Category: Customer Success

What can you do today to help your customer be more successful tomorrow? Ian Burgess, BigChange’s Chief Customer Officer, explains what you need to know.

I have spent my whole life building businesses and my obsession with my customers has been the constant that unites all my ventures, whether it’s a bakery or a software company.

But when it comes to going the extra mile for customers, it’s easy to talk the talk and far harder to walk the walk. A customer-centric approach takes investment, focus and a relentless determination to keep improving.

This is why, at BigChange, we made sure that as the business grew, we kept revisiting the concept of customer success. Regular readers of this blog will have seen some of my posts on the topic. We were delighted when Ian Burgess, who has spent his whole career helping companies better support their customers, joined the team as our BigChange Chief Customer Officer in September.

So, for any business owners out there who want to build businesses with customer success at their heart, I’ve asked Ian to share some of the insights we have learned on our journey. I hope that you find them useful, and that you and your customers will thrive!

Over to Ian!

Q: What does customer success mean?

In a traditional account management structure, a customer will call in with an issue, the team jumps to sort it out, and it can be chaotic. Customer success is about being proactive, not reactive. You understand your customer so well that you can anticipate their needs.

Q: How does a customer success focus change the structure of the business?

In many businesses, the hierarchy (if laid flat) looks like a conveyor belt. One team passes the order to another and so on. Service teams usually sit right at the end of that conveyor belt.

When you put customer success at the heart of the organisation, it becomes a pivot around which all departments turn.

In BigChange, this means that customer success engages with all teams across the customer journey to ensure they know all about the latest developments that can help customers thrive.

Q: How do you establish customer success processes?

Customer success is an ethos as well as a function. You don’t just introduce a customer success team; you need to get buy-in from the whole business. We created a customer success platform; an aggregation layer on top of the BigChange technology.

We look at things like: when was the last time we engaged with the customer? How are they using the product? What might they like some help with?

Q: Are there any pitfalls to be aware of?

Your customers are busy people so you must only contact them when you can genuinely add value.

There’s no point calling up and saying, ‘It’s raining’ – they’ll know that already. But if you can tell them it’s going to rain tomorrow, you give them insight they can act upon.

This is also why we recommend you have a dedicated customer success team – one point of contact for these proactive approaches.

You don’t want people from lots of different teams calling up with different propositions.

Q: What impact did this approach have on BigChange and its customers?

The more we help our customers to get the maximum value out of our product, the quicker they will grow. And the more value they get from the platform, the more efficiencies and benefits they will experience, which also breeds loyalty to BigChange.

That’s really powerful for us, as you can see in our Net Promoter Score. As we grow, it’s very important to everyone in the business that we stay human.

We will never be a faceless corporation. We are always at the end of the phone, always looking to help. It’s a real differentiator for us, especially at a time when other companies in the space charge extra for this kind of service.

For us, it is fundamental to our core offering.

Paul Van Heeswyk, founder of Crucial Engineering, explains how he’s using the BigChange platform to boost efficiency and take his business to new heights.

Paul Van Heeswyk is known as “Dutch” to most people, even though he’s actually more Irish than Dutch, and has an accent that’s pure Leeds.

I met Dutch four years ago. He had just started his business, Crucial Engineering, and was building it from the ground up.

The moment I met Dutch, I was impressed. We got chatting at a BNI networking event and he had that entrepreneurial spark about him. When I told him that we had an issue with our office doors – and he explained that fixing industrial doors was his speciality – I asked him to take a look.

He fixed our problem then and there and I invited him up to test-drive our software.

Even though he was still a one-man band at that time, Paul saw the potential for BigChange to help him grow his business faster than he could on his own. He’s been a customer ever since.

I caught up with him recently to ask how business was going and I was delighted – although not surprised in the least – to find out he’s achieved everything he’d set out to do and more.

I’d like to tell you a little more about Dutch, and hopefully you’ll be as inspired by his drive and determination as I am.

