Businesses have gone through a massive transformation over the past decade or so. With the massive technological advancements, the prosperity and success of modern business firms depend both on sales as well as delivering efficient customer services. A sale usually serves as the starting point for increasing your company’s sales and engaging customers. The past decade has seen a dramatic shift from ‘product-focused’ sales to ‘packaged sales’. That includes the product as well as the ‘after-sale’ services that go with it. Let us discuss How after Sales Service affects your Business Growth.
With immense competition emerging in every industry these days and shrinking profit margins, ‘after-sales’ services have emerged as an excellent means for revenue generation, building brand credibility, customer retention and long-term success and prosperity of businesses. The world has evolved ‘service-centric’ wherein offering high-quality customer services has become absolutely crucial for any business survival and growth.
‘After-sales’ services is a section completely neglected by many business firms that eventually leads to their failure. This essentially holds true for new and small business firms that rely on ‘repeat customers’ and positive customer feedback for their success. Providing top-grade ‘after-sales services’ lays the impression that a company wants to build long-term relationship with its customers and earn their credibility.
Have you ever wondered what impact does ‘after-sales’ service have on your business growth.
After-sales services have the potential to make your business grow by leaps and bounds in a short time span. Studies reveal that businesses providing IT services, white goods, industrial machinery or the ones dealing in telecom services and automobiles earn four to five times more than their original sales through their aftermarkets.
This itself illustrates how crucial ‘after-sales’ services are to the growth of a business firm. ‘After-sales services’ include a wide array of services such as providing troubleshooting services, providing preventive and reactive maintenance, offering a warranty. Insurance services, supplying upgrades and spare parts and other services that leave a lasting impression on customers mind and contribute to customer satisfaction.
Through this post, we will familiarize you with the impact ‘after-sales services’ drive on your business growth and expansion.
How After-Sales Services affects your Business Growth
We will now go through the key points that will illustrate the impact of after-sales services on business growth:
Building Brand Credibility
It is not easy for any business to establish itself in the market and get a huge customer base. Building brand reputation and credibility is vital to the long-term survival and growth of the business. Offering efficient ‘after-sales’ services to your customers is one of the best ways to build your brand reputation in the market. Offering reliable, user-friendly, cost-effective and top-notch customer services play a vital role in building a good brand reputation and establishing its credibility.
Competitive Advantage
Offering top-grade after-sales customer service helps a brand earn a competitive advantage. In this highly competitive era, there are countless firms that deal with the same type of services. The challenge for any business firm is to outshine its competition or stand out in the crowd lies in its products and after-sales services.
Customers nowadays are very smart and compare the products of different brands on various parameters such as features, prices, warranty period, customer services, etc prior to purchasing product of any brand. In short, customers follow any new brand either by reading reviews of the brand or through positive ‘word-of-mouth’ from their acquaintances about the brand. Business firms that offer top-class after-sales services that are unique, innovative and better than their competitors drive positive customer feedback and reviews consequently getting them an edge over their competitors.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is one of the most important factors for the long-term success and growth of any business firm. A firm that provides excellent after-sales services or regularly maintains follow-ups with existing customers is bound to make customers happy and contented.
Regular customer follow-ups to ensure that they are enjoying your services, addressing their issues, providing remote troubleshooting, offering repairs and warranties, are some of the means to ensure happy and contented customers. Customer satisfaction plays a vital role in the long-term survival of a business as discontented customers can spread negative feedback and reviews that tarnishes the reputation of the company.
Building Customer Loyalty
Providing top-notch customer services is an excellent means of promoting customer loyalty and showcasing your brand’s commitment towards their customers. Loyal customers are more likely to refer your company’s products to their friends and colleagues and are also likely to purchase your services repeatedly.
After-sales strategies that promote customer loyalty include offering rewards for new customer referrals, offering discounts on products/services, sending seasonal greetings, providing incentives for new referrals/product recommendations. Such strategies help in business growth and expansion through engagement of new customers.
