You're a customer retention professional. What project management skills do you need to succeed?
As a customer retention professional, you have a crucial role in keeping your clients happy, loyal, and profitable. But to do your job effectively, you also need to manage multiple projects, tasks, and stakeholders. That's why you need to develop some essential project management skills that can help you plan, execute, and monitor your retention strategies. Here are some of the most important ones.
Scope management is the process of defining and controlling what is and what is not included in your project. It helps you avoid scope creep, which is when your project expands beyond its original goals and expectations. Scope management also helps you align your project with your client's needs and expectations, and avoid wasting time and resources on unnecessary or irrelevant activities. To manage your scope, you need to document your project objectives, deliverables, requirements, and boundaries, and communicate them clearly to your client and team. You also need to track and manage any changes or requests that may affect your scope, and evaluate their impact and feasibility.
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- Organization skills to manage multiple tasks and customer accounts efficiently. - Time management to prioritize activities that maximize customer engagement and satisfaction. - Effective communication to convey plans and feedback clearly with both customers and team members. - Problem-solving abilities to address and resolve customer issues promptly. - Leadership to inspire and guide your team towards achieving retention goals. - Analytical skills to interpret customer data and adjust strategies accordingly. - Adaptability to respond to changing customer needs and market conditions. - Risk management to anticipate and mitigate potential challenges impacting customer loyalty.
Time management is the process of estimating, scheduling, and monitoring your project's duration and deadlines. It helps you complete your project on time and within budget, and deliver your retention outcomes to your client. Time management also helps you prioritize your tasks, manage your workload, and avoid procrastination and stress. To manage your time, you need to break down your project into manageable phases and tasks, and assign realistic durations and dependencies to each one. You also need to create a project schedule that shows your milestones, deliverables, and deadlines, and update it regularly. You also need to track your progress and performance, and adjust your plan if needed.
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Na minha experiência no desenvolvimento de projetos internos e externos pude perceber algo óbvio mas que faz muito sentido. Ao monitorar de perto o cronograma do projeto, os líderes podem identificar rapidamente quaisquer dificuldades ou problemas potenciais e tomar medidas corretivas antes que se tornem grandes obstáculos. Ter um cronograma bem formulado e cumprindo prazos e diretrizes a liderança tem mais controle.
Quality management is the process of ensuring that your project meets or exceeds your client's expectations and standards. It helps you deliver high-quality retention results, such as customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention rate, and lifetime value. Quality management also helps you prevent or correct any errors, defects, or issues that may affect your project's quality, and improve your processes and practices. To manage your quality, you need to define your quality criteria and metrics, and measure them throughout your project. You also need to implement quality control and assurance activities, such as testing, reviewing, auditing, and feedback. You also need to identify and resolve any quality problems or risks, and implement corrective or preventive actions.
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In my belief it engages that, the customer receive the compatible and reliable service from your business, which majorly includes their satisfaction. Quality management is earliest a set of process and procedures, which enables execution and development of areas of an organisation to fulfil customer requirements. By paying close attention to what your customers want and need, helps to elevate positive market acquisition and improve in loyal clients building.
Communication management is the process of planning, executing, and monitoring your project's communication. It helps you keep your client, team, and other stakeholders informed, engaged, and aligned with your project's goals and status. Communication management also helps you build trust, rapport, and collaboration with your project's participants, and manage their expectations and feedback. To manage your communication, you need to identify your communication needs, goals, and methods, and create a communication plan that outlines who, what, when, where, why, and how you will communicate. You also need to execute your communication plan effectively, using clear, concise, and consistent messages and channels. You also need to monitor and evaluate your communication effectiveness, and make improvements if needed.
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When you are dealing with an at risk customer, one of the most important things you can do is over communicate. End every meeting by reiterating next steps and agreeing on a follow-up time. Send a recap email. When you say you'll follow-up - give them a timeframe and meet it! Communicate is a huge part of building trust with the customer that you are commited to resolving their issues.
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Ter uma comunicação ativa e assertiva é fundamental para o desenvolvimento de projetos. Não é apenas desenvolver a comunicação interna para cumprir metas, deve-se focar e sempre ter em mente se sua comunicação vai atrapalhar, confundir ou realmente fazer a diferença no desenvolvimento interno ou do projeto. A comunicação pode ser a arma perfeita ou se mal direcionada pode mais atrapalhar que ajudar.
Risk management is the process of identifying, analyzing, and responding to your project's uncertainties and threats. It helps you minimize the negative impact of your project's risks, and maximize the positive opportunities. Risk management also helps you prepare for and cope with any changes or challenges that may affect your project's success, and improve your decision-making and problem-solving skills. To manage your risk, you need to conduct a risk assessment that identifies and prioritizes your project's potential risks, and their causes, effects, and likelihood. You also need to develop a risk response plan that defines how you will avoid, mitigate, transfer, or accept each risk. You also need to monitor and control your risk exposure, and implement your risk response plan if needed.
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Na minha experiência desenvolver um processo eficaz sempre tendo a melhoria contínua como sua aliada você pode prever e mitigar riscos corporativos. Sempre focamos em desenvolvimento de um processo que possua resultados positivos e isso é a base para inúmeras prevenções de riscos, atrasos, falhas e insucesso.
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Document risks, establish accountability owners, and execute disciplined follow-up with a calm, problem-solving mindset to ensure those risks do not turn into issues. This takes finesse and skill, from the RAID log to the SteerCo. A risk response plan should be part of the mutual agreements established with client stakeholders at the outset. And, as the saying goes, “Bad news does not age well”.
Stakeholder management is the process of identifying, engaging, and managing your project's stakeholders. Stakeholders are anyone who has an interest or influence in your project, such as your client, team, managers, suppliers, competitors, or regulators. Stakeholder management helps you understand and meet your stakeholder's needs and expectations, and gain their support and cooperation. Stakeholder management also helps you manage any conflicts, issues, or changes that may arise from your stakeholder's involvement, and enhance your project's reputation and value. To manage your stakeholder, you need to perform a stakeholder analysis that identifies and categorizes your stakeholder's power, interest, and attitude. You also need to create a stakeholder engagement plan that defines how you will communicate, interact, and influence each stakeholder. You also need to execute and monitor your stakeholder engagement plan, and measure your stakeholder satisfaction and feedback.
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Make sure you understand what's most important to each stake holder - what is the bottom line to retain them? Every conversation with them should start with that and an honest assessment of the status of achieving intended results the plan to get there. Be honest, be humble and listen more than you talk.
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You are at your most tenuous position when you are at risk of losing the customer. Even small acts will help build trust. Good project management is on of the easiest ways to do that. Tell them what you'll do, do it (or even better overachieve), then tell them what you did and the impact. Rinse/repeat!
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