Celebrating business owners

As regular readers of this blog will know, I created the “Chairman’s spotlight on…” series to celebrate the amazing business owners I’ve met on the BigChange journey.

It’s an absolute privilege to be able to help these enterprising individuals to grow their companies and be more successful with our software, and I also want to shout about their endeavours from the rooftops! They deserve it!

Like many of our customers, Paul started his businesses after spending years working for other companies and realising that he could do it better.

“I had worked at organisations where the ethics and morals just didn’t align with my own,” he explains. “So I got a van and bought some tools and off I went.”

The quality of his work and Paul’s commitment to customer service ensured that his start-up grew quickly.

Within six months, he was able to hire his first teammate, Chris. “Chris is our operations manager to this day,” he says.

Using BigChange to improve efficiency

Four months into his business journey, Paul decided to become a BigChange customer. “I’d seen the problems that can arise at my previous company,” he explains.

“People thought that I was insane when I first started using it because it was just me, so I was sending jobs to myself and finishing them and sending them back to myself! It seemed as though I was adding more process when I was already busy. But I knew I wanted to grow Crucial, so I needed these systems in place early on. Now that we are 27 people, BigChange is the absolute brains of the business.

“The transparency that it has brought to our financial processes is vital. We use it to quote, raise purchase orders, invoice, you name it. If a customer rings up with a question about a job we completed a few weeks ago, we can instantly bring up the quote, engineer’s photos, reports, invoice, everything. There’s no trawling through folders trying to find historic information.”

Paul believes that BigChange has done more than increase efficiency; it’s reduced overheads and supercharged growth.

“The cost of the software is far lower than what we would need to pay to hire an admin person to do all the laborious paperwork,” he explains. “And when I think about the growth we’ve achieved over the past four years, there’s no doubt that a proportion of that is down to BigChange.”

The start of a great journey

Paul is just at the beginning of his journey with Crucial Engineering. He recently completed the Goldman Sachs Business Growth Programme at Oxford University, an intensive three-month course that he says helped him to formulate his five-year plan.

“We want to become a national player, offering a four-hour response time to clients all over the UK,” he says.

Paul is eyeing acquisitions right now that will broaden his geographic footprint, and also recently bought a glazing business, which means he can produce his own glass and simplify his supply chain.

Crucial Engineering will be a market leader one day. You don’t have to take my word for it. Just look at all the awards Paul has won recently: he picked up this Growth award in Leeds recently and has been nominated in two categories at the Yorkshire Choice Awards: both ‘Independent business of the year 2022’ and ‘Businessman of the year 2022’.

Paul has always wanted to run his own business. He came up with the name Crucial Engineering while he was still in school. “I didn’t even know what the company would be doing,” he jokes. “I just knew that was going to be the name.”

When Paul decided to make the leap into start-up life, he found the name was taken. “I was devastated,” he admits. “My uncle had told me to just buy it years before, but I’d ignored him.”

Luckily, fate intervened and by the following Christmas, the previous owner had dissolved their company and Paul was able to snap up the name.

Now, the sky’s the limit for Paul and his team. “I’m passionate about business and building teams,” he says.

“I’ve always tried to keep a positive mental attitude, I always keep searching for growth opportunities and I love dealing with people, so I love everything about building this company. And I’m thankful to Martin and BigChange for giving us a technology that grows alongside us and keeps adapting to the scale of our ambitions.”

BigChange has had a fantastic start to 2021. Below we highlight the key achievements across the first six months of the year.

Last month, the CBI revealed that Britain’s hard-working companies are powering an extraordinary recovery, taking the economy to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year.

BigChange is among the businesses that are supporting this recovery, creating new jobs at an incredible rate, winning business both at home and abroad, and creating sustainable revenues that will help the nation bounce back from the crisis.

It is with absolute pride that I announce our 2021 half-year results.

People power

We have grown our team to more than 200 people over the last six months. These brilliant new colleagues are part of our sustained investment in BigChange’s growth as we continue to build out our capabilities and win new business from customers large and small.

