Member Article

The time has come to modernise after sales support

The delivery of services and products today, whether a home or a business user, has changed beyond recognition.

The internet has created new ways of engaging with customers and these changes have created new heights in service quality and customer expectations when dealing with brands.

The key to retaining the loyalty of a customer depends not only on the customer`s initial buying experience but the critical after sales care support.

In many cases, after sales support is seen as a cost to a manufacturer, spending as little as possible to support any product failures within a warranty period. When failures do occur, customers become disgruntled, especially when the product warranty has expired and the manufacturers absolve themselves of any responsibility, despite the fact that it is still their name on the product.

This is of course the traditional way that manufacturers have set up after sales support for their products; a disparate, siloed service supply chain created as an afterthought, to support this limited process.

Some brands are marvels at product support – in fact some customers become advocates even when products break, purely on the experience the business provides during the repair process.

But many just outsource the repair service with only a low cost, rapid solution in mind and not considering how the brand experience can last years beyond the warranty. It can be enormously difficult to respond to the increasingly sophisticated customer demands and expectations of today.

The solution requires new thinking and is radical in its approach but innovative in the structure of its delivery. It`s about turning a cost process mentality into a profit and service lifecycle commitment to the brand and in turn the customer.

It’s time for all brands to think in a new way. To create a new proposition which moves profit from a single sale margin, to a multiple touch point profit system through a whole lifecycle product support strategy.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mike Heslop .