Using a CX vision to guide your growth strategy — Jeff Toister
Case Study: GreatAmerica Financial Services
GreatAmerica provides equipment financing solutions to businesses. It’s the largest family-owned equipment financing company in the United States.
CX Vision
We help our customers achieve greater success
GreatAmerica uses its mission statement as the CX vision. Its primary customers are businesses that sell office, medical, or other types of equipment to their customers.
CX Strategy
The company provides financing solutions to help its customers sell more.
Account teams work hard to understand each customer’s unique needs, and then craft a financing solution to help that customer improve sales.
“Our employees care a lot about whether customers win,” said Joe Terfler, GreatAmerica’s chief financial officer. “We try to say ‘yes’ to our customers as much as we can.”
For example, GreatAmerica helped one office equipment supplier combine billing for multiple product lines into a simplified monthly invoice. The simplified invoicing made it easier to sell more services, which led to a 20 percent revenue increase.
GreatAmerica’s customer focused strategy has helped it become the envy of the competition.
One rival executive told me GreatAmerica was hands-down their top competitor. He was frustrated because his company consistently lost business to GreatAmerica because of their superior customer experience.
GreatAmerica is featured in Chapter Four of The Guaranteed Customer Experience, How to Win Customers by Keeping Your Promises.
Case Study: Waterton
Waterton is a real estate investment and management company that focuses on multifamily and hospitality properties. It manages approximately 30,000 apartment units.
CX Vision
Resitality®
Resitality is Waterton’s brand promise. It’s a combination of the words “residential” and “hospitality.” It reflects Waterton’s commitment to managing its properties in a way that residents feel welcome and at home.
“Hospitality is meeting a stranger, and embracing that stranger as a neighbor,” said Stephanie Brock, Managing Director of Property Management.
CX Strategy
Waterton is a value-add investor. It invests in apartment communities and increase their value by making improvements to the property and the resident experience.
Improving properties makes it easier to attract new residents and retain existing ones. Brock also stresses the importance of building community.
“Providing those opportunities where they can come together and get to know each other, they want to stay where they’re known, and where they know their neighbor,” said Brock.
Properties host a wide range of community activities, such as wellness talks, community service projects, and even parties with food trucks.
These events attract as many as 50 percent of a community’s residents, and help residents build stronger connections between themselves and the community.
Waterton’s community-focused, value-add approach has contributed to steady growth. It now has more than $10 billion in assets under management, a more than 60 percent increase in the past three years.
Learn more about Brock’s customer-focused leadership from this interview.