Episode 881: The Customer Care Checklist

Summary

Episode Summary: The Customer Care Checklist

Podcast Information

• Title: The Official BNI Podcast
• Host: Dr. Ivan Misner
• Episode: 881: The Customer Care Checklist
• Release Date: October 9, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode 881 of The Official BNI Podcast, host Priscilla Rice engages in a dynamic conversation with Dr. Ivan Misner and guest Julian Lewis. The episode delves into the intricacies of the Customer Care Checklist, a strategic tool designed to enhance referral generation and client relationships within the BNI network.

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Guest Introduction: Julian Lewis

Priscilla Rice introduces Julian Lewis, a portfolio entrepreneur and award-winning BNI Executive Director based in the United Kingdom. Julian is a founding partner of Integris Global and co-author of the Amazon bestsellers Infinite Giving and Infinite Legacy alongside Dr. Misner and Greg Davies. His expertise lies in fostering collaboration for personal and business success, embodying the BNI mission of mutual growth through structured referral marketing.

Notable Quote:

"Julian's core belief is the power of collaboration for personal and business success. And he envisions a world where everyone can achieve success simultaneously."
— Priscilla Rice [02:30]

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Main Topic: The Customer Care Checklist

Julian Lewis introduces the Customer Care Checklist as an innovative method for generating referrals. This checklist serves as a structured approach for BNI members to proactively seek referrals by genuinely caring for their clients' interests.

Key Points:

• Purpose: To create referrals by deeply understanding and addressing clients' needs.
• Customization: Each member's checklist should be unique, tailored to complement their specific business offerings.
• Client-Centric Questions: Questions on the checklist must prioritize the client's best interests, ensuring relevance and authenticity.

Notable Quote:

"The Customer Care Checklist is a way of looking after our clients and generating referrals authentically."
— Julian Lewis [03:07]

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Implementing the Checklist: Tips and Strategies

Julian outlines critical strategies for BNI members to develop their own Customer Care Checklists effectively:

1. Complementary Questions: Ensure that the questions align with your business services. For instance, an insurance provider might include tax planning as a referral opportunity but exclude unrelated fields like plumbing.

2. Client's Interest First: Questions should prioritize what benefits the client, fostering trust and demonstrating genuine care.

3. Leverage Expertise: If a needed service isn't available within your chapter, add it to your checklist and seek referrals within or outside BNI.

4. Adaptability: Recognize that different businesses and regions may require tailored approaches. Use the provided checklist as a template or inspiration rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

Notable Quotes:

"The questions must complement our business and look out for our client's interest."
— Julian Lewis [05:15]

"The number of questions you ask has to be right for you and your business. It's going to be different for different people."
— Julian Lewis [07:52]

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Real-Life Success Story: Vicki Summersby

Julian highlights the success of Vicki Summersby from Gloucester, who utilized the Customer Care Checklist to generate 69 referrals in two months. By implementing the checklist in her client review meetings and even emailing it out, Vicki achieved an impressive average of 8.6 referrals per meeting over eight sessions.

Notable Quote:

"One of my members in Gloucester, Vicki Summersby, achieved, using the Customer Care Checklist, 69 referrals in two months... 8.6 referrals to every meeting."
— Julian Lewis [10:33]

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Best Practices for Maximizing the Checklist

Julian shares three primary methods to utilize the Customer Care Checklist effectively:

1. Face-to-Face Engagement: The most productive application is using the checklist during in-person client meetings, such as reviews or prospecting sessions, to identify and cultivate referral opportunities.

2. Differentiation from Competitors: Presenting the checklist to potential clients demonstrates a higher level of client care and commitment, setting you apart from competitors who may not offer such personalized attention.

3. Promotional Use: Incorporate the checklist into online content like blogs to generate referrals for fellow BNI members, thereby fostering a collaborative referral environment.

Notable Quote:

"If you're doing this, you're demonstrating how much you care about your clients, which your competition may not be doing."
— Julian Lewis [09:24]

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Conclusion

The episode emphasizes the importance of authentic client care in generating referrals. By implementing a personalized Customer Care Checklist, BNI members can enhance their referral strategies, foster stronger client relationships, and ultimately achieve greater business success. Julian Lewis encourages listeners to adopt this tool to not only advance their own businesses but also to support their peers within the BNI network.

Final Thoughts:

"We can all achieve success together and help other people do the same."
— Julian Lewis [10:51]

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Additional Resources

Listeners are encouraged to download the sample Customer Care Checklist provided in the podcast to begin creating their own tailored versions. Julian also hints at forthcoming podcast episodes that will delve deeper into his book Infinite Legacy, celebrating BNI's 40th anniversary.

