Customer service is the percentage of orders that are filled in time. It is important to set standards of customer service. A customer service standard may be that 90% of the orders are delivered within 48 hours of receipt and 100% are delivered within 72 hours. Higher standards means higher costs as inventory levels need to be higher or faster means of transportation may have to be used. The physical distribution management needs to be aware of the costs of fulfilling various customer service standards, and extra customer satisfaction which results from raising standards. Some customers value consistency in delivery time rather than speed. Customer service standards may be the differentiating factor between suppliers. They may be used as a key customer choice criterion.

Methods of Improving Customer Service:

Improve product availability: Higher stock levels, improvement in accuracy of deliveries in terms of delivery at the promised time and in terms of delivery of the right assortment of products.

Improve order cycle time: Shorter time between order and delivery, improve consistency between order time and delivery time.

Success is achieved by choosing a generic strategy and following it. Below average performance is associated with failure to achieve any of these generic strategies. The result is no competitive advantage, a stuck-in-the-middle position that results in lower performance. Firms need to understand the generic basis of their success and resist temptations to blur their strategies by making inconsistent moves. No frills cost leader should be wary of the pitfalls of moving to a higher cost base. A focus strategy involves limiting sales volume. Once domination of a particular target segment has been achieved by the company that has adopted the focus strategy, there may be temptation to move into other segments in order to achieve growth with the same competitive advantage. This can be a mistake if the new segments do not value the firm’s competitive advantage in the same way.

The perception of a salesperson is that of a slick, suave, fast talking confident trickster devoted to force unwanted products on innocent customers. This is unrealistic in a world of educated and knowledgeable customers in consumer markets and professional buyers in business markets.

Success in selling comes from implementing the concept of customer-orientation when face with consumers, not denying it at the very point when the seller and buyer come into contact. The sales interview offers an unparallel opportunity to identify individual customer needs and match behavior to the specific customer that is encountered.

High pressure selling tactics will not work when customers know precisely what they want, which is increasingly the case in both consumer and business markets. In fact, high pressure selling tactics will put off customers and may lead them to denying access to he such salespeople.

Hello everyone! Be business-like in appearance and behavior: Even in companies where informal dressing and demeanor is permitted among employees, a casually dressed salesperson backslapping prospective customers would not be welcomed. The salesperson showcases the company he represents and his appearance and behavior should reflect the values of his company.

Be friendly but not over-familiar: Even when the salesperson is very friendly with the person he is visiting, the interaction should be business-like and formal when the salesperson is on a business call. A salesperson should start meeting with the appropriate pleasantries even when the customer has allocated a very small time for the meeting. Holding a briefcase in hand which is used for hand shaking will make the salesperson look clumsy.

It is important that the salesperson anticipates the sequence of events that is likely to be followed in the meeting and arranges his accessories and equipments to facilitate his handling each event as it unfolds. Common courtesies like waiting to be asked to sit down, exchanging pleasantries and gifts, etc. have different emphasis in different cultures.

The perception of a salesperson is that of a slick, suave, fast talking confident trickster devoted to force unwanted products on innocent customers. This is unrealistic in a world of educated and knowledgeable customers in consumer markets and professional buyers in business markets.

Success in selling comes from implementing the concept of customer-orientation when face with consumers, not denying it at the very point when the seller and buyer come into contact. The sales interview offers an unparallel opportunity to identify individual customer needs and match behavior to the specific customer that is encountered.

High pressure selling tactics will not work when customers know precisely what they want, which is increasingly the case in both consumer and business markets. In fact, high pressure selling tactics will put off customers and may lead them to denying access to he such salespeople.

Success is achieved by choosing a generic strategy and following it. Below average performance is associated with failure to achieve any of these generic strategies. The result is no competitive advantage, a stuck-in-the-middle position that results in lower performance. Firms need to understand the generic basis of their success and resist temptations to blur their strategies by making inconsistent moves. No frills cost leader should be wary of the pitfalls of moving to a higher cost base. A focus strategy involves limiting sales volume. Once domination of a particular target segment has been achieved by the company that has adopted the focus strategy, there may be temptation to move into other segments in order to achieve growth with the same competitive advantage. This can be a mistake if the new segments do not value the firm’s competitive advantage in the same way.

Most companies erroneously focus almost exclusively on advertising to convey their messages. But there are companies like Body Shop, which have been able to build strong brands and garner large market shares without any advertising. They have used other methods of communications like publicity, sponsorship, and word-of-mouth promotion to convey their brand ideas. The question is not whether a company should primarily rely on advertising or any or more of other communication methods like sales promotion, publicity, sponsorship etc. A seed ascends around the turntable.

The Purpose of Communication and The process of Communication:

The task of communication is not to get one’s ideas across to the other party. The real purpose of communication is to elicit the desired response from the target audience. Eloquence, sophistication, and suave demeanor is pleasing to the communicator himself, but serves absolutely no purpose in changing attitudes and behavior of the target audience. Customers go through a complex chain of mental events from the time they see or hear an advertisement until they decide to make or not make a purchase. For marketing communication to succeed, two processes must take place in the customers’ minds. First, what the customers saw, heard, learned, thought, or felt while exposed to the advertisements must be processed and stored in memory, and second, this stored information in customer minds must be retrieved at the crucial moment when a customer faces a purchase decision.