In the second half of this year, we will welcome even more new faces. We are also currently building out our C-suite, bringing in top talent from across the industry to help support our growth ambitions.

Going for growth

During the last six months, BigChange signed more than £12.5m-worth of new contracts. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all 170 of our new customers – thanks for choosing BigChange.

We now have 1,600 customers in total, with 40,000 users now relying on our technology. What an incredible result from the team!

And we’re not done yet. We believe we will surpass 400 new customers by the year-end.

Based on our performance so far this year, this means we are on track to increase revenues by as much as 50% across 2021.

Loyalty and customer success

It’s wonderful to welcome so many new customers into the fold but, at BigChange, we never let new business distract us from the important job of cherishing and supporting our existing customer base.

This is why I am so pleased that our repeat orders are exceptionally high, with more than 400 customers increasing their licence base in the past six months.

I am also delighted that we have improved our Net Promoter Score.

At 84.8, this NPS shows that BigChange offers world-class service to customers. If you would like to find out more about how BigChange keeps customers happy and helps them to thrive, please read our new customer testimonials.

Our commitment to innovation

Regular readers of this blog will know that earlier this year I pledged to focus on innovation and the creation of a pipeline of new product features to empower and supercharge the global mobile workforce.

We are making good on that promise, releasing several new features in the coming months. Customers will be able to unleash the power of their data through our data-as-a-service offering, we will also offer customers large and small access to best-in-class business insights and analytics through our eagerly awaited PowerBI reporting built in the BigChange platform.

And we have upped the automation factor in BigChange Pay to take on even more of the grunt work when taking payments.

As always, all our R&D is focused on helping our customers to grow and become more efficient. If there’s something you want us to add to the platform, tell us! We have created an ideas portal to allow anyone to suggest updates or new features.

Have you graduated from the BigChange University?

I am over the moon that so many of our customers have attended the BigChange University over the past six months. In total, our sessions saw more than 2,500 attendees.

We created the University as a place where students can learn how to get the most out of the platform and find out about new and exciting functionality.

We continue to improve and update our modules to offer real, tangible value, so if you haven’t had a look yet, then book your session today.

Doing our bit for charity

As a business, BigChange is committed to giving back, both to our local community and to charitable organisations that are making a big difference to people’s lives across the world.

Last year, we decided to link our Motivational Monday series – our monthly events that welcome inspirational speakers – with charitable giving.

This has been hugely successful and over the last six months, we have welcomed the likes of: Janet Street-Porter, the journalist and media personality; Kevin Sinfield OBE – or Sir Kev – the rugby player and campaigner; Tracey Neville MBE, the netball star who played for and coached the England team; and Benjamin Mee, who bought and reopened Dartmoor Zoo.

Among the charities that the series has supported are: Living Potential Farm, which offers work experience to those with learning difficulties and disabilities; men’s mental health charity Andy’s Man Club; PhysCap, which works to improve the quality of life of children suffering from severe physical disabilities; Homeless Street Angels, which helps those sleeping on the street of Leeds; the community action charity CATCH, and veterans’ charity Help for Heroes.

It’s a privilege to be at the helm of a business that is creating so much positive momentum for the economy – and for our customers and community.

Huge congratulations to the team for a job well done. 

There’s a lot of advice out there for entrepreneurs. Every day there’s a new ‘21 ways to supercharge growth’ or ‘Four ways to be a better leader’.

I enjoy reading all the weird and wonderful tips but, in my experience, being successful just requires one thing: great customer service.

If your customers love you and value your business, every door opens. They buy more of your products or services. They reward you with long-term loyalty. You get more referrals – and word of mouth is the best customer acquisition tool because it’s meaningful (and free). Your reputation soars, which helps you recruit better employees, and attract investment. I could go on.

I’ve run all kinds of businesses over the years, and there have been three lessons that have ultimately helped me to be successful each and every time. It didn’t matter if I was creating a bakery, selling white goods, or building a bold new technology venture – I’ve always stuck to these three simple rules. I’d like to share those with you today.

