What Does Extraordinary After-sales Service Mean For Your Business?

By Author: Rakesh Kumar
Total Articles: 33
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Extraordinary service has lately become the rule of businesses. Consumers have become more and more demanding and expect exemplary service. Anything lesser than perfect is not acceptable to them and they walk away with their wallets to other alternatives. What does extraordinary service mean to you? Though it is an easy term to toss about, it means differently to different people. Some people feel that giving superior customer service mean delivering best quality products, while others believe it to be courteous to customers everybody they speak to them. While some go to the extent of confusing extraordinary service with lowering the price of their products in respect to the competition. It’s only when companies actually understand what comes under the horizon of excellent after-sales service would they be able to deliver results.
Extraordinary Service mean following a set of practices followed by companies that distinguishes them as ace when compared to their competition. Here are some of the points that illustrate what extraordinary service may mean to most of us:
Making Service a Quick and Easy Experience- ...
... One of the key points in delivering extraordinary after-sales service is to make service experience quick and easy, not prolonged and troubled. This may begin with your operations being in a streamlined approach and your efficiencies being maximized. With ensuring a complete life cycle approach to your efforts you can enrich your service experience and ensure quick TAT so that your customers are happy. Many companies have switched to customer service management software that allow you to record all proceedings as they happen and give a PAN view to everyone included in the process. This clear and transparent view makes service a quick, easy and reliable experience for both the company and customers.
Timely Feedback / Updation- Suppose you are in mobile handset repair/service industry and pledge to deliver on-time, with cost-effective solutions– but so can anyone. What makes you deliver extraordinary after-sales service is that your operator will call the customers every alternate day to update them on the status of their handset and ensuring that it will be delivered on a said date. This has a huge impact on customers. Calling ahead creates outstanding expectations, even if the delivery is late; customers would appreciate the call in advance.
Use Information- In service industry particularly, closing a work order doesn’t mean that the records/details are good to be scraped. To illustrate, for a mobile handset service center, scrapping all the information after a job sheet is closed isn’t a neat example of excellent after-sales service and support. While saving all the information as a history record helps you delve on it as a reference source while dealing with similar problems. This could also cut down your service TAT for similar problems in the future.
Follow Up- Whenever your customers need some information, be readily available. This however does not mean appointing someone for phone calls and writing back emails just as you get them. A feeling of service could be transferred in form of automated email responders and voicemails. And make sure to call them/write them back as soon as you are can. Following up your customers can create immense positive difference than your customers calling you back.
The points illustrated above when applied in tandem can create a magical experience that we call “extraordinary service” for your customers. The points demonstrate how delivering service requires aptitude (interpersonal skills of the service people), and the right use of tools & technology (using software like service management software and repair management software) to be recommended as exemplary.

Rakesh Kumar is a business consultant of Zed Service. Zed Service is leading service management software in India. Zed Service has lots of innovative features including repair management software, Claim Management Software, work order tracking software etc. For more information visit http://www.service-management-software.net