Service your customers

Service is the part of your organization that helps your customers
utilize the products effectively. This means training, support,
customizations, and implementation. Service should be a critical part
of your business proposition because customers don’t just buy a
product. What they buy is a “whole product,” a purchase that includes
services.

 Develop customer satisfaction

Since customers need fast, accurate, and relevant solutions to their
needs, the organization must continuously improve the response to
customer solution requirements. Service has to move progressively
closer to the customer and drive factors of product improvement.

Share the knowledge

Knowledge created and used by the support organization needs to be
used to drive support strategies: sharing information, providing
customer self-help, leveraging resources, performing value-added
services, and directing future products.

Support the current infrastructure

You have to build your response mechanism and support structure
around your customer’s business model. Take your current systems and
re-focus them toward effective knowledge capture and delivery that
makes the most sense to your marketplace. It only stands to reason that
the better you service your customer, the more satisfied the customer.
Thus, repeat business is fostered.

 Assurance

The organization must strive, however, for a loyal customer, not
merely a satisfied customer. A satisfied customer is happy, but a loyal
customer buys again. This is accomplished by exceeding the customer’s
expectation, a practice that should be at the very core of how you run
your business. It can be as simple as guaranteeing the shipping of the
product in 5 days or providing a 2-day delivery option.

 Feedback

The feedback mechanism must be installed in every part of the
organization, from a follow-up phone call from the salesperson to see
how things are going to a thank-you letter from the product manager to
a personal thank-you gift from the president for exceptional orders.
You need to establish period surveys, evaluate the purchasers’ usage of
the products, and their satisfaction.