Posted by Cameron Francis on 24 Jul , 2015 in News Uncategorized
Are you happy with the products you have?
Are you satisfied with the services you are getting?
Even if you answered “yes” to these questions, it is not enough that you express your feelings and opinions to yourself. If you are happy and satisfied enough, you must be excited to share your thoughts to your friends and to the people you know so they will be able to experience the great thing that you have experienced.
Much like what you would do after seeing a great movie. If you saw it with a friend, the two of you would talk about it even when you have already reached home. The people in your house and your co-workers won’t be spared of your ramblings about how good the movie is. Before you know it, your movie literally has become an epidemic of sorts, a virus that has virtually moved from mouth to mouth.
If that sounds familiar, it is because that’s what we want our customers to be like after experiencing our products and services. We want them to talk about what we have offered them and spread the “good news” like wildfire.
Obviously, this is not possible unless our products or service reach the hands of our customers, so to speak. Or until they touch, see, feel, hear, taste, smell and experience any of these themselves.
And this experience is not found in a single P or combination P’s the 7 P’s of the marketing mix: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning and people. It is in the totality, the synthesis, the summation, and the aggregation of all the elements, including the before and after sales, that such a “wonderful” customer experience is created.
It is not just being able to provide customer service, as it has been about good customer service all along. And there is where the problem lies. Most marketers and entrepreneurs believe in good customer service. We believe we render good customer service – it has been embossed on the wall, right? Service, maybe yes, but whether it is good or bad is a judgment that only the customer can make.
Customer service is not a high-sounding phrase found in our grand vision-mission proclamation, where we make a public commitment to pursue excellence. It is not a declaration that customer is king and a promise to do everything to satisfy him/her at all costs. Customer service is not a noun or an adjective or an adverb. It is not a thought process.
Customer service is what we do for, to and with the customer. Good customer service is an action word. It is a verb, and until we are moved from where we are and are seen doing, behaving, acting, helping, talking, explaining, assisting, communicating, demonstrating, appeasing, consoling and leading our customers towards a positive experience of our product or service, we have not done anything to deserve his/her merit.
Now, it is time for us to sit up, because the customer has stopped being the passive king that he is. With his newfound strength that only he can wield in the social media and the Internet, we are forced to engage him according to his terms. Where in the past he would suffer in silence for having acquired a defective product or service, now he can articulate his dissatisfaction wherever he wants, including the social media.. And we better listen to what he has to say, for we may not have the luxury of time to stop the wave when it hits.
Knowing who the active king is could be beneficial to us simply because it will be easier for us to take a closer look at what we are doing, why we are doing it, and for whom we are doing it.
A good customer service promotes helping, acting, talking, explaining, assisting, communicating, demonstrating, appeasing, consoling and leading the customers towards creating a positive and memorable experience through our products and services. It is honest-to-goodness customer engagement.
Then maybe, the dissatisfaction will never have to be experienced at all, because of our willingness to provide him a platform for creating this exciting moment, we are doing the right design as he suggested – applying the right manufacturing methods, meeting him in his best time and place, and offering him the best product and service that he deserves.
As King, would price even matter?