Tio Erastus Nakasole

Allow me to zoom in on one of the biggest challenges that most businesses are faced with, which is not the ability to attract customers, but to retain them. 

Therefore, in today’s world, consumers demand to have a great experience throughout the entire path of purchasing, which incorporates after-sales service. This translates into the fact that entities are required to put their house in order, understand their basics, and also provide an easy-to-use path for resolving customer issues and problems that arise after 

purchase. 

In a highly-congested and contested business environment with similar product demands, it is worth highlighting that great companies are built on great products with memorable experiences.  

This means only entities that lay down a product and service of greater value than your competitors will sail through, despite all economic and political odds.  

Being competitive means more than creating value through your solution,
both during and after sales are completed.

According to Andy Paul’s cardinal 

pillars of building customer relationships that last, there are three crucial ingredients needed in the sales process. 

Firstly, practice equivalence. This
 golden rule implies that you should treat others the way you would want them to treat you. 

This means that if you would like not to compress the rebound of your clientele, it’s crucial for your entity to recognise, acknowledge and bridge the gap of inconsistency between the past service experience and what was expected.  Service rating via Google reviews and the customer relationship management (CRM) system are some of the mitigating mechanisms to be benchmarked from time to time. Secondly, delight your customers with your commitment to customer service. 

He emphasised the ingenuity and responsiveness that should become a custom with your customers’ requirements for support, both pre-sales and post-sales.

In a business sense, most win the battle but not the war of sales due to the fact that they are more concerned with losing a walk-in customer than satisfying the customer who will give you the next order, and receive a greater referral to another potential customer in perpetuity.

Thirdly, demonstrate your
appreciation for the opportunity to serve your customer.  On the other side of the same coin, this is also another juxtaposition that intersects with corporate social responsibility (CSR), which is an
ethos based on saying that entities have a mammoth task to perform other than just providing jobs and making profit.

It is so crucial, as it will increase brand recognition, build public trust, improve customers’ loyalty, accelerate capital growth, deepen competitive advantage and provide greater sustainability in terms of products being environmentally-friendly and trade that has to be reciprocal, and not counterfeit goods that have no warranty condition and whose longevity is unreliable.

Quality of service

When customers purchase goods or services in the market exchange and pay for tangible benefits and values chosen from the entire assortment introduced to them, in the same vein, service quality is the result of certain internal factors such as availability (as to whether the service is readily available in time), reliability
(in terms of fulfilling its commitment), knowledge (the ability to understand the customer’s needs), safety (the safety net of the service rendered), politeness (whether the staff are sensitive to the customer’s needs), and communication (as to whether the service was explained in and out). 

Therefore, paying lip service to the
promise of after-sales service will be disastrous and unsustainable if the sales consultant and service consultant concentrate more on what to sell than on how to sell. Lastly, sustainable and repeatable sales’ success in any business is less about what you sell, and more about how you sell.

Finally, in all aspects of after-sales service, enterprises should create and provide something worthy and memorable that other people want and need at a price they are worthy of spending, in tandem in a way that satisfies the purchaser’s needs and expectations, as this will breed what we call “leisure fire” chances of satisfaction, making it a worthwhile relationship built on trust, loyalty, honesty, commitment and fairness.

* Tio Erastus Nakasole is an MBA student at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, and has an honours degree in economics.