Importance of Customer Service
Introduction
Today’s organizations fail to realize the value of their customers when it comes to the success of their business. Without customer loyalty the success of your business will always be uncertain. Organizations must sensitively tailor the designs of a successful firm to the particular challenges of understanding, attracting, and keeping valuable customers. “Having satisfied customers just aren’t good enough”. Kenneth Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, co-authors of Raving Fans, believe this concept is needed to have a successful business. I agree with this concept of customers being the focal point of any business. I would want more than just a satisfied customer; I want a “Raving Fan”.
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Discover What the Customer Wants
After creating your vision, try to discover what the customer wants or what their vision is. The customer will focus on just one or two things and it will be up to you to fill in the gap with your vision. You will then pick and choose which ideas you want to use to complete or build up your vision. Not every idea of the customer will be used or has to be used. Some ideas may not be feasible or even applicable to what you have envisioned.
Deliver the Vision Plus One Percent
This is where the vision becomes reality; make it happen just as you envisioned it. Work out the bugs and keep doing what ever it takes to make this vision come alive. Start out with something small that you know you can maintain and be consistent with it. Once you have mastered that idea, add to it, make it better by just one percent. Continue to do this with each new idea, always producing better ideas by one percent. This way the customer is not promised something that you will not deliver and you’re not promising something too big or complex to consistently follow through with. Consistency is critical; it creates credibility.
Conclusion
I have always believed customers are the focal point of any business. I found that having satisfied customers does not mean you are doing a good job. It may mean the customers are satisfied because their expectations are so low and there is no one else doing any better. Having
Satisfied customers can be the best advocates, which is why customers’ needs should be satisfied every time.
A clear vision of your business is crucial for planning your marketing, product development, buildings and equipment, and financial and staff needs. For example, a drop in sales caused a small business manufacturer of metal trash cans to reexamine its product. To regain lost sales, the owner decided to redefine the product as metal containers and to develop a new marketing plan.
product/ service bundles to meet customer needs. How can they do this and how can
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Then, go to www.vision2learn.com and send your completed Assessment to your tutor via your My Study area – make sure it is clearly marked with your name, the course title and the Unit and Assessment number.
This makes it an important skill to be able to see what they really mean. For example, if a customer is silent, it is important you recognize it and start to ask more sincere questions so that the customer opens up, and informs you what they want. The third and final secret to creating raving fans is learned from Andrew, the manager of a chain of gas stations. The secret is “discover what the customer wants – deliver plus one”. This means that it's important to always deliver, no matter what. Consistency is the key. The "plus one" part refers to slowly improving your service so that it’s easy to stay consistent. There's no point in trying to deliver a service that is too big to consistently be there. If you improve by one percent per week, it will make a huge difference after only a year. Customers will become a raving fan if they know they can come back and count on the same great service.
Customer satisfaction is the customer’s evaluation of a good or service in terms of whether it has met their needs and expectations (Vander Schee, 2016). The culture of the organization is to focus on delighting customers rather than on selling products (Lamb, Hair, & McDaniel, 2017). An example of a highly satisfied customer would be Nicole Snow, who owns a small business in Maine. One day she reached out to FedEx on social networks and asked for help in getting her supply chain set up. The team responded immediately and helped her solve the problem (“FedEx,” 2015). Here customer satisfaction is greatly shown the customers’ needs and expectations have been met by
They also to compete with the likes of Bp and Esso by opening up over
Customer loyalty is much harder to obtain that customer service satisfaction. The most important first step is to satisfy the customer by meeting their expectations. Customers only give a company one chance and if they aren’t satisfied they will not do business with that company again, as well as tell others of their experience. The next step would be to exceed the customer’s expectations. If a business goes above and beyond to assist the customer they begin to build loyalty. The next step is to truly surprise the customer. In order to dominate the marketplace the company must find a way to make them selves stand out with their product or service, accompanied with phenomenal customer service. Once this has been done customer satisfaction and loyalty will be gained. “Acquiring a new customer can cost four or five times more than keeping a current customer” (Bestmark, 2013). So it’s essential to keep the current customer’s happy and coming back for more.
Vision Statement: We want to create value for our customers so as to enable them achieve their vision.
It is imperative to satisfy customers and give them an amazing experience at the company. While it cost less to sell to existing customers and companies can increase profit by selling to the same customers; if customers are satisfied, there is more chance they will come back for more services or products. Satisfied customers are a free marketing for the company. However, it is the opposite if customers are dissatisfied. Dissatisfied customer will tell 8 to 10 people about his or her experience (O’Brien, A & Marakas, G. 2004). If by any reason, representatives see that the customer is not satisfy, they should act fast and fix the problem. Furthermore, there is more chance for sale representatives to sell to an existing customer that to a new customer. A good strategy for customer retention is to reward good customers. Companies can easily do
Study findings show that strong leadership systems focus on customers, motivate employees, and implement their customer service vision. They also focus great attention on gathering the information needed to track customer satisfaction, and employees overall performance. Customer service should be designed and delivered seamlessly from the customer's point of view. Customer-driven operations lead to success. Decentralized, uncoordinated customer service provision makes for a most frustrating experience for customers.
Research shows that “80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers.” So, your team must focus on satisfying customers and ensuring they gain value.
Several activities could be done to increase degree of engagement with customer such as workshops, brainstorming and solving sessions to boost participation and collaboration during decision making stages in regards of innovation. However, cautiousness is required in front of highly technical customers, since it could lead to a lower level of innovativeness once aligned to the developing team. Constant monitoring could be a good strategy to check if they are showing red flag tendencies such as unquestioned technologies or familiar solutions proposal and drive on-time changes.
By getting feedback and suggestion from the customer organization should work on their strengths and weakness. Its also important to get the target customers.