The retention department, or if you prefer, customer care, is a safe and quiet haven in every company. At Imper, it is managed by Head of Customer Service Zdeněk Jodas . He says about his job that it is primarily intended for meticulous people with a great sense of order, who like to take care of clients and systematically work to make them feel like they are in a bubble. So if you are looking for a new job in a store in a key account position, come and see with us what retention looks like at Imper.
Zdeněk, what is the role of the retention department within the company?
The agenda is very broad. We provide full service for everything that is so-called under our roof, i.e. the data applications Merk, Leady and Monitora . First, the client is trained with us, which is in charge of acquisition salespeople. We have set up cooperation with them as needed. The division into acquisition and retention salespeople is not dogmatic for us, for example in the case of optimization, when colleagues from retention are present during the setting up of the service at the client as part of the acquisition.
As soon as the client is “in the door”, we enter the scene. The client is transferred to the care of the retention department and everything that follows is already in our hands. That is, education on how to use the applications, technical support, contract extensions and any subsequent business of all our products – cross-sell, upsell. And let me not forget, strategic business development is also part of it.
Who is retention work ideal for? Do you see any similar patterns among your colleagues?
All of the retention people have experience with business, but they place a higher emphasis on the client, they are more relationship-oriented people, oriented towards long-term results. Retention is a conservative department, we try to keep clients satisfied and educated. We give the acquisition salespeople feedback from clients, we are actually such business clairvoyants.
In addition, we look for as many ways as possible to work with the client's potential, to come up with procedures to help the client. The common characteristics of all my colleagues are certainly consistency, a sense of order, a love of processes. They like peace, stability and a clearly defined agenda. What they definitely must have (and do have) are presentation skills and the ability to talk to everyone in loan database the company, from the boss to the last person. Their strongest advantage is certainly the ability to sense the client's needs.
How many of you work in the department altogether?
Currently 6, including one colleague on maternity leave, plus assistant Anička, who works for us at the university. But we would like to expand the team, because thanks to our skilled acquisition department, we are quickly gaining new clients.
And when we mention the acquisition department, what kind of people are there?
Good question. The typology is actually completely opposite there, but they are also quite similar people: dominant, each is an original with a different superpower. For example, one of them focuses on winning key clients, has incredible knowledge about the application, his superpower is sales thanks to his knowledge. Another is a specialist in government contracts, a master of the business craft, one of the colleagues is an incredible hard worker, and another colleague is top-notch in client presentations and networking. The Avengers.