team’s performance and look for trends, not for single errors. When you spot a trend, offer kind and supportive mentorship individually. Do not nit-pick the small stuff, as it could be a one-time error. Responding to every small mistake will unnerve your team.
- Schedule regular continuing education for your team and individual members. Put it in your calendar with reminders – not a passive remembering a couple times a year.
- Tier the level of training and guidance your leaders provide to the levels of your different team members. Mentorship should not be the same for senior versus junior team members.
- Listen to your team and ask for their feedback on the service points you are asking them to fulfill for clients at regular intervals. Use surveys, one-on-one conversations, town halls, etc. Evaluate if your methods are successful at all times and ways you can improve as an owner.
- Most importantly – teams of service providers must be nurtured in the relationship, just like a client. By teaching your team to be effective and why processes exist, you make your opportunity more valuable to them. They have a chance to learn, as well as understand the level of support you are providing.
These tips on how to streamline team communication in a service business are all building blocks that contribute to clarity and ways to reduce miscommunications.
However, there is one special ingredient missing that brings all the smaller systems together for a business owner leading a team – a clear assignment of responsibility for the entire service process to all individuals serving the client.
Role-based communication workflow to define ‘who-does-what’ in a service engagement
To prevent overwhelm for both your client and account administrators for your service business, there must be clear ownership of different communications within the engagement and ‘who-does-what’. This means different members of the team are responsible for executing different aspects of the service with the client, but should not overlap with each other.
Example: is client onboarding done by your team member, or by the owner / admins? It would not be a process done by both internal sides of your service business, but rather one person who does this any time a new client signs up.
In a well-running operation, each member of the service team is aware of what the client knows about the service, and every member of the team works together fluidly to hand off steps of the process to each other seamlessly. The client never feels a strain in getting the information they need, and the organization feels ease in the process and knowing what everyone is else is contributing to the client experience along the way.
By contrast, the organization that is not succeeding with role-based communication has admins ‘running into each other’ constantly. Can members of a company overlap on some client matters and have multiple points of contact included on a communication? Absolutely.
It’s when individuals are consistently and unintentionally re-doing each others’ work and overwhelming the client that it becomes an issue. When a client is getting multiple copies of their welcome packet from different administrators, or receiving the same update multiple times from different individuals, it leaves a bad impression.
Overlap in duties also costs you money in the moment, not just with retention. You are losing time and money on your operations with this overlap of effort. Redundant work means there was a 50% loss on what one of two team members could have been doing otherwise, and that adds up.
Why is the defined hand-off so important to workflow? The answer is two-fold. Not only is there a clear division of service between individuals in a team, the client unifies those pieces into one final product. Each member has to deliver their portion in order to make the full service come to life, and that creates a sense of purpose and unity within an organization. In other words, you get team-work.
How poor team communication workflow can contribute to churn for a service business
When the best practices of team communication workflow are not synced, owners often experience increased churn in their enrollment, or subscriber numbers, as well as an overall strain in their operations. The information and expectations that are not in alignment will create chaos for your client, and your clients will band together to create chaos for you with the uptick in support required for rapid fire questions.
These customer service needs can be a drain on an organization’s time, as serving the client consistently never goes away as a responsibility (and maintaining that quality), and a surge in questions and issues to resolve can literally take up all time left for acquiring new business.
An ongoing service business at any size can be halted by this kind of spin with immediate concerns taking up time for growth. The answer is not increasing capacity to meet the spin, though – it is eliminating the source of the spinning in full.
End the spin: reduce miscommunication in recurring revenue teams
Questions from ongoing service clients are typically due to a misunderstanding and about the service parameters they receive for the amount they pay. Of course, there can be concerns about the quality of service, individual providers, or other areas, but 9 out of 10 times, the question is related to expectations and / or billing.
If your service itself is strong and you have good providers on your team, there should be no reason for misalignment on service points within your business, and yet, this occurs all the time.
There is, unfortunately, no way to prevent all miscommunications from happening around an ongoing service, but there are ways you can minimize the strain it puts on your business.
This suggestion may be counter-intuitive, but equipping your staff with verbiage to divert any questions of a theme that creates misunderstandings to admins, and educating staff members in the moment when a miscommunication does arise, are the best ways to prevent further issue.
This works, because loaded questions that can create an uptick in dissatisfaction with clients typically have nuanced and complicated answers that your team members cannot answer with ease. The residual uproar you see with questions is the clearest indicator that you should take this question entirely off your team’s plate.
If a concern, or question arises and your client feels a positive intent from the person helping on your company’s team, they will continue to trust your business. Most likely, a solution can be reached for any issue that leads them to continuing their membership, or patronage. But the same issues occurring over and over and not being helped effectively are what will cause a customer to look elsewhere for their service.
The most realistic objective is minimizing miscommunications and learning from every experience we can, rather than being perfect at all times. Customers appreciate that sincerity and can feel this positive intent in how they are served by an organization.
Proactivity and support for team communication workflow – in conclusion
The way you communicate with your team as a leader and the systems of communication you have in place can make a huge impact on your client retention rate and overall satisfaction with your service. If you are experiencing a period of churn, or glacial growth rates, prioritizing your staff of providers and the way they are guided is the answer to curbing client attrition.
Your staff needs more than just a handbook with your mission statement and a quarterly town hall to get who you are as a company. You need more than expanding your admin staff to handle all the questions coming in.
The secret is stopping the endless spinning questions through a clear assignment of responsibility for each part of the client service-experience within your team…then continuously mentoring your staff in a personalized way on how their work plays a part in the big picture.
In the end, if you are not seeing your team through a human lens at all times and letting your communication workflow process evolve with your group, you will experience internal strains that ripple all the way down to your bottom-line.
You can stop subscription churn and spinning by investing in your team and their individuality, as well as their future. Just as they help others and serve through your business opportunity, you have a chance to benefit them. You have created a common mission as a platform through your company, and you are united by your goals. This opens an owner up to providing mentorship, advancement opportunities, and industry insights as further support to their teams.
By contributing to your team’s success, your success and influence as a business owner only grows.
If you are struggling to unite your team, or create effective systems for your team workflow, contact us to share details about how we can help! We offer both business coaching for leaders and service-business support in a wide range of areas, especially communication and staff development.
