When it comes to business growth and expansion, relationships are essential. You need to have good relationships with your customers so they keep coming back to use your services. You also need solid relationships with suppliers to keep your business moving. Most importantly, you need partnerships that will help you to grow your business into new markets and explore new opportunities.
“Relationships are crucial to navigating the new world of work,” says Carel Scheepers, General Manager: Sales at Citiq Prepaid. “Everybody’s learning how to manage life in the current climate. It’s difficult and uncertain. This makes it important to nurture people and work with companies that want to help you achieve your business goals.”
The key is to find partners that share your vision and that provide you with the tools you need to pursue it. In the electrical contractor space in South Africa, there are numerous challenges that have to be overcome in order to become a qualified electrician and to start your own business. There are complexities around finding quality products and decent support. Simply put, there are plenty of potholes on the way to the customer but the right partner will be the one yelling the directions in your ear so you don’t twist an axle and get where you’re going, on time.
“When you partner with Citiq Prepaid, we go out of our way to make sure that you have what you need to drive your business forward,” says Scheepers. “We have worked with aspiring electrical contractors, helping them to find the right qualification pathways and providing them with blog posts and information that they can use to get their DOL and start their business.”
Citiq Prepaid developed a complete series of articles designed to help people make heads and tails of the complicated electrical contractor qualification process. This commitment to helping people achieve their business dreams is one of the pillars holding up the company and one that it continues to invest into through innovation and development.
“Our product range is also carefully curated to reassure electrical contractors of absolute quality,” says Scheepers. “It’s important to have the right tools for the customer and if a product is sub-standard or faulty, the contractor’s reputation is as badly impacted as that of the service provider. We have made quality the gold standard for our sub-metering solutions, investing into innovative and high-end meters that can withstand all that life throws at them.”
Citiq Prepaid has also invested significant resources into providing customers with hands-on support with two well-manned call centres. Customers can receive ongoing support for any technical issues that may arise, and this support is extended to contractors should they need guidance during an installation or around a specific recommendation for a client. These call centres are further bolstered by the fact that Citiq Prepaid’s solutions are just easy to use.
“We believe in building solutions that are easy to use, understand and implement,” says Scheepers. “There’s enough complexity in life right now, nobody wants to have to spend time fiddling with a complicated sub-metering solution. Our products are designed to be simple throughout so anyone can get started with installing or using them.”
Citiq Prepaid’s offerings extend into the virtual world as well. The company has developed an online platform that allows for both customer and landlord to access reports that can refine their usage and their spend. These reports can be customised and managed to suit specific circumstances and they can potentially help identify a leak or a problem long before it becomes a really expensive problem.
“Partnerships help you do more with your time and your business,” concludes Scheepers. “The right partnership, with us, will help you to grow your business with a trusted team that understands what you need and helps you succeed every step of the way.
