Are you being upserved?

Today is the first Tuesday of October, a day that has been coined by the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) as international Customer Experience Day, in short: CX Day. As a Simac customer or channel partner, you know that every day is CX Day at Simac. Working together closely with our customers and partners is in the lifeblood of Simac, as demonstrated by our Teamnology philosophy.

Serve first, sell next

Teamnology closely relates to what author Daniel Pink describes in his bestseller ‘To sell is human’. In it, he talks about how it is more effective to ‘upserve’ your customers rather than ‘upselling’. We all know what upselling is: when you know that a customer wants to buy one thing, you also offer an adjacent product or service. Whenever you go on a website to buy something, a recommendation engine based on business intelligence and artificial intelligence will alert you to what other people are buying alongside that specific product or service.

Pink calls the concept of upselling hideous, as it puts the seller's interests far ahead of the buyer's. Upserving is quite different. As Pink says: “it means doing more for your customer or prospect than (s)he expects or that you initially intended -- sometimes going the extra mile to transform a mundane transaction into a memorable experience or a source of insights. The advantage of upserving is that it's both the right thing to do and a way to build the relationships and reputation that can enhance future success. In today's world, when buyers and sellers are far more evenly matched than ever, the approach should be to serve first and sell next.”

Thinking along with the customer

That is exactly the approach that Simac has been taking for the last 50 years. As I explained in my previous blog post, Simac is not synonymous with a ‘hit and run’ approach. We are in it for the long run and view our relationship with customers as a never-ending marathon that we undertake as a team. Working with Simac should feel to customers not as just another service, but as a memorable experience.

If you turn to our references pages or the press releases where we write about new wins at customers, you will see that upserving and providing a good customer experience is not a hollow phrase at Simac. Before we make an offer, we always take a deep dive into the business of the customer, and we ask ourselves: how are processes structured? What makes the customer successful? What value can we add to the uniqueness of this organization? Only when we have this full knowledge of the customer will we build an offer that really fits that company. If there are alternative solutions, we will talk about them and weigh the pros and cons of each possible solution. In short: we treat the customer as if we were looking for a solution for our own company.

Once a solution is implemented, we prefer to continue working with our customers, to ensure they get the best possible return on their investment. By offering managed services for instance and unburdening customers so they can focus on growing their business. That way, we can deliver on our promise: offering the best possible IT solutions and services to your business. We do not want to just meet your expectations, we want to surpass them.

I would love to hear from you if we are meeting or surpassing your expectations. Do call me if we are not. Not just today, on Customer Experience Day, but any day. That is my promise as the CEO of Simac ICT Belgium.