With the shift from a
seller's market to a
buyer's market, satisfying customer needs
has become the focus of the marketing strategies of any organization.
Not only that, with heightened consumer awareness and
brand proliferation, the present situation demands an efficient sales force
to offer better customer services to create a long-term relationship
with the organization. Above all, a company's success depends on
the ability to create a relationship that goes beyond the loyalty generated
by any objective assessment of a brand's value.
A customer's overall experience with a product or service is
shaped on the basis of numerous occasions on which he/she contacts
the company. From the moment a customer selects a product to
the instant he/she requests a delivery or service call, the experience
cycle shapes that customer's perception of the company and its products.
Any one of those contactsbe it a very good or very bad incidentis
critical in determining whether the customer becomes a loyal or
a disgruntled one.
Delightful customer experience results in more revenue to
the organization and more profits. As Joe Girard, one of the world's
greatest salesperson, rightly said, "I look at
a customer as a long-term investment. I'm not just going to sell him
that one car and then tell him to shove it when he is not satisfied with
that car. I expect to sell him every car he is ever going to buy. And I want
to sell to his friends and relatives. And, when the time comes, I want to
sell his children their cars too. So when somebody buys from me, he is
going to remember it and remember me and talk about it to everybody
he runs into who needs a car. I took at every customer as if he is going to
lie like an annuity to me for the rest of my life. So they have to be
happy. They have to believe in me." |
