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WHO IS CONSUMER CHANGING PERCEPTION OF CONSUMER WHAT IS CONSUMER SATISFACTION CONSUMER SATISFACTION IN 7 STEPS ADVANTAGES OF CONSUMER SATISFACTION MEASURING CONSUMER SATISFACTION THROUGH THE TEN DOMAINS RULES CONSUMER DELIGHT SIMPLIFIED MODE FOR ENSURING CONSUMER DELIGHT THE BEST CONSUMER DELIGHT SOME OF BENCHMARKING OF CONSUMER DELIGHT HOW TO DELIGHT YOUR CUSTOMER ADVANTAGES OF DELIGHT CONCLUSION
WHO IS CONSUMER?
An end user called consumer. The "consumer" is the one who consumes the goods and services produced. A consumer is a person who buys a commodity from another person. Eg: you're buying bread from the grocer. A consumer is the most important person in any business. A Consumer in not dependent on us. We are dependent on them. A Consumer does us a favour when they call. We are not doing them a favour by serving them. A Consumer is a part of our business, not an outsider. A Consumer in not someone to argue or match with us. A Consumer is a person who brings us their wants. It is our job to fulfill those wants. A Consumer is the life blood of every business
There has been total transformation in the way a consumer is perceived ever since the emergence of a global market place. As could be seen from the above illustration the Endeavour by most of the business enterprises in the developed world in the 50s and beyond was just to tolerate the consumer and provide him with just the bare product/ service. However, during the 60s to 90s the business world in the western countries took note of the unfolding competition from Japan which flooded the world market with high quality goods at very attractive and affordable prices. With the emergence or other newly industrialized countries like Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong a little later than the global market place became even more competitive and the business world of the industrialized countries for the first time recognized the pivotal role the consumer played in their prosperity and they went all out to please the consumer.
From the 90s onwards, with players like China and Malaysia appearing on the international scene, the corporate world of developed countries realized that even pleasing a consumer wasnt enough to retain their hold on their consumer, given the kind of challenges they faced from newly industrialized countries. So, a deliberate strategy of putting the consumer on a high pedestal and trying to delight the consumer in ever so many ways was put into action. Of late, there has been a realization by some of them that even a delighted consumer, for no apparent reason may cease to be one. Of late, efforts are being directed at retaining the consumer and the consumer are being hammered out in the board rooms of the corporate world of today.
Customer satisfaction means is a persons feeling of pleasure or disappointment resulting from comparing a products perceived performance in relation to his or her expectation. Customer satisfaction, a term frequently used in marketing, is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 71 percent responded that they found a customer satisfaction metric very useful in managing and monitoring their businesses. It is seen as a key performance indicator within business and is often part of a Balanced Scorecard. In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers, customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element of business strategy. Within organizations, customer satisfaction ratings can have powerful effects. They focus employees on the importance of fulfilling customers expectations. Furthermore, when these ratings dip, they warn of problems that can affect sales and profitability. These metrics quantify an important dynamic. When a brand has loyal customers, it gains positive word-of-mouth marketing, which is both free and highly effective. Therefore, it is essential for businesses to effectively manage customer satisfaction. To be able do this, firms need reliable and representative measures of satisfaction. In researching satisfaction, firms generally ask customers whether their product or service has met or exceeded expectations. Thus, expectations are a key factor behind satisfaction. When customers have high expectations and the reality falls short, they will be disappointed and will likely rate their experience as less than satisfying. For this reason, a luxury resort, for example, might receive a lower satisfaction rating than a budget moteleven though its facilities and service would be deemed superior in absolute terms. The importance of customer satisfaction diminishes when a firm has increased bargaining power. For example, cell phone plan providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, participate in an industry that is an oligopoly, where only a few suppliers of a certain product or service exist. As such, many cell phone plan contracts have a lot of fine print with provisions that they would never get away if there were, say, a hundred cell phone plan providers, because customer satisfaction would be way too low, and customers would easily have the option of leaving for a better contract offer. There is a substantial body of empirical literature that establishes the benefits of customer satisfaction for firms.
CONSUMER SATISFACTION IN 7 STEPS:Its a well known fact that no business can exist without customers. In the business of Website design, its important to work closely with your customers to make sure the site or system you create for them is as close to their requirements as you can manage. Because its critical that you form a close working relationship with your client, customer service is of vital importance. What follows are a selection of tips that will make your clients feel valued, wanted and loved.
do? If the first option doesnt work, then what? Should they contact different people for billing and technical enquiries? If theyre not satisfied with any aspect of your customer service, who should they tell? Theres nothing more annoying for a client than being passed from person to person, or not knowing who to turn to. Making sure they know exactly what to do at each stage of their enquiry should be of utmost importance. So make sure your customer service policy is present on your site and anywhere else it may be useful.
