how to shoot downturn and Grow your marketshare

If you are looking at getting new customers and increasing your sales its important how you deal with your current customers . For your present will decide your future and its critical to incorporate this aspect of marketing communication as a key ingredient in Return on Investment. The problem is there is hardly a link between Marketing and after sales service. In fact to the point of risking a few friends I will still mention this very boldly that After sales service needs to be under the direct supervision of marketing head and not sales .You may ask why .for one simple reason Advertising sells the product once and after sales service (read customer service) sells it again and again and again

Just to state one personal experience, when Hyundai Sonata was launched in India , was one of the few people who was first to buy the car from the looks and the technology at price it was offering But one thing was still bothering me was the after sale service because after using Hyundai Assent. The experience of getting the car serviced was a nightmare. Because every time you gave the car for servicing you never got it back the same day and always, yes always all the problems mentioned to the customer care executive while handing over the car was never attended. Thinking that I was buying the most premium offering form that Brand stable I would get the service I deserve but to my surprise all my fear came true and I had to sell the car and shift  to Honda Accord at the first given opportunity  and Not that  they “Honda Accord’ guys were any better which prompted me to address the issue.

This is not the case with just auto guys but with most of the brands and the problem lies in the weak consumer protection Laws and the lack of media agencies taking this as an great media programming /content opportunity

Here's the big fact ...98% of all dissatisfied customers were not dissatisfied because of a quality problem with the product or service purchased. In 98% of the cases their dissatisfaction was related to their perception of how they were treated by the people they dealt with.

One more time... note that I said their perception of how they were treated not how they were treated. This is very significant. It means that in some, maybe many of those cases, the employees involved actually treated the customers fairly, courteously and tried to do the best they could. However, what they did is not the issue. It's how the customer perceived what they did that counts.

Customer service diplomacy has to do with controlling the customer's perception. In other words, being right is not as important as winning in the relationship with the customer. This tells us that the #1 reason why businesses lose customers is their perception that they were treated discourteously or unfairly by the company's people with whom they interacted.

This means clearly that if you chose to concentrate on it you can make a big difference in your company's win loss record of keeping customers. Maybe it's not even reasonable but to the customer you are your company.

At the time of my writing this email, the news media's full of criticism of the airline industry. The industry's complaints from passengers have skyrocketed. Everyone traveling is experiencing problems with cancelled or delayed flights, lost luggage and an apparently declining quality of service.

One airline gate agent said to me, "Imagine how difficult it is coming to work every morning knowing in advance that you are going to have to deal with a lot of people who are angry and frustrated with you." And she went on to say, "Even though it's not our fault to these people... we're the airline."

She's right of course. She, her counterparts and the flight attendants are the airline to the passenger. The executives are so out of reach that they are not real to the customer. Many of these airline employees have become tremendous customer service diplomats. They are saving the airline they work for buying it time to straighten out its problems without losing its customers in the process. It doesn't matter whether we're looking at the airlines or a retail store or a restaurant or even an online business.

The people who answer the phones, respond to emails and deal with the customers person-to-person they actually control the company's destiny. I use the word destiny deliberately. You see repeat business is absolutely critical to most companies.

There is a substantial cost attached to acquiring each new customer. All of the rupees  spent on advertising promotion, publicity, signage and so on to bring the new customer in the door or cause the new customer to call the first time. In many, many businesses companies really lose money on the first sale to a new customer.

The profit that insures the company staying in business and growing its business is in the second, third and fourth sales to that same customer. Without this repeat business most businesses fail and this repeat business has more to do with Customer Service Diplomacy than with anything else even including the goods or services themselves.

This is an important subject for you to grasp and in the next Success Marketing Strategy