THE KEY OF DELIGHT!

So, in a successful business world, we are so familiar with the phrase “Customer is the King”, “the customer is always right” and that you should do everything that the customer demands, etc. It is a cliché to place the customer always on the upper pedestal when it comes to business. And it has been the same for decades, even though nowadays we do hear about balancing the scales between customers and vendors when it comes to human behavioural treatment. It is indeed a tough nut to crack, to find the right ingredients to the formulae of efficacious customer support. And as the world keeps changing frantically now, the behavioural patterns of customers are becoming more unpredictable and wobbly.

A successful business cannot afford a dissatisfied customer. As we know, retaining the regular customer is always more worthy than trying to add on new customers. It takes more effort to market and sell to new customers than to retain the regular loyal lot. And regulars tend to do the word of mouth which will gather immense trust in the brand and in turn adds to the number of customer base again. Hence companies and brands do their circus on a daily to 'date' their customers and keep them happy. A variety of new offers, discounts, promotions, bonuses, privileged experiences and gifts are being sent out to the customers' lot to keep them glued to the brand. However, today's world competition is high and 'survival of the fittest' in marketing has become more evident. Even if you are high in quality, other advertising gimmicks mostly can lure your customers at least for some time out into the rival’s tents.

It says that your employees are your first customers. And to prove it true, employees jump ships faster nowadays than a customer do. It is imperative to give an apt training to a newly inducted employee to understand the company, policy and ethics, so that the faith is adhered and shall be passed on. The employee usually cascade down what's been fed to him/her. Hence it is important to filter down what's been said and done from the higher levels to the lower ones in the hierarchy. Because mostly it is the first-level employees who interact with the majority of customers than the higher-ups. So the employee should have the utmost trust in the brand in order to sell it to a potential customer. How the team leader exhibits his leadership skills also matters which helps the employee to be mentally steady while communicating over the phone or in person. For all of these, adequate training is a must and the stakeholders should make sure that the learning imparted is accurately executed in the field; which inturn is a dire component in the longer-term success of the organization. As social media is strong today, it just takes a ‘tweet’ for your brand to come down in seconds, or your share to fall in hours. So the stake has gone up as the tentacles of technology has all of us in its tight grips, more than ever before.

Many of us entrepreneurs are not really enjoying a really healthiest of the economy after the 2008 recession and the worldwide pandemic. Eventhough recessions are somewhat foreseeable, the pandemic took the sands under a lot of our feet. Lot many business decided to change shapes, structures, many went online, many went off business, many are still struggling to regain balance. The entrepreneurs were thrown into deep waters, deliberate and abrupt decisions were taken. To make the problem even complicated, today there is a larger volatile nature to consumer behaviour and most of them are less loyal. Even though we rely a lot on decades of study on consumer behaviours and research, the current trend and pattern shows that many a techniques do not really convince the buyers. The truly natives of digital generation Gen Z already represents 40% of the global consumers online. Things once were products are now evolving into services too. The emerging markets like entertainment, artificial intelligence, video streaming is all depended on the consumption statistics. Gen Z are largely educated base who are not ready to consume what’s been fed to them by a particular brand if that doesn’t align with the cause they believe in, or if it conflicts with the individuality of identity they choose to reflect on, or if there is any concern on the ethicality of it. For millennial, the trend is essentially is still ambiguous. They do all the researches and reviews online. There is a variety of channels available for them to do a buy; however some studies shows that they still mostly opt for a retail buy-in stores, may be a cohesive omni-channel experience matters more to them. Gen Y are still offline customers in the majority, who choose to keep their loyalty to a regular brand before they are convinced to be dragged onto a new one.

A successful customer service is how the business decided to engage with its customer inorder to give them benefit, satisfaction and value for the investment they put in. The intriguing world of CRM is not that simple as yesteryears. It’s more intricate and problem-solving now. There ought to be a customer satisfaction structure in place which will jump in to rescue whenever there is a need or a problem arise between your service/employee/ product and the customer. The goal indeed is to make the customer feel very important and unique. It will help when you make your interface more friendly with the customer – whether it be offline or online. The customer should feel the ease of manoeuvring around, choosing the product and with the aftersales too. The customer should feel easy to get back to one of your account managers or representatives who can then smoothly guide them to an amicable resolution. Promptness and pleasing approach is a mandatory there. Some unique startegies some companies have devised overtime to enhance customer satisfaction experience has indeed done miracles in adding delight and number to their customer base, as the customers will then align with your company’s purpose as if it is theirs. They unknowingly become your brand ambassadors for free. That is why even when technology has a larger play in today’s world and it helps, but a humane touch remains extremely relevant. With the right potion of supreme efforts on making a superlative customer experience and an impeccably quality service/ product, you can indeed make a remarkable leap of success in the times to come. The future is yours!