Business Info - i142

01732 759725 41 magazine IT SUPPORT Many businesses pay lip service to customer service without ever putting their fine words into practice. London-based IT support provider Totality Services is an exception. Its commitment to customer service, validated by sky-high customer review ratings, has fuelled the company’s impressive growth and enabled it to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Totality Services was set up by school friends Luis Navarro and Pedro Martins in 2008 when they were both already in full-time employment. They ran it as a hobby business until 2016 when they quit their jobs to commit fully to the business. “We grew organically to the point where we had about 40 or 50 clients and couldn’t handle it by ourselves anymore. So, three years ago, we quit our jobs and went full time with the business. Since then, we’ve grown massively.We now have a team of 20 and this financial year we’ll probably hit £2.2 million in revenue, up from just over £200K three years ago,” explained Navarro. Totality Services provides end- to-end IT support to London-based businesses with 5 to 100 employees. This includes the supply and installation of IT hardware, software and solutions; remote and on-site support; IT services, such as consultancy, data migration, mailbox migration and help with office moves; and IT security solutions. “We now have 120 clients in a wide range of verticals, from FCA-regulated financial services businesses to law firms, marketing agencies, modelling agencies and estate agents.We support some well known names as well, like the Aldwych Theatre and the Dominion Theatre,” said Navarro. A question of trust From the outset, Navarro and Martins had a laser focus on customer service, which also underpinned their marketing Don’t take my word for it… and customer acquisition activities, including the use of Trustpilot customer reviews to improve their trustworthiness and online visibility. “In our sector, it’s all about trust,” explained Navarro. “In London, there are about 200 other companies like ours – boutique IT support companies – and every one of them is fighting to get clients. If a prospect is looking to switch or to start with a provider from scratch, the first thing they do is go to Google and type in ‘Business IT support London’. If somebody did that, our ad would appear on Google Ads with a star rating. That gave us a massive advantage over our competitors who weren’t doing anything like that at the time.” This advantage evaporated two years ago when Google increased the number of customer reviews needed for its star ratings from 20 to 150 – more than Totality Solutions’ entire customer base. “We lost that competitive edge and saw the number of leads go down rapidly. It made a huge difference,” said Navarro. Help desk integration In order to increase the number of reviews it was able to generate, Navarro decided to integrate the Totality Services help desk platform with its customer review platform so that every time a problem was resolved the end user would get an email asking them to review the engineer’s performance and their overall customer experience. When Trustpilot was unable to do that, Navarro started looking for a provider that could, which led him to Feefo. “Feefo had built an integration with an API called Zapier, which enabled us to do what we wanted. Now, each time a help desk ticket is resolved, the end user receives an email from Feefo asking them to review the engineer performance.We implemented this in June last year (2018) and since then have had about 600 odd reviews. In the last 12 months we have had a star rating of 4.9 out of 5, making us the highest rated support company in London and earning us a Feefo Gold Trusted Service Award.” Navarro points out that as well as being an effective sales tool, Feefo is great for generating leads. “If you go to our website you will see our Feefo review score in quite a few places. If a prospect lands on our website, we usually get a lead out of it,” he said. A developing relationship Since that initial implementation, Totality Services has continued to develop its relationship with Feefo. This includes a second Zapier integration, which feeds Feefo data into Totality’s BrightGuage reporting platform so that each client’s monthly help desk report now includes that company’s own Feefo star rating for the month. Feefo is also helping it with its website redesign. “We are currently rebuilding our website, using a newWordpress theme that is going to make our website a lot lighter and a lot faster. Feefo has got a really good in-house SEO team who are helping us to optimise our site as much as possible. They also have some really good widgets for Wordpress that will give extra visibility to our star rating on the website.” Summing up, Navarro points out that in the short time they have been working together, Feefo has become a key supplier, helping Totality Services to attract, convert and retain clients. “For me, selling is now an absolute joy and a pleasure. I can say ‘Don’t listen to me, just go onto our Feefo page and have a look at what our clients have to say’. It makes the sales process so simple. Everyone says ‘Wow, you’ve done a good job with this business.’ But it’s more about what Feefo does that has enabled that,” he said. Luis Navarro We now have a team of 20 and this financial year we’ll probably hit £2.2 million in revenue, up from just over £200K three years ago London-based IT support provider Totality Services has prospered through its use of customer reviews as a sales and marketing tool. James Goulding finds out more from co-founder and sales director Luis Navarro

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