An Important Lesson in Humility and Giving Customers a Voice

Aurora, IL, March 16, 2016 (Newswire.com) - After over a decade of being a nationwide technology provider to multiple location businesses, Tie National, LLC (TIE) revealed a service that could change how their clients would handle their background music and message on hold. It had everything the clients had asked for and more but clients were not renewing their annual subscriptions and no one really understood why.

CHALLENGE

TIE knew they had to resolve these issues if they were going to be able to further promote this product. More than that, they wanted to make it right for the existing Sound Suite users and win back their loyalty by providing a quality product.

Kathy Powell, Marketing

TIE's Sound Suite bundled background music and message on hold into an on-line portal for remote access to Users are able to preview each message and song, rate them for future reference and even review a history of changes made. They had the right mix of technology and convenience, and even an edge over competition by offering unlimited changes. Even with all its innovative features, Sound Suite wasn't living up to the hype.

SOLUTION

After joining TIE in 2009, Kathy Powell found herself managing the marketing and creative department. She began taking a long look at Sound Suite. It seemingly worked well. The portal was user friendly, and the opportunity was there for enterprise and franchise clients to work with TIE to customize the products even further. The main users at the time were franchise spa owners and Powell noticed that even with the advanced features, these clients were not renewing at the end of their plan term. So Powell did what others had been scared to do; she asked the subscribers what was wrong with the product. She gave the clients a voice.

The candid communications revealed that the trouble was with the play lists. Glitches caused songs to end abruptly, volume to get loud then quiet, and some songs within the play lists were irritating for their guests and staff to listen to. This dream solution was sounding like a nightmare and TIE knew they had to resolve these issues if they were going to be able to further promote this product. More than that, they wanted to make it right for the existing Sound Suite users and win back their loyalty by providing a quality product.

TIE reacted by hooking up Sound Suite within their facility. Employees were subjected to the same songs heard by their clients and responded by taking notes on each song until they had listened to all 1,076 songs from start to finish. When a glitch was heard, employees would take note of the song name and the trouble experienced. TIE used this detailed feedback to re-master each play list for Sound Suite.

RESULT

After Sound Suite had been updated, Powell asked clients to give Sound Suite another chance. This time, the responses were exactly what TIE had hoped for. Not only did TIE now have a solid product that met the needs of their clients, they were able to restore loyalty from clients who previously thought their complaints had fallen on deaf ears. TIE's marketing team will be keeping in touch with users to ask for ongoing feedback and suggestions for future releases and TIE has since built processes to continue to give their clients a voice in order to improve their products and services and build strong client partnerships along the way.

Media Contact
Tie National, LLC, Marketing Dept.
(630) 518-9622