Be the landlord

With any business, the founder should feel personally responsible for its success. Like a pub landlord who puts their name up above the door, you must take pride in your venture and never hide behind the organisation, even as it grows.

I see myself as personally responsible for everything that goes on at BigChange. My phone number is on the internet, and I take calls direct from customers at all times of the day or night all week, except the sabbath. If my customers experience any pain using our service, then I feel that pain too. I get copied in on all emails and I make sure that I’m involved until the issue is resolved.

Customer service goes beyond the customer; it’s about how you treat your own people. If I get an email in the night, and I don’t see that someone else has handled it, I’ll phone the driver or engineer back. Doesn’t matter if it’s 2am or 3am, I’ll phone and ask what I can do to help.

Some of the business leaders that I admire most have a similar strategy. It was a great shame when Dido Harding stepped down from TalkTalk, the telecoms business, following its cyber security issues. I remember when my mother had a problem with her TalkTalk internet service and I emailed Dido. She was genuinely interested in my mum, a woman in her seventies, and personally fixed the problem – even though TalkTalk had millions of customers at the time. Whatever she decides to do with her career, I’ll remember that interaction – that’s the power of great customer service.

Spend more than you think you should on customer service

From day one, in all of my businesses, I have invested in customer service. People have always called me mad: spending money on a department that wasn’t directly related to sales. But it’s always paid off for me.

At BigChange, we have at least one customer service representative for every 50 customers. We are creating a brand-new piece of technology, so we have always offered free webinar training and free support. We don’t even charge people to call us – we take on that cost.

Great entrepreneurs make it easy for their customers to get in touch. That means offering online, phone, and offline options. If one of our customers is really struggling with something, we will send a person over to their offices to help them resolve it face-to-face. I think it’s safe to say that’s a pretty unusual strategy for a software company.

When you spend on customer service, the return on investment is massive. We have really low customer churn – only 3% ever leave us. And some of those were due to company liquidations rather than cancellations.

Love your difficult customers

When you are building a business, you will come across difficult customers from time to time. They are never satisfied, and are always demanding more from you and your team. I’ve learned that a customer who is difficult at the outset of the relationship will often be difficult for the duration of the contract – that’s just the way it is. I should know: I’m a difficult customer myself and it takes one to know one. But the great thing about these people is that they help you to learn, and they drive your team to perform at a much higher standard.

If every customer was passive and no one gave you a hard time, how would your business improve? It’s better to be challenged: a customer service team learns a lot as a result of dealing with difficult customers – they often speak a lot of sense. Many of our customers have been with us for years, whereas some employees might be brand new, and could learn a lot from the customer’s insights.

It’s important to train your team to love tough customers. I take the time to explain that our customers come in all shapes and sizes. I like to use the analogy of the NHS. When a nurse is on the ward, some patients will complain that they haven’t been seen fast enough, others will apologise for taking up a bed. The ward is full of all sorts of people but the nurse has to make them all better, and make sure each patient leaves feeling they have received a good service.

I hope these customer service lessons will be as valuable to you as they have been to me. If you’ve got any great tips to add to the mix, please leave a comment. If you enjoy these posts, don’t forget to follow me to receive updates. See you soon for the next instalment…

All the best

Martin Port
Founder & CEO
Mobile : +44 7973 671779
Landline: +44 113 4571000 Ext 333

Fleet Technology Entrepreneurs from across Europe met at London’s famous Savoy Hotel to strengthen business collaboration.

The 17 members of 1-Fleet Alliance – a group of telematics companies that together track over 500,000 vehicles throughout Europe – agreed to forge closer ties.

Following previous meetings in Barcelona and Budapest, the group agreed to form 1-Fleet Corporation, a commercial entity to represent the interests of the majority of the members. The group objectives include collaboration and networking, promoting innovation and telematics industry standardisation, as well as joint marketing and commercial agreements.

