Making customers the heart of your business
In an era where business growth is directly linked to customer satisfaction, being able to meet and exceed the needs of a company’s clients through excellent customer service is very crucial to the survival of the business.
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However, meeting and exceeding the customer’s expectation requires that the company in question identifies and familiarises itself with the basic desires of the customer whose interest fuels the growth of the business.
On the Springboard, Your Virtual University, Sunday evenings radio programme on Joy Fm, two experts in customer service relations, the General Manager of Delta Air Lines GSA Ghana, Mrs Petra Asamoah, and an experienced Sales Coach, Mr Mawuli Ocloo noted that the underlining thing about customer satisfaction was for a business to know what customers want from the business and/or brand.
They appeared on June 20 edition of the show and they spoke on: ‘‘Customer Engagement as a key to Business Growth.’’
“At every level of the business, the customer must be at the heart of business and everything you do, whether you are hiring new people or putting in place systems or structures. All these things must be based on the needs of the customer,” Mrs Asamoah said on the show, hosted by Reverend Albert Ocran.
To help achieve customer satisfaction, she said: “It is always important to identify what satisfies the customer and even exceeds his or her expectations. Generally, there are basic things such as the customer’s desire to get value for money and experience friendliness when he or she walks into the company. He or she also wants to have options and even feel good that he is important to the business,” Mrs Asamoah stressed.
She explained that most businesses normally assumed they knew the needs of their costumers and as a result introduce products and services based on those assumptions.
These assumptions, she said, were wrong and should not be entertained in business, given that they often formed the basis for wrong corporate decisions.
Mr Ocloo, who is a sales trainer and coach, shared similar sentiments.
“People are motivated by different things and it is for us to tease out those things and provide them,” he said.
What motivates customer choices?
Given that the choices of customers are generally based on their motivations, Mrs Asamoah said it was imperative for businesses to strive to know their aspirations to be able to attract them.
“You may be looking at pricing as an indication of what the customer wants but it may not be so; it may be convenience, accessibility, availability or timeliness. So, it’s quite a wide range of things,” she said.
Touching on how to use adverts to catch the attention of customers, the Delta Air Lines GSA Ghana GM said marketers needed to ensure that their messages appealed to customer’s needs.
This, she said, would help create a connection between the product and the customer, thereby causing the latter to make a purchase.
As a result, Mrs Asamoah said it was always important for the business to make the customer the boss in whatever decision it took.
Beyond these, Mr Ocloo said businesses needed to understand the people who made purchasing decisions so as to be able to tailor their marketing strategies towards the right people.
He explained that good customer relations needed to be made a cultural thing that would permeate the entire organisation. That should be complemented by good strategies that would help measure the results of actions put in place to help impress customers.
“You need to measure, reward, train and punish as and when possible,” Mr Ocloo said, explaining that businesses needed to sanction employees whose actions always negatively affected the objectives of good customer relationships.
Mr Ocloo explained that feedback was central to the growth of businesses and stressed the need to invest in structures that would make it possible to tract feedback.
Changes in customer behaviour
Given the sudden changes in customer behaviour and its impact on business growth, the two experts agreed that companies needed to be flexible in their actions to be able to stay afloat.
Asked how businesses should deal with sudden changes in customer preferences, Mrs Asamoah said: “You change as well.”
“The business must change as customer preference changes. You can’t remain static because that will be injurious to the growth of business,” she said.
Additionally, Mr Ocloo said businesses must reposition in line with changes in the demographics, preferences and other developments in the business environment.
5 Key things about customer satisfaction
1. Ask a lot of questions about the needs of your customers.
2. Make the customer the centre of your decisions because he/she is the boss of the business.
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3. Businesses must be flexible to change to be able to meet the needs and preferences of their customers. Companies that will not change risk collapsing.
4. Companies must measure the impact of their customer relations activities, reward employees whose actions meet and/or exceed the needs of employees, as well as punish those whose actions drive away customers.
5. Training of staff is key to the success of a company’s customer service objectives. If you train, you equip your team to deliver to the expectations of customers. — GB