A sale is not where it ends. The success of a brand today depends a lot on how it serves its customers after a sale is closed.
Manufacturing brands are no exception. Logos, packaging and unique selling propositions have their place, but ultimately a manufacturer’s brand is built on how customers’ experience its products and services. With social media growing to gigantic proportions, the bad word about a brand or a product spreads much more virally than the good word.
This is precisely why after-sales service is important today – it is a key influencer in the purchasing decisions of the consumer. It also provides benefits in the form of recurring revenue streams, provides new sources of differentiation and offers a new counter force to the commoditization in mature industries. Manufacturers of everything from elevators and freezers to security systems and transportation equipment — products built to last — find that revenues from after-sales (including product installation, configuration, maintenance, and repairs) average 25 percent or more of their total revenues. The profit margins from after-sales can be 10 times or more than those from initial product sales. Little wonder that many organizations today want to reap the benefits that after-sales promises.
However, after-sales can also be a big drain on a company’s bottom-line if it is not strategized and executed well. There are five core challenges that need to be addressed in a company's attempt to provide best-in-class after-sales service: (1) value chain inefficiencies, (2) weak after-sales strategy, (3) costly and inefficient execution, (4) step-motherly treatment to service and a reactive service culture and (5) poor governance. Click here to read a WNS white paper titled 'Turning a Non-core Service into a Core, Key Differentiator' on how to address these challenges and excel in after-sales service.
Simply selling products or services doesn’t create a long-term customer relationship, providing an outstanding customer experience does. Excellence in after-sales service helps manufacturers exactly do this.
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