Business strategy: Why 'customer care' is a battleground in today´s attention economy where business is won or lost
Client is king?
The world´s economy is having tough times. Today´s global markets are facing a lot of considerable challenges at the same time, and even established company´s are struggling. As a reasult, it seems that launching a new business has become a quite venturous affair.
While business ideas are mostly driven by financial aspects and everybody only cares about how to save costs and reduce investments, there is one player who seems to be forgotten: THE CLIENT.
In the following article I want to point out the importance of customer care in today´s attention economy, considering it a key to success for modern business.
Service is becoming a scarce ressource
In times of constantly raising primary product prices, tax increases and insecure banking systems, businesses have to deal with a lot of economical challenges. To keep productions profitable anyhow, ressources and production time need to be shortened. At the same time, today´s global markets demand top quality. Products are perfectly comparable and customers well informed - there is no excusive for missing compliance.
But as we have learned already in school, you can´t have it all...
Quality vs. Time vs. Cost
The premise of the project management triangle (which can also be used to analyse and optimize higher-ranking management strategies) is that you can’t have all three of these outcomes. You can only pick two and by doing so the third option will automatically suffer.
5 reasons why customer care is key
1. It builds brand awareness in highly competitive markets
Especially in times of social media power, where almost every brand, product and service is immediately evaluated online, word of mouth is the most powerful ally you have on your side.
What your customers will tell others about your brand could make or break your business. When you provide the very best in customer service, people will talk about you because it has become a scarce ressource these days!
Happy customers and their friends will remember your brand and recommend it.
2. It´s a point of differentiation
In today´s attention economy where every marketplace is a battleground where businesses compete for their target groups, customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator. Those businesses which succeed in cut-throat environments will be the ones that make customer satisfaction a priority of their business strategy.
3. It reduces problems (= time and money)
You won´t avoid all the problems which could technically arise doing a certain business. The perfect business where everybody got absolutely fulfilled only exists in fairy tales. But if customers only knew that they could voice complaints and those issues would be handled properly, they would feel more comfortable doing business with you in any case. The more unattended problems you have, the bigger they grow.
'Customer service should not be a department, it should be the entire company.' Tony Hsieh (CEO Zappos)
4. It matters more than the price
No matter which study or survey you read, a large group of customers will always tell you that the service argument is much more important than the economical one. To gain the right experience and fulfill their expectations and needs, in today´s 'quick and dirty fast food world', people are willing to pay more!
5. It builds trust
In today´s global markets, where services and products can be delivered to every single corner in the world, longlasting customer relationships are hard to maintain. Generally people will only stay loyal to a business or company if they have very good reason to. Otherwise, there is plenty of competition available around the world they could choose to move to at any point of time. Thus, business leaders have to work even harder to keep customers, build and maintain their trust in a specific brand, product or service. By providing the very best in customer service, trust can be established.
Customer care is key to customer loyalty and essential to build stable customer relationships in today´s attention economy.
Daymond John: 'Nothing is more important than great customer service. To over-deliver in service to a customer is by far the most valuable thing to a business. Because, there are only two ways to improve the operations of a business: increase sales or decrease costs. In today's environment, decreasing costs is hard. And as far as increasing sales, doing so via customer service is highly effective.'
In the meantime.... Me being a satisfied customer while shopping @ Dolphin Mall (Miami Beach)...:-)
I hope you enjoyed the read.
Cheers,
Marly -
Picture source title: http://nelson4to5.blogspot.com.es/2013/12/miserable-men-at-mall.html
Picture source Calvin Klein: http://67.media.tumblr.com/
Picture source triangle: http://smarterwebsiteowner.com/
Picture source price tag: http://data.whicdn.com/
Very interesting [email protected] work.thank you.best regards
Dankeschön :-)
Bitteschön :-)
Great post @surfermarly. Customer care is indeed incredibly important, and it always has been. In these days when customers can be more impatient and fickle, it's more important to do simple things such as respond to calls and emails in a timely manner or the customer will quickly go somewhere else.
Thank you!!! Yip, that's it, we don't have many opportunities to impress :)
When I speak on the phone with a customer who is having any kind of difficulty with or question about my products, I tell them that my greatest asset is happy customers. As a small enterprise, I absolutely cannot afford to have anyone out there saying bad things about the products I make.
Great post, Thanks! ;) 😄😇😄
Thank you my dear surfer buddy ;-)
I am totally with you - every voice counts, and a good customer relationship will be highly appreciated from both sides.
Totally agree @surfermarly. Me encanta el triángulo... no se puede pretender tener algo de calidad y que te lo vayan regalando... Por desgracia cada vez hay más empresas que se olvidan de que el consumidor es quien al final tiene que estar por delante de todo... En fin, a ti se te ve bien consumiendo a tope!!! :D
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This is such a good reminder to those in service industries and anyone dealing with a customer . The best thing I learned when I worked in a book store years ago was that we are here for the customer - the customer did not come here for me.