Any company must have a professional interest in gaining and keeping customers, but the best have an interest in upholding customer care at their heart. Koris is a shining example of such an organisation, according to Sales and Marketing Director Craig McCalley.
It is instinctive for Koris to put customers front and centre - no matter what - a policy that is paying off in bucket loads, according to McCalley. Little of this comes as a surprise to scholars of customer care, but the Koris philosophy adds a new dimension to client satisfaction and retention, and the statistics speak for themselves in loud volume. The company hasn't lost a customer to a service issue for over eight years, and there is unlikely to be the tiniest deviation from this established formula.
In 2007 four directors and the senior team of an acquired company set up Koris, a fresh business with a sharp focus on its 'serviceFirst' ethos. "From the outset Koris has been passionate about customer experience," said McCalley. "There have been no sharp turning points in our development, more a continuous elevation of service that revolves around customer retention, growth of customers, revenue, profit and the development of dedicated, valued staff. Just saying you have good customer service is not good enough."
So true. Small wonder Koris' turnover of over £4 million generates profitable year-on-year growth of 28-47 per cent. Its circa 30 headcount services a customer base of 200 user companies and global organisations with thousands of employees. "Our business will continue its profitable growth at the current rate reaching £10 million turnover in the next three-five years," added McCalley.
Underpinning this growth is the firm's much praised ServiceFirst approach, enabling it to build a strong maintenance and managed service base that is responsive, proactive and takes ownership of all issues. "Organisations no longer need to tolerate poor service," added McCalley. "Customers are also far more educated about their requirements so we ensure that all staff from sales through to engineering provide added value."
We all understand that offering an outstanding customer experience leads to profitable growth, but only with the right employees on board. "Our biggest challenge is the time it takes to find the right staff," added McCalley. "We want people who are not just capable but also have the right outlook. Finding engineers with our passionate ServiceFirst desire can be tricky. It is easy to find qualified and experienced engineers but more difficult to find them with the right customer service attitude, mainly because of the way they have been previously managed and targeted."
Upholding the ServiceFirst ethos is Koris' primary occupation but sticking to core values and 'what we are good at' is an equally important modus operandi. Not for nothing did Koris scoop a brace of important BT Business Partner Sales awards - Growth Partner of the Year 2014 and Acquisition Partner of The Year 12 months earlier.
"Koris made a strategic decision to partner with a core group of key vendors enabling us to ensure we have the highest level of skill, technical expertise and experience," said McCalley. "We are a voice and data managed service provider, so we focus on providing solutions that enable customers to increase their revenues and reduce costs. Koris reduces and manages risk for multi-site organisations that may also have disparate or remote workforces."
In terms of LAN and WAN the company partners with Cisco for hardware and BT for circuits. Mitel is the preferred option for addressing opportunities in IP telephony and contact centres, an eight year partnership that delivers over 35 per cent growth year-on-year. "Koris' early investment in Lync catalysed our fastest area of growth, in particular high availability voice and integration into legacy systems," commented McCalley. "So much so that many partners outsource this element to us due to the complexity of the solution. This investment has given us not only the platform but also the experience that our competitors find difficult to compete against."
There is more to Koris' knack for achieving notable successes: McCalley's experience is the ultimate sign of a Director whose clarity of vision defines his leadership approach. McCalley's 20 years experience in the IT and telco industry began at a comms distributor in telesales. He moved to a small start-up and progressed from internal sales to Sales Director achieving £18 million turnover. This business was later acquired by Azzurri.
"I have been lucky to work with some great people in start-up, VC backed, AIM listed and LSE global organisations," commented McCalley. "This gave me a deep understanding of business types and their different situations, including M&A, start-up, turnaround and growth. My current role will continue to focus on developing our successful sales team while ensuring ongoing customer satisfaction and profitable growth."