Customers are the King and Keeping them Happy is the Key
In today’s world of extreme competition and technological advancement, it is vital to keep customers happy, build customer value and retain them. Keeping your total attention on customer satisfaction will keep the company captivating the market.
Companies should realize the ultimate importance of customer satisfaction and align all the business processes to achieve this goal. Happy customers reflect well about the company in the market and the affect is multiplied.
Due to the large competition, many similar products and services are available in the market at cheaper rates. Then why should a customer buy from your company. What is the unique selling proposition that your company has to offer which no one else is offering in the market. After several researches, it is observed that customers tend to buy those products and services which provide them with high perceived value. It can be calculated by finding the cost associated with the emotional level of decision. It can be either the sales personnel image, the brand personality or the functional image of the company. The value is then converted to total customer costs by adding the purchase cost, energy and time used to evaluate the product and instinctive cost. Customers are very smart as they keep both the perceived cost and total cost of the product in mind while purchasing it. Company should provide the best type of after sales service as this ensures customer satisfaction to the fullest and helps to retain the customers.
Satisfied Customers Promote Word of Mouth
Customers who are happy with the product uses word of mouth to spread positivity about the product in the market. They even make repurchases of the product multiple times. A smart company is the one who can thoroughly understand its target market and their expectations and align all business processes to achieve excellence through their product and service offering. Companies are able to achieve maximum customer satisfaction by having good business practices and abiding by all business ethical values. Companies should make sure that all the stakeholders are dealt fairly and are given their rights. Previously, the focus was only restricted to shareholders of the company. But as businesses expanded and competition has become tough, each stake holder is very crucial for the company’s reputation in the market. Boundaries should be decided by the companies for each stakeholder to receive maximum value from each one of them. Proper processes should be designed to fulfill the customer expectations requirement. Several cross functional teams can be assigned to create smooth work flow, understand the core competencies of the company, develop them and manage all resources successfully towards the production. The company’s policies and procedures and organizational design should be flexible enough to adjust the changes made to achieve customer satisfied culture.
Delivering Customer Value
In the digital era, where customers are very particular about their needs and what they want, creating value for them is not easy at all.
Companies can run marketing campaigns focusing on the value offered by their product and service which is unique and more reliable than other competitors. The main game is not just to attract customers, but how to keep them retained and loyal to the company which requires certainly more efforts and the companies need to go an extra mile for it.
Building a Strong Customer Relationship
Companies should be very particular about formulating policies and measuring the customer retention along with attracting new potential customers. The practice of retention of customers is thoroughly focused by CRM, which is customer relationship management. A company should have an active CRM department to make sure strong and reliable relationship is formed with its customers and how to develop strong brand equity. CRM is responsible to convert first time buyers to multiple time buyers. Multiple time buyers to members of the company and then convert them to goodwill advocates and in some cases as partners too. Companies can offer several financial advantages to such customers or they can even get associated with a social cause to target their audience in a different way.
At the end of the day, companies are there to make profit. So targeting profitable customers and providing the best quality and USP should go hand in hand. Profitable customers support the revenue stream of the company and keeping this maintained will have a competitive edge for the company. Total quality management style should be positioned to form and deliver customer satisfaction.
