Today is officially ‘Blue Monday’ which is claimed to be the most depressing day of the year.
It may feel that this year we have even more reasons to be blue than normal, but the COVID-19 pandemic has underlined two fundamental truths about how to be successful in business.
The first is that a company is only as good as its employees, and secondly the importance of having a strong focus if you want to develop customer loyalty and ensure long-term growth.
At the start of the first lockdown everyone faced the combined challenge of working from home while supporting their customers during the uncertain times we were all facing.
A huge amount of calls were made to our customers, and we received many requests for forbearance – requests to pause payments, or extend loan terms – all of which had to be managed in a compliant and efficient way.
Through all the impending chaos, while boardroom strategies laid the groundwork for the response, it was the employees who were the ones that ensured the successful implementation of that response, despite feeling the impact of COVID-19 on their own families and personal lives.
And at a time when our customers really needed our help, I’m proud that we recognised we needed to adapt and offer suitable options of funding, whether this was further finance for an asset, or a Government backed initiative like CBILs.
If you want a customer to always be a customer, then we believe you should be there for them whenever they need you – and when they need to spend less, not just when they want to spend more.
As Ian Tims MD stated “What has really impressed me over the last year has been the single-mindedness of all our team to put the customer at the heart of what we have done, to reach out to them, to listen and to try wherever we could to look after them – including in many cases offering restructures to current agreements – while simultaneously managing to actually increase our new business orders. There’s no doubt in my mind that focusing on doing the first bit is what led to us achieving the latter.”
Our customer satisfaction levels are now at an even higher level than before the outbreak, and we will continue to offer attractive finance solutions to suit you or your businesses circumstances. If you are thinking about a purchase or would like to hear about options for creating a better cash-flow, please do get in touch!
