If your startup business operates on a subscription-based model, ensuring that your customers’ accounts are well taken care of is essential. After all, that will encourage them to continue their transactions with you.
But managing these accounts requires a lot of work. And a fledgling company like yours might not have the resources yet to handle everything. For this, outsourcing can be a good option. Here is how to do it right and keep your regular customers happy.
Why Outsource Your Account Management Tasks?
With about 80% of startup business revenues coming from returning customers, a lot rests on managing their accounts properly. Outsourcing provides several key benefits that will help you accomplish this better.
Consistent Account Scrutiny
Constant review and assessment of client accounts are essential for effective management. But with all the other tasks to be done, you can overlook this. An outsourced team can get the work done in the background, ensuring that these are updated every time you access them.
Access To Experts
You might think of account management as simple record keeping. But there is a lot more work put into it, including studying account holders and finding ways to engage them. Having experts handle these for you assures that you get better results in these tasks. And outsourcing gives you easy access to expert managers without the need for a tedious hiring process.
More Innovative Tactics
Expertise also plays a role in how you properly utilize account information to engage with customers. Here, your goal is to take advantage of engagement opportunities that arise for each account. Expert account managers can help you develop unique techniques to get the most out of these opportunities and generate more revenues from each account.
Keeping Competitors At Bay
Competition can be intense in your industry. And competitors will always be aiming to capture some of the accounts you have. To avoid this, you need to monitor client behavior and competitor movement regularly. Not only can outsourced teams do this in the background, but they can also proactively act to secure customer accounts.
Starting With Outsourcing Your Startup Business Account Management Tasks
With the role it plays, you would want to outsource startup business’ account management work right. It all begins with careful planning. You need to decide the best ways to go through with the effort.
Deciding Which Accounts To Outsource
The first thing that you need to decide on is which accounts you would want to hand over to a third party. This is important, as some accounts might be too big or essential to the business that you need to handle them internally. Meanwhile, others might not be as prominent, but they are still valuable for added revenues. In these cases, you might want to hand them over to an external team to ensure they are taken care of.
A good way to start here is by sending the smaller accounts to the third party. These accounts would be easier for them to handle, ensuring that they get the attention. Additionally, these are at a lower risk for your business.
Note that as the partnership grows, you need to reassess the value of the accounts handled by providers. You might find that these have increased in value. At this point, you have to decide whether to bring it back in-house or let the partner continue handling it.
If you opt for the latter, see that the outsourcing firm can effectively tackle an account of that magnitude. Another way is by taking over some of the more critical management functions while leaving the rest to them.
Selecting The Right Provider For Your Startup Business
LIke any outsourcing effort, your startup business will benefit greatly from having the right partner for the job. Beyond the general considerations when looking for a partner, you need to consider the following specific factors.
- Experience: The firm must have professionals that can conduct high-level discussions with customers.
- Market proficiency: It must also be able to identify and segment accounts for greater market coverage.
- Methods: The outsourcing firm should provide a clear strategy that uses best practices to improve marketing and sales alignment.
- Reporting: Your partner should have an accurate and detailed reporting system that will help you better leverage the account information.
- Compatibility: The outsourcing firm should have a good track record working with in-house account management and marketing teams.
All of these factors will ensure that the outsourcing firm your startup business gets can handle the kind of customer accounts you have. These also ensure that they can start working on those accounts and building a long-term management plan for them immediately.
You might also have more specific management requirements for customer accounts. Lay down these terms as clearly as possible to further narrow down your candidates. Upon choosing a partner, make sure you discuss how they will fulfill these requirements.
Working With The External Account Management Team
Once the external management team is in place, your startup business can begin handing over the accounts to them. Before getting them started on the work, be sure to discuss the peculiarities of each account. For instance, you can delve into the specific preferences of each customer. This will help the team formulate an effective engagement plan for each.
Additionally, establish a clear means of communication with the team. This is important for the escalation of concerns regarding the accounts. Make sure that the provider knows who is responsible for the accounts within the internal teams so that they can be in constant touch.
Additionally, you would want to review the external team’s account engagement plan routinely. Take a look at how effective the plan is in generating return purchases from the customer. You can then bring your external and internal teams together to discuss how to refine these strategies.
Keep Your Startup Business Customers’ Accounts Well Managed
When done right, outsourcing your account management work will not only keep these records well maintained. It can also help them prosper and generate more revenues for your startup business. Contact us today and we can help you keep those customer accounts going.