Importance of service based approach
Anyone who has experienced the last fifteen years of generational shift in marketing would have seen every aspect of marketing strategy and varied focused approaches towards selling. We do remember a time when organizations were more ‘product’ focused, launching of products was not all that frequent and retiring cycles were long. Customers didn’t have many options other than sticking on (in fact, the term customer experience was not used very frequently) as there was less competition. Then came the era of competition, where organizations not only thought about acquiring new customers but retaining the customers became a key priority. This was the dawn of a ‘Customer’ focused approach with up-selling, cross-selling, loyalty etc being the new buzz words.
All in all, customers today are happier with lots of options available for them to switch service providers whenever they want. We can call this as Consumer controlled market Phase 1. But the very important essence of customers, connecting to organization products and brand is ‘service’ so effectively whatever the approach, customer should not come to you for any problem but it should be other way round and organizations need to be reactive for customer problems especially in service industry.
If organizations do the same level of investment (which includes resources, IT investment etc) in acquiring as well as in managing the customers then why is the service is not at the same level if not better than during the Order/ Marketing/ Campaign services? Organizations need to see the most important part of retaining the customer i.e. ‘Service’ focused approach. We may call it Consumer controlled market Phase 2. Many would be of the opinion that a number of companies provide excellent service and but very often, servicing is seen as a second, not-so-important priority.
Very often, when you go to buy a new product the approach towards you is very cooperative and friendly, with many options made available. But consider the experience of approaching them for a post purchase repair/ servicing , and very often you would see quite another face of the organization.
Everyone agrees on the critical role of customer service in customer satisfaction, but still many large companies are not able to convert put it into practice. I had such an experience with the company I purchased my laptop from, after which I don’t think I will ever buy from that company. I bought the laptop last year from the US. From the first day it ran into some basic wireless LAN problems. I ignored it and continued using that the laptop, and then the wireless stopped working altogether. I visited the service center in India and was told there was some internal damage which they would not repair under warranty and that I had to visit another service center. There, I was informed there was hardly any likelihood of getting it repaired here as it is bought it in the US. Anyhow, after a while they confirmed that it could indeed be repaired, but that it would take a minimum of 5 working days to create the quotation and that I would need to leave the laptop with them for that duration. 5-6 days for creating a quotation? And on top of that, I was asked to call customer care to confirm whether the laptop could be repaired there. Sitting in the service center, do I need to call customer care about that?
I have a few questions for the company here: Why is it called a global warranty if it is not global? Why was I not informed in the first call itself which service center the warranty for this laptop would be valid at? Why don’t service centers have detailed information readily available when they are connected to the same system across the globe?
Customer satisfaction and customer experience are best tested when a customer approaches a company for servicing. Get this touch point wrong, and your customer satisfaction levels are sure to dip, and so will your chances of repeat business and referrals.
