Write on Time

Introduction

Michelle and Christian from Write on Time Limited joined my Customer Journey and CRM course in November 2021. The course is funded through the European Fund and delivered through the Manchester Metropolitan University. Recently I checked in with them to see how things were and to understand how their journey has been since doing the course. You can find out about the amazing services provided by Write on Time Here

Before we delve into what life is like now, it would be great to understand how you felt before joining the course and what made you sign up?

So, can you describe to us the problems that you were trying to solve before the course started?

Chaos and confusion. I think we were very much doing things on the hop, being reactive in onboarding new clients and the engine room stuff of the business. It was very much in the moment, which is positive in one way, but that also restricted our ability to plan which in turn, impacted on our customer journey with lack of consistency in our approach and missed opportunities to pursue leads.

We were designing services ‘on the go’ versus having a clear service offering that was universally available to people who were approaching our business for the first time.

What was your customer journey like before the course?

We knew we needed a clear and concise pathway with well signposted opportunities to work with us and to house our information in the most efficient way, because a lot of the time we were responding to people across multiple platforms, social media, emails and web enquiries, we were having to increasingly hold larger and larger amounts of information in our collective brains because there wasn’t one place to house everything.

So that is where we think our interest in CRMs came from; how could we house our information in a way that makes sense?

So to have it in one central place was something that we recognized we needed because there were times where just through the momentum of business we would quite honestly forget to tell each other a lead had come in,  so we needed to have something where we would capture everybody, every opportunity, every expressions of interest in one central hub, somewhere that we could both oversee rather than going off and doing it in silo.

What solutions did you try before joining the course?

We tried to implement things like team meetings. We tried to house some information on Word documents and Excel spreadsheets and all kinds of shenanigans.

It was just this sense of not really knowing where to start because we are people who love what we do. So our focus is always in delivery and being present as mentors for our clients. So the back office of the business is something we did on a must do basis, rather than embracing it as a vehicle to actually move our business forward.

So how do you feel now about the customer journey and CRM?

It feels a lot more in control and automated and less like a ‘thing’ that we must consciously think about. We’ve put steps in place to take away some of those tasks that we were doing on the hop.

Can you tell us what has changed as a result of doing the course?

We host a Media Mindset Membership group. When people come into that group as a new subscriber, we now have an orientation email which signposts people to where they can access relevant information, upcoming events and how to contact us with any queries.

That now goes out automatically from the CRM as soon as somebody signs up. Whereas in the past, we were almost waiting for people to ask us a question and then handling it in the moment. Now it feels much more like people can enter the group and hit the ground running because they know exactly where and how to access important information. We know this was a big, big outcome from the course.

Also, when somebody signs up to the membership, we book a call in with them in advance, which is their first catchup call, so that there is a structure in place for us to follow up with them and see how they’re finding the group and what areas of additional support they might need. This was something that simply didn’t exist at all. We did this course and sounds crazy to say, we had not thought to do that, but sometimes you just need someone to hold a mirror up and show you opportunities to do things better.

A further example is relating to our six-month subscription members.  We’re now in the process of when they are coming up to the end of their subscription, we contact them a month beforehand and establish their intent, whether they want to stay with us or are there areas of additional support they need or what’s going well for them in the group. We’re not just waiting for the end of the subscription to arrive and then just reaching out and saying, do you want to continue?  We are actually building time in advance to really understand what their needs are and what their intentions are. And even in the past month, we’ve done that four times and three out of the four people wanted to stay on.

They appreciated the fact that we had reached out and it is an effective addition to forward planning for our business. We’ve got everybody’s dates recorded in our CRM now to record when their subscription started or when it’s due to end so we can keep a closer eye on where things are up to. And, again, none of that would’ve been in place had it have not been through the course.

Did you have any reservations about joining the course?

We would say yes. We are quite spontaneous and have to be in the mood to do certain tasks.  We are much more comfortable being playful and creative than dealing with administrative tasks. Our concern was that it was going be database driven and very analytical and all about data entry and all that kind of thing. It took us two years to start doing QuickBooks.

If you are a person who has more of a personality type like this, then we would really encourage you to put those kinds of concerns to one side because the value of doing this work actually means that we’ve got more time to be creative and more time to be playful (because we’re not constantly having to do back office tasks simply because we didn’t make the effort to automate them).

Final words

We are really pleased that we took this opportunity, and we really hope that anyone reading this who wants to move their business forward (and do it in a more organized and structured way) but still create room for playfulness and fun and creativity signs up. We 100% recommend this amazing course.

 

More about Michelle and Christian and their Business – Write on Time Ltd

Christian and Michelle are former journalists turned PR pros and they help business owners just like you to figure out how to publicize your business with stories that are genuinely interesting to the media and to take your first steps to getting those stories published in newspapers, magazines or broadcast on TV and the radio.

They have worked with over 3000 different business owners in the past two years alone from every sector you can possibly think of. They have offerings that start from free challenges all the way through to our done-for-you packages. But the best way to find out about them is to visit their website or on Facebook.

Sound Familiar?

If any of Michelle and Christian’s challenges resonate with you, or you just want to learn more about CRM and my services, book a chat with me.