What is a customer care plan?
Customer care may sound similar to customer service, but the two are completely different aspects of running a successful website design or development business. Customer service refers to the support you provide your customers and prospects that makes working with you easier.
Customer care refers to the ongoing and recurrent services you provide that meet your clients’ needs.
With customer care programs, you give your clients the ongoing support they need each month. They come to rely on you and trust you to take care of them for years to come. And that means reliable recurring revenue that you can depend on month after month.
Why customer care plans matter
To start bringing that recurring revenue into your bank account, you’ll want to create customer care plans. These plans allow your clients to set up ongoing support with you rather than having to network with other web developers or struggle through making updates on their own or backups, monitor performance or security, reporting or more on their own
But most importantly, customer care plans help you engage with your clients deeply and provide them with the tools necessary to enhance site and business performance.
How to create a successful customer care plan
So, what makes a great customer care plan that your clients will want to sign up for? These are a few key components you’ll want to include:
Software updates: Every site needs routine updates, but those updates will vary from client to client. Offering software updates as part of your care plan guarantees that your clients won’t have to worry about downtime or outsource the task to another web developer.
Backups: Clients don’t like having to remember to back up their own websites. By offering to do it for them as part of the customer care plan, you prove that you’re in it for the long haul and save yourself work in the future.
Performance monitoring: By offering this component, you’ll be able to spot issues and problems long before your client notices them. This lets you make changes or suggest additional services to serve your clients better and increase your revenue.
Security monitoring: Compromised files and hackers can take down websites faster than you can blink. With security monitoring as part of your care plan, you’ll be able to address those issues as soon as they pop up, saving your client money and yourself time.
Site optimization: Site optimization should be done every time the site updates. With GoDaddy Pro, the process is effectively hands-off, but you’ll be able to tell your client what’s happening quickly.
Reporting: Keeping clients updated on their sites’ performance is the best way to prove that you’re worth the investment.
Designated support, design, or development time: Every client will have one-off requests and updates once in a while.
Additional services: These can be anything you feel would benefit your clients most, like monthly strategy calls, elevated levels of other services, and anything that goes beyond the basics.
Of course, the exact components you’ll want to include in your customer care plans will depend on your clients’ needs and the scope of work you provide.
How GoDaddy Pro helps
If implementing the customer care plan seems daunting, there’s good news. The Hub by GoDaddy Pro takes most of the stress out of things for you. You’re able to manage all of the basic customer care tasks right from a single dashboard. And you can do it with nothing more than the click of a mouse.
How to sell a customer care plan
Now for the tricky part: getting your clients to buy the care plan in the first place. Try to remember that selling your care plan is less about aggressive sales tactics and more about explaining the value that your plan provides. You need to show clients how the plan will help them in the long run. Here are a few tips to help you sell plans successfully.
Put yourself in your clients’ shoes: Identify their concerns and explain how the plan will eliminate those concerns.
Charge appropriately: Consider how long it will take you to complete the components of the plan in total. Charge slightly more than your hourly rate but not so much that it will keep clients from wanting to buy-in.
Customize your plans: Every client and website is unique. Take the time to build out plans that fit your individual clients’ needs.
The revenue relationship
You’re in business to make money. And you can do it in two ways:
Fostering a transactional relationship with your clients
Building a relational revenue model.
In a transactional relationship, you count on a one-time transaction of a once-and-done service for a fee.
On the other hand, the relational revenue model refers to the ongoing transactional relationship between you and your clients.
It’s about providing consistent value for your clients’ businesses in exchange for recurring money that helps you grow your own business.
So, how do you keep the relationship going? That’s where care plans come in. The care plan helps your clients’ businesses grow and your clients, in turn, help you grow your own business.
The 5 principles of a “revenue relationship”
The key to implementing a successful relational revenue model lies in following these five core principles:
Identify and anticipate client needs: You’ll spot issues before they become major problems and can present solutions before clients know they need them. They’ll see you as someone they can trust and rely on almost instantly.
Become the expert they can rely on: When you show your clients that you care about their business, they’ll depend on you and keep coming back to work with you on future projects and updates.
Set clear boundaries and stick to them: Set clear boundaries and communicate those boundaries to your clients. Mutual respect goes a long way and will keep you from dealing with burnout.
Have a plan for the future: By approaching the relationship with long-term goals in mind, you’re helping your clients prepare for the future. That means you’re helping them grow while setting your business up for success at the same time.
Be receptive to feedback: Feedback can sting but try to be open to it. When you can hear what you can improve on, you’ll have insight into how to make your business more successful.
The “revenue relationship” keeps both partners in business
By developing the relational revenue model, both you and your clients stand a better chance of maintaining a successful and thriving business. You’re taking the time to prioritize your client and do what you can to improve their website every month.
Your client is, in turn, paying you for the work you do on a recurring schedule. They experience firsthand just how much you add to their business. Over time, your clients will end up providing stellar referrals and help you further grow your business just as you help them grow theirs.
Re-think customer care
Embrace the idea of customer care and you’ll set your business up for success for years to come. Learn how to implement customer care methods in your business so you can start moving in the right direction now.
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