DO YOU HAVE AN EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUPPORT MODEL? (PART 1)
Your customers’ perception of the products, value, services, and support that your company provides are the building blocks of your corporate image. And these are the same elements that your customers use to select business partners to supply their needs.
Behavioral studies have shown that people are drawn to positive experiences that they have had in the past. So it makes sense for your company to strive to make your customers’ experience as positive as possible by employing a client-centered approach to marketing your company’s products.
- Provide quality product
- Provide quality support and service after sale.
- Charge competitive and reasonable prices.
- Keep your promises.
When you keep yourself in your customers’ position, it is easy to understand why customers want to align themselves with suppliers that provide great products, great value, and great service.
Step 1: Evaluate your service and support model
Good customer service and support cam help your company differentiate its products from those of your competitors, reinforce customer loyalty, and generate repeat business and referrals. Companies that achieve total market domination develop client-centered customer support policies and procedures.
I often ask my clients to visualize a set of pipelines between their company and their customers. Then I ask my clients to explore the different ways that their company can deliver whatever information or resources that that its customers need to purchase, implement, and support its products through its pipelines, for example, my customer may “pipe” information about its product’s benefits through a reseller “pipe” or through an advertising “pipe.”
In most selling situations, customers’ requirements are constant and are independent of the “pipe” that a company uses to provide information and support resources. But some “pipes” are more effective – higher bandwidth and less expensive to use – than others. For example, one of my clients recently invested in an Internet based customer support system to decrease the investment that it must otherwise have made in its telephone support call center. You can use the “pipe” game to help you think creatively about how your company can deliver the information and resources that its customers need to solve their problems. Thinking “out of the pipe” can help your company develop a customer-centered approach to selling and supporting its products, which can put your company on the path to total marketing domination.
Step 2: Perform a customer satisfaction survey
A research done by a marketing consultant found that only 4 percent of dissatisfied customers ever complain. The majority of customers that do complain to a company will do business with the company again if their problem gets solved quickly, but 65 to 90 percent of dissatisfied customers never buy from the company again.
When customers do take the time to complete customer satisfaction questionnaire, you should thank them for their effort, respond immediately to any concerns that may be expressed, and use their comments to re-engineer your internal systems and evolve your marketing story.
Many companies employ customer satisfaction questionnaires to measure their customer satisfaction with their service and support. But the truth is, dissatisfied customers often use the time that they could spend completing satisfaction surveys to look for new suppliers. Companies that dominate their market are proactive about implementing internal quality control programs and employ creative techniques to help them understand their customers’ experience.
For example, if you own a chain of retail clothing stores, you might hire company shoppers to visit your stores. And if your company sells tools, you might use focus groups to help you understand how customers use your products, and to identify any potential problems that they may experience.
Your company can use the “Customer Satisfaction Evaluation Process:” worksheet to verify that it has a process in place to evaluate its customers’ level of satisfaction with its products and services.
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION EVALUATION PROCESS
| When was the last time your company did a customer/user satisfaction survey? | Last September |
| Did you do a direct mail or a telephone survey? | Direct mail |
| If you did a direct mail survey, did you follow-up on all customer concerns? | Yes. |
| What are the results of your user satisfaction survey? | Generally our results were very positive. All of our major accounts responded. The survey was done by an outside research firm. |
| Do you supply customer feedback cards?If you have received two or more feedback cards with the same criticism or concern, what did you do to respond to your customer’s concern? | No |
Credibility
Most businesses prefer to do business with large, established suppliers because they believe that they will provide a higher level of customer service and product support than small, less–established suppliers will. Regardless of the size of your company, there are many ways that your business can demonstrate its credibility and its commitment to customer service and support. For example, your company could:
- Promote customer testimonials
- Participate in product competitions
- Earn favorable product reviews
- Offer extended warranties
- Offer 24-hoiur-a-day, 7-day-a-week service.
- Provide special support options for strategic customers
Part 2 continues in the next article
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