Perintäritari: Customer Feedback Is the Best Marketing

When your mission is to help businesses collect their receivables with quality and customer relationship, the customer experience has to be right. Perintäritari has been using Trustmary to measure customer experience and collect referrals since 2019. With a strong focus on quality customer service, new customers come from referrals alone, and there hasn’t been much need for sales calls over the years.

Watch the full story in the video (in Finnish):

Benefits of Trustmary:

• Maximum benefit for your marketing budget
• Customer satisfaction survey, collection, and display of testimonials in one package
• Growing customer understanding
• Internal understanding of the quality of work
• References are easy to find online
• Reviews can be found not only on their own website

Perintäritari (direct translation: “Debt collection knight”) is a Finnish debt collection agency that has been operating since 1989. Second-generation entrepreneurs Juha Järvinen and Jussi Saarijärvi started as entrepreneurs in 2017, initially doing new sales in addition to managing old customer relationships.

– Once we had raised the first euros for marketing with the revenue funding, we thought carefully about what kind of marketing we wanted to invest in. We decided to use Trustmary’s referral tool, and the rest of the marketing budget was spent on sponsoring local sports, says Järvinen.

The cooperation with Trustmary has been long and close, and as a result, new customers no longer need to be acquired by the company itself, but are largely acquired through existing customers.

– We are in a business of trust, and what others say about us is extremely important. We can always market what we do ourselves, but when you hear it from others, it gives us credibility, Järvinen continues.

Return on marketing investment

When the first marketing effort was to introduce Trustmary and send out a customer feedback survey, the result was a stack of public testimonials.

– We immediately put the testimonials on our own website and used them for customer acquisition. We used them in sales calls and directed potential customers to read more reviews on our website, Järvinen recalls.

References gave credibility, helped to build trust, and helped to speak the same language as the client.

– Customers are the best salespeople, and they should be used in sales. At the same time, customer feedback also gave us confidence in sales, as we could speak for ourselves and tell our customers what others thought of our services, says Järvinen.

Within a few years, the company’s marketing investments in a referral tool and sponsorship of a local sports club paid off, and today, almost all new customers come inbound.

Lightweight customer feedback process

The work of a “debt collection knight” is all about customer service. The company not only serves its clients but also represents them in debt collection situations.

High levels of customer service and satisfaction are among the company’s most important assets, and they want to maintain it at all costs.

– Twice a year, we send out a customer loyalty survey to all of our clients. The most important thing for us is to find areas for improvement so that our cooperation can continue in the future, says Järvinen.

After the survey, Järvinen calls customers personally to discuss issues in more detail, which allows for a deeper understanding of the customer and the development of better operating models.

– We go through customer feedback in detail twice a year, also among all our staff. These are important places to openly highlight everyone’s successes and areas for improvement, he says.

Because customer satisfaction is important, a small business needs to find ways to measure and analyze customer feedback in a way that fits its daily life and business practices. Järvinen feels that Trustmary is the perfect tool for small businesses.

– While we get customer feedback, the Trustmary survey also allows us to collect recommendations.

Social proof brings credibility

The recommendations collected through Trustmary have been widely used.

– We have embedded feedback in key areas on our website, such as our pricing and contact information pages, so that potential customers know what current customers think of us, Järvinen says.

Updating your website is easy when everything is done through the Trustmary tool.

– Every six months, I review what new feedback came in from the latest survey. At the same time, I update fresh feedback to replace old feedback where necessary.

Positive customer feedback should also be shared through channels other than your own website. Perintäritari has a concept called “feedback of the month”, where the company highlights one piece of customer feedback each month on its social media channels.

– This is also a way to showcase our customers, Järvinen says.

Credibility is built from small pieces

Small businesses have limited budgets and resources, so every service and measure needs to be carefully considered.

– Trustmary is a great tool that saves time and adds credibility to our customer experience, as Perintäritari does not collect feedback itself but does it through a third party, Järvinen underlines.

The practical benefits for credibility can be difficult to measure, but Järvinen gives a very simple practical example.

– A couple of years ago, a customer googled “Perintäritari experiences”, and Trustmary’s page with all our feedback came up first. The client went to the website, read the feedback, and contacted us saying, “Hey, I read so many companies’ feedback about you that I would love to get to know you better,” Järvinen recalls.

Other search results for this search are from the Perintäritari website, which diminishes the credibility of the results, even though the same feedback is given there.

– The company in my example is still our client, and – directly speaking – this one client has already paid back the money spent on Trustmary many times over, he continues.

Marketing effort vs. benefit

Measuring how much money is spent on marketing is often perceived as difficult, but Järvinen uses common sense.

– If a client says they have become a client after seeing our feedback or visiting our review page on Trustmary, I will attribute all assignments and new clients coming through that client as Trustmary referrals, Järvinen explains.

The most important step in measuring ROI is to ask all new customers how they became a customer.

Järvinen has been pleased with Trustmary.

– If we were to break off our cooperation with Trustmary now, I dread to think what would happen to us. From a small business perspective, Trustmary is a superior referral tool, he says.

Although the marketing budget is tight for a small company, Järvinen wouldn’t stop using Trustmary.

– I don’t think we could do it with old customer recommendations alone. We need fresh ones to build trust. I wouldn’t dare stop using Trustmary, Järvinen laughs.