Losing Touch with Customers

Corporate Responsibility, an important initiative in today’s business environment, does not only apply to socially conscious issues, you have a responsibility to your customers as well. Your responsibility to your customer generates the revenue that enables Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives.

 

Maintaining customer confidence and gaining their repeat business requires more than e-mail communication, social networking, and targeted advertising.

• The quality of your product or service needs to be acknowledged.

• Your products performance needs to be rated: how well did the product accomplish what it was intended for.

• Your customer service needs to be genuine, especially when challenging issues arise regarding communication and specification misinterpretations, delivery dates, and product defects. Don’t be defensive. Take responsibility and apologize, if appropriate. Dave Mattson, Entrepreneur Media

All this requires genuine effort, effort that too many manufacturers and service providers want to ignore. There seems to be an attitude, albeit an unhealthy attitude, that due to the internet and social networking, dissatisfied customers can easily be replaced by any one of the ‘multitude…?’ of potential customers now made available due to these communication advances. This attitude can be rather shortsighted:

1. It completely ignores the genuine value of reputation. Continual bad ‘press’ will eventually eat into profits where as great press (verbal or print) cost-effectively brings customers to you.

2. It overlooks the opportunity to maximize revenue. In business familiarity (repeat customers) should breed a smooth and efficient transaction of business; a cost-effective revenue producing process.

Harvard Business Review, March 2016, has an article titled Reigniting Growth that addresses “stall-out, a drop in revenue and profit growth…”. One of the points emphasized is “… losing touch with customers…”, and one of the solutions  “… is to view customers as underserved and the industry as setting insufficient standards…”Isn’t this the mindset that grew the business in its formative years?Chris Zook and James Allen, HBR March 2016  

Impact Enterprises, Inc. was founded in 1987 by Bobi Hamilton, President & CEO, on the premise that the then industry standards resulted in underserved customers. She single-handedly turned the manufacturing industry for presentation products on its head by stirring excitement, adventure, and creativity into the fabrication process. Today, Impact is an internationally recognized manufacturing business for innovative product designs, environmentally responsible materials, and genuine customer service.See Testimonials.