Companies urged to delight customers with quality, not extras

The Executive Director of Toyota Ghana Limited, Dr Eric Yeboah Dako, has advised businesses to desist from trying to delight their customers with what he described as ‘extras’.

He said many a time, companies tried delighting customers with extras at the detriment of the quality products and services that the customers rather required.

Dr Yeboah Dako said this in an interview with the Graphic Business after he delivered a lecture at the Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana’s “Evening with” series on March 24, 2017.

The lecture was on the theme, “A step beyond customer delight; the automobile market experience.”

In an attempt to delight customers, Dr Yeboah Dako said many businesses gave customers extras that they did not necessarily need.

He said some also provided the customers with short-term promotional incentives which did not offer any competitive advantage, while others also blindly copied what competitors were doing.

“Delighting customers more than necessary trims down your margins but may not necessarily increase loyalty and bottom line,” he stated.

“When customers get too many extras, some begin to feel the company has been making too much profits than necessary,” he added.

He also pointed out that sometimes, what companies perceived to be delighting customers may not necessarily be so.

Questions to answer

Dr Yeboah Dako noted that before companies embarked on trying to delight customers, they first had to find out the customers primary concerns, needs and expectations.

He said until companies were able to fully meet their expectations, they should not be thinking about delighting them with extras.

“Are we able to fully meet customers’ expectations? If no, why do we need to try exciting them if their primary expectations are not fully met? If yes, how likely will the additional extras change their loyalty, particularly to an already loyal customer?” he asked.

Customers’ primary concerns

The executive director said some customers’ primary concerns and expectations included providing fast, efficient and accurate services, providing high quality products at a competitive price, and putting in place helpful, friendly staff to provide information and answer questions.

Others include providing prompt responses to customers’ inquiries whether online, by phone or in person, having a trained staff that can answer all their questions without referring them, and an easy-to-access clean facility or an easy-to-navigate website.

According to him, these were the things that guaranteed customer loyalty and not the giving of extras.

He said meeting these customer expectations was, however, not easy and required well-planned and well-supported activities with skilful resources.

Changing customer expectations

Dr Yeboah Dako was, however, quick to add that customer expectations were changing faster than ever before.

“If we fail to meet customers’ expectations and make them dissatisfied, they can also easily damage our image and collapse our company,” he mentioned.

He, therefore, advised businesses to focus on the changing customer expectations and establish systems and structures in their organisations to meet their needs before they consider giving them extras to delight them.

Advise to members

The President of CIMG, Mr Kojo Mattah, advised the members of the association to make good use of the lecture in order to delight their customers in the right way.

“It is my hope that whatever we learn here will not be in vain but will affect the customer,” he said.

“We should not take delight in providing bad services to our customers,” he added.