Part Two: Does Your Service Provider Care Enough About You and Your Company?

Happy Valentine’s Day!  While you rightfully don’t expect to be gifted a heart-shaped box of sea-salted, dark chocolate truffles from your background screening provider today, you should feel appreciated by them. Like any good relationship, dependable client care starts with listening, follows with understanding, and feeds off of honest communication. Expert in client management Ollyvia Banda, Client Services Manager, Verified First shared her thoughts on how to deliver and maintain superior client service.

A greatest gift you can give a client is time

Many customer service organizations require that support staff end client phone calls in three minutes or less. The goal of these organizations is meeting operational costs over what should be priority -- client satisfaction. “If it takes 45 minutes to walk a client through ordering a background report or an hour answering a client question, that’s more than okay, as long as we answer and resolve that issue for our client,” said Ollyvia.

Learn and own-up to mistakes

No one’s perfect, which is why Verified First has a 98 percent client satisfaction rating for case resolutions. Seriously though, for every instance in which a client contacts Verified First, we apologize for the less-than-positive experience, work it until it’s resolved, ask them for feedback on how we can improve, and thank them with heartfelt words and a gift card. Every client engagement is a learning experience, and we embrace the opportunity to make it a delightful one for the client. ​

Client care from the heart

Sounds funny to tell talent acquisition professionals this tip, but here it goes: hire people with heart to build a team of authentic, caring personnel. At Verified First we screen candidates for this attribute that’s innate, vs. learned. It’s about hiring caring people who are not only great at, but are passionate about being great listeners, are generous with their time, strive to understand, and are highly motivated to solve issues, and quickly.
“I’m fortunate to have a really great staff that genuinely cares about our clients and about the quality of work that they do. So taking care of our clients is just natural. It’s what we’re supposed to do,” said Ollyvia.

TIP: Find a background screening provider that’s got a big smart heart. Start with a conversation with the provider, then ask yourself:

1. Do you feel like you could love working with them?
2. Did they provide you with insights, or a new way at looking at something?
3. Were they able to answer all your questions, and were they knowledgeable?
4. Do you feel like if you were in a tough spot, they’d be there for you?

Today there’s one out of every three companies currently looking for a new screening provider, according to Aptitude Research. If you’re one of them, we hope we’ve helped you in your quest. And if you aren’t already working with Verified First, we’d love to help you! ​