Closing Remarks: Priscilla Rice wraps up the episode by promoting MeisnerAudioPrograms.com, offering tools and inspiration to enhance the BNI experience, and invites listeners to join future episodes for more valuable insights.

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Key Takeaways

• The Customer Care Checklist is a vital tool for proactive referral generation.
• Customization ensures relevance and effectiveness in aligning with specific business needs.
• Authentic client care not only fosters trust but also sets members apart from competitors.
• Real-life success stories, like Vicki Summersby's, validate the efficacy of the checklist.

By integrating these strategies, BNI members can significantly enhance their networking and referral marketing efforts, leading to sustained business growth and mutual success within the BNI community.

Transcript

[Priscilla Rice]

Episode 881, the Customer Care Checklist.

[Dr. Ivan Meisner]

You're listening to the official BI podcast with BI founder and chief visionary officer, Dr. Ivan Meisner. Stay tuned for networking and referral marketing tips from the man who's been called the father of modern networking, along with suggestions and insights into getting the most from your membership in the world's largest networking organization, bni.

[Priscilla Rice]

Hello everybody and welcome back to the official BNI Podcast. I'm Priscilla Rice and I'm coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. And I'm joined on the phone today by the founder and the chief visionary officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Meisner. Hello, Ivan, how are you and where are you?

[Julian Lewis]

I just got back from Miami. I did a membership drive cruise for BNI United States. We had well over 200 people there and great cruise event and I spoke in Miami and now I'm back home.

[Priscilla Rice]

Okay. Was that a fun trip?

[Julian Lewis]

Yes, it's always great to see a lot of members. I'm not a big fan of cruising, but I'm a big fan of members, so it's always, it's always a lot of fun. I spend a lot of time with members at dinner and in, I know, in the bar. What a shock. A few other places.

[Priscilla Rice]

Okay, great.

[Julian Lewis]

So we have with us today a good friend of mine, Julian Lewis. Julian is a portfolio entrepreneur. In 1998 he founded his first business and IT support company and he's an award winning B and I executive director based in the United Kingdom and a founding partner of the coaching company Integris Global. He's co author of the Amazon best selling book Infinite Giving along with me and Greg Davies and I'm really, really proud to say that he's also a co author in my latest book, Infinite Legacy and that book just recently came out. We'll make sure and have a link in this podcast for the Infinite Legacy book. It's, you know, we're about to celebrate BNI's 40th anniversary and so I thought this was the perfect book to do this year before our 40th anniversary, before I bring Julian on. Julian's core belief is the power of collaboration for personal and business success. And he envisions a world where everyone can achieve success simultaneously. Julian, welcome to the B and I podcast.

Oh, it's wonderful to be here, Ivan, as always, wonderful to talk to you and thank you for mentioning the books which both of which I'm very proud of. Legacy is a fantastic book. So really proud of it.

Yeah. I have a good friend who Just finished about half of it and said they were really, really enjoying it. So I love the opening for the book. It's a tremendous opening and I'm going to do a podcast or two on the book coming up. But today's topic is about the Customer Care Checklist and you have a story about a B and I member that you'd like to share and we'd all love to hear it.

Yes, absolutely. So Customer Care Checklist is a way of generating referrals and you say often enough, Ivan, that we shouldn't get distracted by shiny, bright, shiny objects sometimes. So. And before I approached you about doing the podcast, I was very keen that we got some kind of proof behind this process. And one of my members in Gloucester, Vicki Summersby, she achieved, using the Customer Care Checklist. I'm going to explain in a minute, 69 referrals in two months, which, you know, across, across eight meetings is 8.6 referrals to every meeting using the Customer Care Checkers. So it's, it is a, it is a really great tool when used correctly.

So tell me more about it. How did it work? How did she come up with it or you come up with it?

Yeah, so I came up with it. BNI's mission, as you know, is, is having a helping people increase their business and using the structured marketing program, referral marketing. And back in the day we used to give people lots of different tools and it struck me that some of these needed modernizing slightly and especially the tools that allow us to be creators of referrals. You know, the kind of top level people that are out there finding referrals, not just reacting to them or reacting to what people say. So the Customer Care Checklist is a way of us doing that. It's a way of us looking after our clients. Because in bni, we like to invite people we care about to meet people we care about. We do that in chapters. And as owners of businesses, we care about our clients. We certainly care about their success. And we also know in MB and I that we're surrounded by people that can make a very positive impact on people's businesses and people's lives. So the Customer Care Checklist is a way of different members coming up with a different set of questions that would generate referrals.

So the checklist isn't the same for everybody. It's a little bit different for each.

Definitely not the same for everybody.