Consumer Psyche:

Marketers want the attention of the customers in their target market. Customers are largely ignoring unsolicited advances from marketers. Customers are facing pressures from more urgent quarters of life and it would be naive to believe that they would be willing recipients of whatever marketers have to tell them through their promotional efforts. The customer’s attention is at premium and marketers will have to understand customer’s psycho-biology of attention to be able to get their messages across to him.

Customer service is the percentage of orders that are filled in time. It is important to set standards of customer service. A customer service standard may be that 90% of the orders are delivered within 48 hours of receipt and 100% are delivered within 72 hours. Higher standards means higher costs as inventory levels need to be higher or faster means of transportation may have to be used. The physical distribution management needs to be aware of the costs of fulfilling various customer service standards, and extra customer satisfaction which results from raising standards. Some customers value consistency in delivery time rather than speed. Customer service standards may be the differentiating factor between suppliers. They may be used as a key customer choice criterion.

Methods of Improving Customer Service:

Improve product availability: Higher stock levels, improvement in accuracy of deliveries in terms of delivery at the promised time and in terms of delivery of the right assortment of products.

Improve order cycle time: Shorter time between order and delivery, improve consistency between order time and delivery time.

Raise information levels: Improvement in salespersons’ information on inventory, improvement in information levels on order status, promptness in notifying customer of imminent delays.

Raise flexibility: Development of contingency plans for urgent orders, a structure to ensure fast reaction time to unforeseen problems like product return.

Order processing and Inventory Control:

The idea is to reduce time between the consumer placing an order and receiving the goods. A computer link between order department and salesperson is effective. Computers can also check the customer’s credit rating and whether the goods are in stock, issuing an order to the warehousing, invoicing the customer and updating inventory records. Since inventory represents cost, finance managers seek stock minimization. But marketing wants large inventories to prevent stock out. Balance has to be found particularly as inventory costs rise at an increasing rate as customer service standard nears 100%. To always have in stock every conceivable item that a customer might order would normally be prohibitively expensive for companies marketing many items.

Culture refers to the traditions, taboos, values and basic attitudes of the whole society within which an individual lives. Culture is essentially associated with a certain nationally or religious identity of an individual. Culture teaches an individual the acceptable norms of behavior, and tells him the rights and wrongs. When an individual deviates from acceptable norms, certain sanctions are imposed on him.

Social Class:

Social class refers to the hierarchical arrangement of the society into various divisions, each of which signifies social status or standing. Though there are various methods of ascertaining social class, most often it has been equated with income differences. However, this may not be true. Income differences do contribute to differences in social status though they may not be the sole cause of differences in consumption patterns or lifestyles. Social class may fail to distinguish between contrasting consumption patterns though it remains an important discrimination of consumption patterns. Social class should be used with other measures such as life stage and life cycle.

Reference Groups:

Reference groups are groups of people that influence an individual’s attitude or behavior. Individuals use these groups as reference points for learning attitudes, beliefs and behaviors, and adapt these in their life. Family and close friends are considered to be primary reference groups in an individual’s life due to their frequency of interaction with the individual and primacy of these significant others in an individual’s life. Schoolmates, neighborhood, colleagues, other acquaintances are a part of the secondary reference groups of an individual. Reference groups influence product and brand purchases, particularly when the consumption is conspicuous in nature. Where a product is conspicuously consumed, the brand chosen may be influenced by what buyers perceive as acceptable to their reference groups. In case of conspicuous luxuries, even product consumption is influenced by reference groups.

New technologies can be used very effectively to counter inflation and recession. New machines can reduce production costs. The increasing computing and processing capabilities of personal computers is increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of businesses. Advances in information technology has made it possible to plan truly global supply chains, in which manufacturing and warehousing are disbursed through out the world depending upon where these activities can be performed best.

Technologies for Nations:

Economies will need to excel in both basic and applied research. Basic research attempts to expand the frontiers of knowledge but is not aimed at a specific problem. Economies which are well off should concentrate more on basic research because they can remain ahead of other economies only by creating new businesses through inventing new technologies by basic research. Developed economies should be ready to relinquish businesses they are currently excelling in, because other economies will catch up with them and the developed economies will not be able to charge premium prices for their products and services.

Technologies for Products and Services:

New products and services are possible because of new technologies. These help to increase revenues and profits of companies. At different times in history, technologies have created new business like automobile, railways, telephones, computers, etc. Currently we are seeing new products and services being developed by emerging technologies like internet, mobile connectivity, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, etc. These technologies are likely to fuel growth in the near future.

Technologies for Business Models:

But companies also use new technologies to do business differently and more effectively. Dell computers are able to sell its product directly to business customers because internet enables it to be in contact with its customers without incurring much expense. It gleans valuable information about its customers from the interactions it has with them. Dell uses this information to segment its market further and then it focuses its attention on the most profitable customers. There are companies in fragrance and other business which have equipped their customers with design tools. The customers design their own products and services and the companies manufacture them.