6. Anticipate Your Clients Needs & Go Out Of Your Way to Help Them Out
Sometimes this is easier said than done! However, achieving this supreme level of understanding with your clients will do wonders for your working relationship. Take this as an example: youre working on the front-end for your clients exciting new ecommerce Endeavour. You have all the images, originals and files backed up on your desktop computer and the site is going really well. During a meeting with your client he/she happens to mention a hard-copy brochure their internal marketing people are developing. As if by magic, a couple of weeks later a CD-ROM arrives on their doorstep complete with high resolution versions of all the images youve used on the site. A note accompanies it which reads: "Hi, you mentioned a hard-copy brochure you were working on and I wanted to provide you with largescale copies of the graphics Ive used on the site. Hopefully youll be able to make use of some in your brochure." Your client is heartily impressed, and remarks to his colleagues and friends how very helpful and considerate his Web designers are. Meanwhile, in your office, you lay back in your chair drinking your 7th cup of coffee that morning, safe in the knowledge this happy customer will send several referrals your way.
ADVANTAGES OF CONSUMER SATISFACTION: Brand Loyalty Word of mouth advertising Market share and profits Customer loyalty
MEASURING CONSUMER SATISFACTION THROUGH THE TEN DOMAINS RULES: Quality Value Timeliness Environment Ease of Access Efficiency Self-Management Teamwork Commitment Innovation
CONSUMER DELIGHT:Customer delight is a key to success. Customer delight refers to if the company reaches beyond the expectations of the customer and the customer exceeded quality, then the customer is delighted. Customer cannot be delighted if he/she is not satisfied, the factor of delightness comes after the factor of satisfying consumer need. The delighted customer is more valuable for the company as It will help to the companies to compete the competitors. A delighted customer finds the largest perceived value-cost gap. Customers are moving towards services and quality. Delighted customer can do a lot in the favour of a company. On the other hand, a dissatisfied customer. Exceeding consumer expectation is delighting consumers. The consumer reacts with a WOW in return for the product/service.
Figure shown above, Depicts a model for moving in the direction of delighting consumer. It could be seen even delighting the consumer in not an end in itself but only a means to an end of achieving the ultimate goal, namely establishing an ever lasting relationship with the consumer. There are only a few companies in the developed world, who have been able to establish this kind of an everlasting relationship, having survived and grown over a period of century and a half. In the 90s, however, with the impact of global competition on the corporate scene, a new dimension has been added to ensure consumer delight and that is the dimension-time. It has been proven that such of those companies which can provide quality service product at a competitive cost and most important of all, in the quickest possible time, are the ones who have grown beyond ones imagination.
THE BEST CONSUMER DELIGHT: The ability to win the hearts of those whom are impacted. The ability to understand the mood of consumer. The ability to deliver on promise systematically and consistently. The ability to control any situation through communication. The ability to own a problem until it is solved.
SOME OF BENCHMARKING OF CONSUMER DELIGHTS:1. Leading pizza vendors like PIZZA , DOMINO are offer to supply PIZZA within half an hour of placing orders, failing which they offer to supply PIZZA free of cost. 2. Mc- Donalds assure their consumer that they will be attended to or served within five minutes of their entering their food store, failing which they will give their burgers free to consumers. 3. TOYOTA, the makers of the luxury car LEXUS, offer a new car for their use as a replacement for the car they may have purchased earlier from them till such time as the defects in their car brought to their notice is rectified. 4. The chairman of Xerox Corporation, Mr. Paul Allaire says that he spends a substantial portion of his time with his consumer listening to their problems and trying to solve it for them. 5. Some of the leading software companies assure their consumer that their telephone call will be answered within 3 ring failing which they will compensate them suitably. 6. Mercedes Benz, the German automaker, offers almost instant response to the standard consumer on European highways by providing them free transport to nearest town as also free boarding and lodging facilities till such time as their car is repaired. 7. Some of the leading automobile repair shops in USA offer to transport their consumer from their home to office and back till such time as their car is under repair in the garage. 8. LEVI the world famous manufacturer of jeans, offer to supply jeans to suit individual consumer by taking body measurements with a laser beam and cutting the cloth with computer controlled laser knives and stitching them subsequently all of this within half an hour of placing the order in a department store. 9. Some of the South Korean companies during the initial stages of setting up their operations in Malaysia, offered to service for free any brand of electronic equipment even if it is not manufactured by them. Many more such examples could be quoted but suffice it to say that the bottom line for corporations is to earn everlasting support and loyalty of the consumer for their services/products and most successful corporations around the world are adopting very creative and innovative methods to achieve this goal. More importantly, these days, ethics and transparency in dealings with consumer are emerging as key issues in ensuring consumer Delight.
HOW TO DELIGHT YOUR CUSTOMER: Customer delight isn't necessarily about "more" customer service. Quantify customer delight in monetary terms. Appoint customer champions. Don't leave room for compromise. Dismiss business orthodoxies. Get the customer involved. Remember that whatever your role, you are an expert.
ADVANTAGES OF CONSUMER DELIGHT: Brand loyalty Retaining the consumer Build a relationship Entering new consumer Word of mouth advertising Market share and profits
CONCLUSION:In today's competitive era biggest challenge for seller is retaining of customer. For the same cause seller has to move beyond from customer satisfaction to customer delight. Because it will be easier for competitor to match the expectation of customer.