Jeff Bezos referred to as
‘The Everything Man’ of Amazon has
famously said that” your brand is what
other people say about you when you are not in a room”. This is the most
lucid way to define “Brand”. Markets
today are extremely competitive, customers have thousands of offering in same
product category, and it is hard to differentiate a product among several others.
Then how customers decide on, what to choose among hundreds of products, how to
reduce the problem of plenty, that is where concept of “Brand” comes into the
picture. Brand helps companies to stand out among competitors.
There is a misconception
that branding or stigmatization is result of extensive and excellent marketing,
but it isn’t. Marketing is one facet which helps you create a brand but to
build an aura around your brand and to sustain it all that is required is a
good quality product. The real brand has its heart and soul in quality product
if you spend too much on marketing of a not so up to the mark product it won’t
yield you desired result. Hence a right product, at right price at right place
is necessary for creation of a brand.
Consumer behavior has
modified dramatically over past pair of decades, Consumers have become more
demanding & exacting and are making well researched buying decisions. To
adapt to present modifications in market, corporations must spend strategically
on advertisement of the product and concentrate more on product itself. In
today’s scenario creating a great product can help you minimize your
advertisement cost. This is the era of social media, where ‘word of mouth’ is best way to market
your product. Customers don’t simply expect nice product from corporations
however they expect nice pre-sales and post sales service from the businesses.
It’s not just a great product but all these factors like how you service your
customers, how you value them, creates a protracted brand image. Customer
service has always been integral part of brand building.
Over last one decade this
generation has experienced a wave of digitization. Social media has become
integral part of life of current generation. Research has shown that this
generation has a unique trait of sharing most of their life events on social
media and this trait presents a great opportunity to marketers. Rise of Social
media has been instrumental in providing platform for everyone to be a
broadcaster. Everyone today has internet connection, mobile and social media
account. A person can broadcast any event that he or she is experiencing in
flick of a second, and it can be viewed by all of his social media followers,
posted- reposted on other social platforms and may go viral. This is why
quality product and excellent customer service holds the key for success in
current market.
While writing about this
article, I just happen to google about the greatest of customer service
examples or how customer service can affect the image of the brand and there I
found one very fascinating story about “Morton’s- The Steak House”. This story
is about the amazing experience of an American author/ blogger Peter Shankman,
which he posted on his official website shankman.com.
As a regular day in his life, Mr. Peter Shankman has had terribly busy day, he
was scheduled to travel during dinner time and was feeling damn hungry so while
plane was about to take off, he jokingly twitted “Hey @Morton’s can you meet me airport with porterhouse when I land in
two hours? K, thanks. J”.
But to his surprise when he landed at Newark airport, a man from Morton’s
dressed in tuxedos was awaiting Mr. Shankman with porterhouse that Mr. Shankman
had just wished for. This was so thrilling experience for the Peter, that he
went on to share his experience on his official website and end up receiving
thousands of replies on his twitter. Mr. Shankman was Morton’s fairly regular
customer, and he had more than 10K followers on twitter. May be Morton’s did it
deliberately knowing about the influence that Mr. Shankman had on social media
or maybe they just did it because they care for their customers whatever may be
the reason, but at the end of the day Morton’s managed to gain on life time
customer and more importantly an influential brand ambassador. When Mr.
Shankman shared his story with the world, in the comment section of the same
post there were many others who shared their experiences regarding Morton’s.
One can imagine what kind of efforts Morton’s might have put forward to cater
to the need of their customer, it definitely involves great efforts of Morton’s
alert & energetic social media team and complex logistics.
Now after reading this,
if you happen to visit United States of America, there are good chances that
out of curiosity you might love to check out Morton’s steak house. This is what
a great customer service can do for a brand. Morton’s twitter activeness and
customer service went viral and generated large amount of name substance.
Morton’s is a great example how social media or viral content can build up a
brand in short time. However same social media tools can knock down any brand
in even shorter time. Social media combined with ‘experience sharing’ traits of
this generation can act as a double edge sword for any brand.
The very successful
businesses acquire customers ‘organically’
without much advertising. In this digital era, Quality product and word of
mouth drives the sales at all the best businesses around the world. Businesses
concentrating more on advertising are losing the edge these days. Customer
service has become essential part of all the businesses around the world and it
must be treated as core competence in every business. It is cumbersome and
costly affair to acquire new customer but relatively easy to maintain existing
customer and in the process of retaining the existing customer if you manage to
satisfy them efficiently there are bright chances that, existing customer might
refer your brand to someone and bring in new customers to you. Actually good
customer service is an art of making your customer feel valued and who on earth
don’t love being valued. So it is always advisable to have outstanding customer
service to stay in the competition as it simply makes transition from good
company to a great one a lot smoother.
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