subject: Improving Customer Relationship Means Going The Extra Mile [print this page] After--sales service provides you with a huge opportunity for improving customer relationship as well as cementing the bond with a customer. Many business owners forget the need to keep tab on the customer after a sale in completed. It is the usual round of service after the sale is completed that businesses resort to. Otherwise the onus is left with the customer to complain or call up for any issues he or she may have about your product or service.
Unless you keep constantly in touch with your customer, you cannot reinforce the belief that whatever he or she has bought from you is right. If you leave the calling up and communication solely to the customer, there is every chance that a feeling of getting a bad deal will stick through. Your silence will reinforce the belief that something must have been wrong or was not properly explained during the purchase. It is your worry that should drive you toward your customer the moment the sale is completed and you get the payment.
You should call up or get your sales staff to keep in touch with the customer to check if he or she is satisfied with the product or service. It is your business to check up and if you wait for the first move from the customer, then you might risk losing a potential source of cash flow in the long run. Once a concern gets planted in the customer that the seller is not maintaining contact mainly because there might be a hidden secret, you are on the edge.
You can get two types of customers. One may be very irate and bombard you with emails and faxes or take the living daylights out of you with a barrage of phone calls to you and your sales staff. The other type of customer can just remain quiet and not make any issues about things that you had suppressed during the sale. Her silence should not be taken as a sense of forced satisfaction as the deal is done and over.
Both of them can endanger your reputation and give you a bad name. In these days of the internet, information flies very fast at the click of a mouse. If you don't resolve the irate customer's problems and replace the product or service, you lose the customer. And the other one who has kept quiet and you thanked your stars that he or she perhaps missed your secret, may also quietly go elsewhere during the next purchase.
You cannot take your customers for granted. Nothing can be left to chance in today's business world. A customer who has never complained about your product may not be too expressive, but he or she would, without letting you know, go elsewhere and make the next purchase. You would lose in improving customer relationship if you don't reach out to a customer after the sale.
