What Are Your Client Turnover and Retention Rates and Why?
As an IT service provider, Acropolis undergoes a lot of scrutiny when talking with prospective clients. We fully understand why, and we actually welcome it. We don’t want there to be any surprises down the road because that inhibits our ability to do our jobs, and it makes for a poor business relationship.
In the spirit of transparency and undergoing scrutiny, we try to answer common questions in articles like this, and something we hear a lot is “What are your client turnover and retention rates?”
Let’s explore those numbers, and we’ll discuss why we think our retention rates are so high.
Client Turnover Rates
Starting with turnover rates, fewer than 10 percent of our clients ever leave our services. That’s a pretty bold claim, and we’ll complement these details in the retention section, but this is the gist of our business model. We aim to please clients to the point that they want to stay with us.
More to the point, this turnover rate includes clients that leave for involuntary reasons. For instance, some of our clients have gone through merger and acquisition processes that forced them to change IT providers. Even including those, our turnover rate sits right around eight percent.
Client Retention Rates
If the turnover rate is 8 percent, then the retention rate should sit around 92 percent, right?
That is certainly the case, but we can expand on these numbers with a few other details that can help illuminate how we do business and how we work with our clients.
On average, all of our clients have been with us for roughly 10 years. We add new clients every year, so this highlights that we have very long-lasting relationships with our business partners. As stated earlier, it’s an essential component of the business model.
In case this isn’t clear enough, we can proudly report that roughly one-third of our clients have been with us for more than 15 years. That’s the longevity of an Acropolis business relationship, and we’re happy to maintain that kind of longevity with any client who will have us.
How Do We Maintain These Rates?
That covers the key numbers and metrics related to our turnover and retention rates, but there’s plenty more to the story. Why do clients stay with us for so long? Do we do something special? Does the secret lie in extremely binding contracts?
It might surprise you to hear this, but from our perspective, the answer to both of those questions is “no.”
We really don’t believe that we’re doing anything special at all. Instead, we strive to provide a consistent, transparent experience. Through that, we’re able to understand what our clients want and how we can take care of them. At the same time, it’s easy for clients to understand where, how, and why we do the things that we do.
Value
If contracts and exit contingencies aren’t how we keep clients around, then what is the secret?
We can’t exactly speak for all of our clients, but we like to believe that it all boils down to value.
Acropolis is built on providing consistent and obvious value to clients. We aren’t just trying to solve IT problems for you. We’re trying to provide you with resources that empower your business and help you succeed on multiple fronts. We just happen to use IT expertise to do that.
In the end, we’re still taking care of IT needs for clients, but the perspective matters a lot when it comes to finding ways to generate value. Consider it from your own perspective. If it seems clear that your IT provider is improving the bottom line of your business, that’s a compelling reason to stay with them, right?
Customer Service
Here’s another perspective on why we don’t claim to be special. Every IT provider has customer service. It’s standard, and most clients reasonably expect customer service to provide a pleasant experience that resolves problems.
We can’t speak for your experience, so maybe high-quality customer support is common, and maybe it isn’t. The point here is that we fully believe that customer service should be about taking care of customers (or clients in our case). It sounds obvious, but we take it seriously.
We try to get to know our clients and understand their businesses. We create a business relationship that goes with the services we offer, and through that relationship, we customize every part of the customer service experience. It doesn’t feel like we’re doing anything special; we’re just working the only way we know how. But, our clients sure seem to appreciate our efforts, and it’s certainly part of our longstanding, positive client relationships.
Culture
Lastly, we need to talk about culture. Every company has its own culture. Some companies might be all about moving fast and being competitive and making aggressive moves. Other companies might focus on empathy and trying to help you feel positive about the whole process. There are plenty of other examples, and most company cultures are more than some two-dimensional catchphrase.
At Acropolis, the culture is pretty simple. We want the process to feel easy on your end. We strive to be reasonable — meaning we take the time to understand your requests and do our best to provide you with the best resolutions we can offer. We try to ensure that you fully understand the technical side of your requests, challenges, and investments. We also try to maintain a fluid approach that readily adapts to new challenges.
Sure, we invest in cutting-edge tools and techniques to stay on top of the industry. We encourage hard work and a go-get-it attitude. But at the foundation of what we do, we try to make your life easier.
If that sounds good to you, then maybe you would be happy joining our very satisfied group of clients.