Soar to Success December 2021

SOAR TO SUCCESS / Feature Article “There is an art and a science to what we do. What questions need to be asked? Who are the people, or groups that need to be surveyed to find accurate data? These questions need to be determined before the first survey is conducted.” Throughout her over 20 years in this business, Darlene has seen too many businesses get bogged down by focusing on a certain customer satisfaction score. She believes there’s more to it. It’s understandingwhere you standwith your customers, where you’re at risk, where your opportunities are, even for your prospective customers, what are the opportunities out there? Her focus is to take that data and those scores, and use it to help drive business growth. She makes it her goal to help every client reach the next level. She wants her businesses to actuallyunderstandwhat their clients perceive, what risks the company has with their clients, plus what future opportunities are available. “We want our clients to understand the data and use it to accelerate customer relationships.” Businesses realize that finding new customers is expensive. Performing the correct market research and gaining more understanding of past and current customers many times leads to increased sales to current clients at a much lower cost than seeking entirely new ones. “How can a business make more money from its current customers? How do you make them happier in the process, so they buy even more from you in the future? That’s what customer acceleration™ is all about. That’s how it’s different from customer satisfaction.” In her early career, Darlene worked for an IT company and was very successful. At the age of 27, she became the youngest, as well as, the first woman in that company, to be handed her own region, the state of Ohio. The company was committed to customer and employee satisfaction. Implementing her training to maximize customersatisfactionandemployeeawareness, her region grew from $2 million in sales to over $27 million in just six years. “We had the number one region, with the top recruiters and sales force. We hit our annual