Good Real Life Relation: Essay Example

Chapter Overview: "Customer Relationships: Basic Building Blocks of IDIC and Trust"

This chapter identifies the generation of trust among customers as the main objective of IDIC process. Emotions and trust are the main factors that drive customers, but without mutual interaction these two are useless for creating mutually beneficial relationships between the company and the customer. Relationships are established only when a customer and a company interact and gradually develop their knowledge about each other, trust and confidence. Information about customer needs is essential component. Relevant information provided by the customer will enable further service customization for this particular client. The issue is that no client would submit information about himself without a certain level of trust to the service agent.
Businesses should be able to identify a customer and his needs, differentiate customers according to their needs and to interact with each of them in an intimately personal way. All these are prerequisites of profitable business. According to “Pareto rule”, 20% of customers generate 80% of revenue, which mean, that if a company manages to differentiate those 20% and provide then the best possible service it will eventually increase its profit. The trick here is not to aim at profit itself. Customer should be at the center of every business process.
Among the 4 components of trust equation (credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation) self-orientation is the most important. The trick with trust is that a company can’t be trustworthy without implementing customer oriented services. I consider this to be interesting in terms of long term strategy of a company. The key point here is that a company should not concentrate on each transaction with a customer, but on long-term perspective instead. If trust is used to earn money, sell additional service or product, customer feels it and becomes reluctant to interact. Company should satisfy needs of its customers even if it doesn’t gain anything from it is the short run. The great example, which I found in book by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is that a company may even sell a competitor’s product (which contradicts companies own interests) or order a pizza for a client, which dialed a wrong number (which is actually zero-profit work) in order to satisfy a customer’s need. Company should care about its goodwill and its image in the eyes of its customers. Zappos makes customers interests paramount, which in the long run provides loyal customers that are engaged with the company. The next time a person who ordered pizza, might be asked whether he want the same “4 Farmagio” pizza. And he then will feel that this company cares about him. This makes good companies great.
If a customer considers a company to be his or her trusted agent then he or she is likely always to buy any product or service from this company. This evident statement is not always understood by the companies. To my mind, CRM systems allow companies to build an image of customer that will allow them to fully satisfy that customer’s need. But the problem is that they don’t use this tool as they should. I have heard lots of testimonials when people were sent empty-handed only because the necessary product was out of stock. A company lost the client and client will unlikely try to contact the firm again. This company could have advised the other place to buy the item or even organize shipping and thus create the initial trust level. Trusted agent is more than a company it is a friend that always is willing to help. CRM systems allow any company to become such friend.

I didn’t work with CRM yet, so I would like to tell about my recent experience as a customer. I was interested in taking courses on Marketing Profs. I have been examining possible variants for 2 weeks and they called them for a consultation. The level of service really impressed me. The manager already knew who is calling (I created an account on the site before) and already knew what courses I was interested in. Moreover, she offered me to wait for 3 weeks in order to get a special offer. Basically, the interest of the company was to sell the course for the highest possible price, but considering that I am still a student, the manager decided to offer a better proposal. For me this example is a showcase, as the client’s needs have been rated above companies’ own.