So give us some hint, give us some hints and tips on ways someone a B and I member can produce their own Customer Care Checklist?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's some real key things about the checklist because I said about it generating referrals for your chapter. One of the things we need to guard against is not literally just going around the chapter and finding a question for everybody in our chapter. Because some questions just won't make sense for us as a supplier to our customers. So the questions must complement our business. As an example, if I was selling insurance, I can quite easily introduce someone to someone that maybe does a tax planning for somebody. That's a very obvious kind of link. I don't do tax planning myself, but I know that my clients should have that service. But if I was introduced them to, say, a plumber in my customer care checklist, that would be a little bit weird. So everyone has to have their own version. And the tip number one is questions that complement your business. The other tip that I talk about is questions that look out for your client's interest. They absolutely have to be in the interest of your client. And this is another tip for BNI members. If there's something you know as a supplier that is in the interest of your client, but you don't actually have anybody in your chat or that is covering that expertise, still put it on your checklist and then you can find someone else within bni, hopefully, but certainly within your network that can cover that area. Because this does have to be about being authentic, that you're looking out for your clients. And I think we're going to put up an example on the podcast for people to download. And it's got about 10 questions on one side, 10 on the other. But the number of questions you ask has to be right for you and your business. So just like you said there, Ivan, it's gonna be different for different people.

And do we know what business? I haven't seen the checklist that you're gonna give me for us to post. What profession is the checklist that we're gonna put up here?

Okay, so the checklist is. I use my experience from a coaching point of view. Okay. But lots of questions where you're within your Power team or your contact sphere. You can work on this in Power Team meetings to swap questions, and lots of them are the same within Power teams anyway.

Okay, so the checklist that we're going to post is a great example, but you don't necessarily use that exact checklist in your own business.

Absolutely not. It has to be right for you and your business. There's possibly also. There will be some differences around the world, different countries and different variations on what we call things and what other people call things. So it's kind of use it as an example, use it as inspiration.

Yeah, Actually, I see it. You did set it. I've got it right here. And you've got questions like, do you have a shareholder partnership agreement? Do you have a suitable commercial insurance? Do you engage in proactive tax planning, pension planning? Yeah, these are good questions to ask. It's a great checklist.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, there's. There's various ways we can. We can create this because it looks a bit daunting when you first see it, but you can ask the members of your chapter. They're. They're the experts in the particular topic. So if I was going to ask a question to introduce you, what would I ask? Yeah, I also know that sometimes when you do that with people, they're like, oh, yeah, I'll get back to you, I'll get it to you soon. And they don't actually get it to you. Yeah. So you can actually use AI to create the questions and supporting material and then go to the expert and say, look, if I said this, is it correct? Because as a great idea, I have.

Found AI to be very effective for doing surveys.

Yeah, it does sometimes make mistakes. Right. So, yeah, it does. So we have to just check it in with the expert. And also we want to make sure that what we're kind of. What we're getting at for their business is correct.

Yes. So you have three ways that the checklist can be used based on your recommendations. What are those three ways?

Yeah, so the most, the most productive way is face to face with a client. So you might be at a review meeting or even actually at a prospecting meeting, because that's. The second way is you can use it to make yourself stand out from the competition. Because if you're doing this, you're introducing yourself, you say, this is my service. And on top of that, we care about our clients so much that here's our customer care checklist that if you come on board for us as a client, we can go through that. In actual fact, why don't you just keep that? Because whether you use us or not, that's it. And I bet your competition are not doing that. And then they're not demonstrating how much they care about their clients. The very last one, quickly, is you can use it as promotional stuff. This is all blogs that you can use online to create referrals for your fellow members.

This is really good stuff. And you have a member who gave based on using this checklist, gave 69 referrals within a period of just two months.

Yep. Using it during client review, she actually emailed it out, which is less effective than face to face as you can understand. But still the results speak for themselves pretty effectively nevertheless.

Yeah, absolutely. What a great suggestion and thank you for sharing this today. Any last thoughts before we wrap up?

I just what you said in my introduction about we can all achieve success together and I want people to take this on board and get the success that they deserve and help other people do the same.

Well, thank you. We're going to have the sample checklist on this podcast, so please take a look at it. And Julian, thank you so much for helping co write Infinite Giving and Infinite Legacy, which is our new book together. I appreciate you.

My pleasure.

Priscilla, over to you.

[Priscilla Rice]

Okay, great. Thank you both so much for the great information. This podcast is sponsored by MeisnerAudioPrograms.com these audio programs will provide you with the tools and the inspiration to powerfully enhance your B and I experience. So check out the great material that's available to [e-mail] and then use the promo code IVAN5O for 50% off of everything. All of the proceeds go to the BI Foundation. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we look forward to having you join us again next week for another exciting episode of the official BI Podcast.

[Julian Lewis]

It.