Follow up after Purchase adds to brand’s reputation
Businesses that provide excellent services always remain on the hit list of customers. Right from guiding on payments methods to following up to ensure product delivery to updating them on product delivery status to making service arrangements to arranging installation to guiding product usage and providing troubleshooting, all these activities add to your brand reputation since customers get impressed by your company’s level of involvement and reliable services.
Customer Retention/Getting Repeated Sales
The long-term success and growth of a business depend on customer retention. A business cannot solely rely on new customers for its survival. Getting repeat orders from existing customers contributes immensely to company’s revenue. Having a loyal customer base is crucial to the long-term success of a business.
Businesses have only a few means of ensuring customer retention – the product and after-sales services post the delivery of the product. Service strategies at the point of sale include explaining features of the product, explaining refund policies to customer, providing information about warranty periods, suggesting additional products, adding customers to mail lists, providing status of delivery through e-mail or phone, thanking customers for showing their interests, offer deals and cash back to customers, etc.
Sales follow ups are the excellent means of ensuring customer retention that involves calling/interacting with your customers and enquiring about whether they are happy with your services, seeking their feedback on product delivery, product quality, usability and seeking suggestions from them that could help in refining the product/service, resolving customer complaints/grievances/issues professionally. Timely, sending repeated e-mails promoting new products/services, sending seasonal greetings, sharing customer support number through e-mails, quick revert back to customer issues, offering rewards and incentives on new referrals and product recommendations are some of the best after-sales services that promote customer retention. As we all know, retaining customers is far easier and more cost-effective than engaging new ones and efficient after-sales services helps in meeting all major business goals.
Helps in Getting New Customers
After-sales services can aid in substantial revenue generation for businesses. Modern day customers are very smart and try products/services from new brands on the basis of product/service reviews, feedback, and recommendations. Owing to the power and reach of web and social media, product reviews are extremely influential since they come from a third party and customers perceive them as genuine and make their purchase decisions on the basis of reviews and recommendations.
Customers give positive feedback and reviews for your company’s products only if they themselves get satisfied and like your services. You can only ask your customers for referring your products to others and encourage them to write a positive review only if you are able to impress your customers with top-notch customer service. This is how the quality of your after-sales service impacts your business growth since top-grade customer service contributes to larger new customer engagement through increased brand awareness and sales.
Promotes Business Growth
Good quality after-sales service promotes business growth in numerous ways. First, it promotes new customer engagement through ‘word-of-mouth’ and positive company reviews. After-sales services include diverse range of activities such as delivering spare parts, providing upgrades, offering installation services, offering repair and maintenance services, product insurances, providing training and instant resolution of customer complaints/issues.
A business can generate an immense revenue through efficient after-sales services since maintenance services and upgrades and troubleshooting services all have incurred the huge cost and consequently allows a business to generate four to five times more revenue than profit generated through initial product sales. A business can earn huge revenue from after-sales services provided they open a separate customer service center. Have separate staff dedicated to providing timely and reliable after-sales services to their customers?
Helps build brand popularity
Making your brand popular or building brand awareness is a difficult task and after-sales services are one of the means to increase brand awareness and popularity amongst the customers. Customers usually purchase a product/service and forget the brand a while after product purchase.
Following up consistently with the customers or interacting with them on social media or consistent engagement with your customers helps to increase brand awareness and adds to the popularity of the brand. Good after-sales services help you leave a lasting impression of your brand on customers. It emerges as a way to keep your brand remembered.
Makes life easier for everyone
Offering top-grade after-sales services provides mutual benefit for your business as well as your customers. Sharing your customer service phone numbers and contact e-mails on your company’s website, brochures and sharing contact details via e-mails to customers will make it easier for them to reach you for services. You must design an FAQ page on your website for customer guidance. This will help them reach your business easily for availing services while also increasing sales and revenue for your business on another side.
We hope that going through this post will definitely familiarize you with the impact after-sales service presents on business growth.