The meeting saw the appointment of Pedro Zamith, a well-known figure in the Automotive Technology arena, to oversee the development and launch of commercial propositions on behalf of 1-Fleet Corporation.

“This was a landmark meeting for 1-fleet alliance, taking our collaborative activities to a new level. One of the primary benefits of the alliance is that is looks after the interests of the market in general, rather than the interests of individual suppliers. Despite a changing political landscape affecting Europe, cross border trade will continue and technology will become increasingly uniform. At 1-Fleet Alliance we will drive innovation and standards in the telematics field for the benefit of fleet operators across Europe,” says Joe Fenech Conti, CEO of Loqus, one of the founder members of 1-Fleet.

This is the first ever pan-European alliance between leaders in the Fleet Technology and Telematics field and allows commercial fleet operators to benefit from the combined strength, global expertise and innovation brought by the diverse group membership.
www.bigchange.com

Martin Port
Founder & CEO

1-Fleet Alliance continues its strong momentum in 2016, launching its new Alliance website and integrating 5 new companies one of which is BigChange. The Alliance now consists of 16 members, and a combined total of more than 400 thousand connected vehicles.

The new website – www.1-fleet.com – is part of the Alliance’s campaign to introduce our philosophy and strategy for the telemetry industry.
The Alliance feel that their distinct advantage is having a pan European reach combined with local know how in each market and this offers a unique value proposition to their local and international customers. The combination of each member’s expertise in their home market, with the European scale of the Alliance, enables the delivery of the most innovative solutions with the highest quality standards for European fleets.

The 1-Fleet Alliance has enlarged its European footprint, adding 5 new members from Germany, UK, Belgium, Netherlands and Hungary. The current 16 member companies now boasts direct presence in 19 European Union countries, which represent 93% of the 14 trillion euros EU economy. All together the 1-Fleet Al1liance has a sales network with more than 150 salespeople and an installation network of more than 1500 professional installation engineers across Europe.
The new Alliance members are:

1-Fleet Alliance gives a warm welcome to these new members who underpin the 1 Fleet Alliance values: trust, integrity and excellence. These members’ will add significant value to the Alliance’s primary goal of developing the telematics industry ecosystem, through a coopetition strategy.
_____________________
About 1-Fleet Alliance:
1-Fleet Alliance is a European association that represents key industry players in the Telematics Fleet Management Solutions industry. The alliance’s primary aim is to create a collaborative environment where the knowledge sharing will conduce to innovation promotion, economies of scale generation and the development of the TFMS industry ecosystem. www.1-fleet.com
About Arealcontrol:

Founded in January 2004, AREALCONTROL GmbH provides Telematics Systems, complete cloud and hybrid solutions for enterprise mobility, fleet and work force management. AREALCONTROL’s goals are fully integrated solutions and applications based on telematics for transport, logistics, sales and service companies.
www.arealcontrol.de

About BigChange:
BigChange by name, BigChange by nature! BigChange is an established force in mobile workforce management and telematics, offering a system that transforms the way companies manage their mobile operations. By challenging convention and through breakthrough innovation, BigChange is pioneering new intuitive and simple to use technology that delivers industry leading levels of return on investment.
www.bigchangeapps.com

About Emixis:
Emixis develops and commercializes innovative hardware and software solutions to help companies manage vehicles, moving assets and field service forces. Our solutions, available in the form of SaaS, are sold in Europe and Africa via a network of resellers and systems integrators.
www.emixis.com/en

About iData:
iData is a hungarian Fleet Management Systems company that was founded in 2005. The founders are all engineers and keen on technology. iData managed to disrupt the market with it’s very early innovation in fuel management and rapid customization technologies. en. itrack.hu

About INmatix:
INmatix Technology Group is a fast growing European Telematics Service Provider (TSP). We operate a flexible high-end telematics infrastructure for communication with remote objects like vehicles, trucks, trailers and machinery.
www.emixis.com

Martin Port
Founder & CEO