--0000000000006a608605f6ce250a Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Good Afternoon Keri I hope you're well and had a nice weekend. Recently, I have heard quite a bit of conversation around client retention and considerations on why clients may not always feel connected to the office team. Client retention was always at the forefront of my mind as an HCA owner and as you know, I am a huge advocate for client appreciation and loyalty programs. I have some thoughts here on Chen's burning question "why do clients love their caregivers but basically just put up with the office team? First, I am thrilled that attention has turned back to client retention rather than solely focussing on client starts but it's interesting to me that Client Success Managers have been basically stripped of all our tools to see this through. The new Operating Model sees that CSM's manage at least 13,000 hours with a stretch goal of 16,000 hours which has diminished our valuable face time with clients. From an historical point of view, as franchisees, we typically worked on a model of approximately 35 clients and 10,000 hours per CSM. As such that difference in hours managed per CSM simply doesn't allow for high-quality relationship development any longer which drives retention. We no longer have a budget for small tokens of appreciation, milestone gifts or loyalty rewards. Client Success Managers don't currently have any real "offerings" for our clients. Being proactive in this area is critical to adding value to relationships. We have to find ways to connect with our clients regularly and in positive ways and not only when things go wrong and we're in recovery mode. This doesn't have to only come in the form of paid gifts necessarily but time for regular communication and face-to-face conversations would go a long way. It would be nice to occasionally have more to offer our clients than just a weekly update. We are still dealing with an older population, both our actual clients, and their families in general who continue to view =E2=80=9Cold-fashioned=E2=80=9D relationships = as valuable. We have excellent tools for recovery and to try and regain lost business with win-back programs and yet, we don't have any tools for reaching out just to thank them. I guess I feel like we have great focus on the business we don't have, rather than appreciating the business we do have. We can and should do both. Second, clients love our caregivers for the most part. They feel loyalty to them and start to see the office as unnecessary because they don't see all the background work, all the effort that goes into making a case run; all the coaching and scheduling and crisis management. We are the bad guys, just here to make money. As much as we like to think that the "business" of a case is confidential between caregiver and client, the reality is that most care relationships are far more intimate in terms of information sharing. As such clien