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Businesses can often become so busy building buzz around new innovations in order to attract new business that their number-one lead source - current customers - gets put on the back burner.

In today's frenzied era of change - whether that be constantly shifting healthcare reform regulations, daily announcements of mergers and acquisitions, or a steady stream of new healthcare IT product solutions, current customers can occasionally get lost in the shuffle. Businesses can often become so busy building buzz around new innovations in order to attract new business that their number-one lead source - current customers - gets put on the back burner. 

Some have said recently that public companies may feel more beholden to shareholders than their client base, while private companies feel no such burden. No matter how companies - public or private - define their success, all successful companies should realize that nearly just as much attention should be paid to fostering the relationship with their current customers as that placed on seeking new ones. 

"We believe that if our customers are successful, then we're going to be successful," says Eric Grunden, Vice President of Client Services at Greenway Medical Technologies, an EHR vendor based in Carrollton, Georgia. 

Greenway has for a number of years stuck with the tagline "What's Your Experience?," a reflection of the company's number-one core value - service. Greenway conducts up to 80 'What's Your Experience?' customer site visits each year to ensure that the entire process - from sales to post-implementation - has gone smoothly and all questions and concerns have been attended to. "Our executive team is required to do at least four apiece throughout the year - on site, face to face," Grunden adds. 

The company's annual PrimeLeader customer conference is a greater extension of these visits, offering users from across the country the opportunity to come together and give their candid feedback. 

"As with any national conference, we roll out new services and software, and have a lot of events to where our customers can be a part of focus panels and advisory committees around not just the product, but with regard our presence in Washington as well," he says. "We really want to hear what our customers are concerned about, and whether or not we're on the right track. Are we representing them the right way? Because they don't have a presence in Washington, so we need to. More than that is finding out what are the services that we need to offer today that we didn't five years ago." 

The balancing act at Greenway of devoting time and resources to attracting new customers and maintaining current ones is delicate. "At the end of the day, if we take care of our current customers, the new customers automatically come," Grunden says. "I think if you look at how we're regarded within this industry, what our customers are saying and the fact that our best reference is our existing customer base - that's our best marketing. That goes farther than anything a magazine ad can do or any booth at MGMA. 

"We know our number-one referral source is our customers. It's something we pride ourselves on. I think it's a culture here. I guess it's a Southern thing - you dance with the one that brung ya." 

Source: Billian's HealthDATA