Customer is King

Great customer satisfaction greatly translates to customer loyalty, which in turn brings about corporate growth. To satisfy a customer, it is important to fully understand their needs as well as their interactions with the products and services offered through a different lens. For instance, it is imperative to understand their view on the products and services offered, by studying the gap and then working to making improvements to suit the customer’s needs.

Jim Rohn, an author and a motivational speaker said, “One of the greatest gifts you can give to anyone is the gift of attention.” We recently celebrated the international customer service week, which was quite significant in acknowledging the importance of having good customer service.  A customer is very valuable in any business and therefore it is quite important to know how to treat a customer. Just like the phrase, customer is King, a customer should be treated like a king. Kings in their kingdoms are usually a first priority and they get quite the attention. This goes without saying that businesses are kingdoms where the customers are the kings.

In any business, it is important for business owners and managers to realize that customer retention costs less than making new customer acquisition. Practices such as prompt customer service that bridge customers and businesses ought to refined and improved from time to time. One of the ways to kick start these improvements would be to conduct customer satisfaction surveys so as to know what your customers think of your services which will in turn help in strategizing on how best to improve your customer service. Customer satisfaction surveys can become imperative tools for improving businesses and ensuring customers are happy and loyal.

The Kenya Trade Network Agency (KenTrade) fully understands the importance of a customer satisfaction survey and because of this, they recently conducted one. The results of the KenTrade Customer Satisfactory survey revealed that to have happy customers it is quite important to ensure good interaction/communication, improve on customer experience, have effective and efficient ways of handling complaints and improving on the level of reliability. According to the survey, the customer satisfaction level of KenTrade’s customers has greatly improved from an index of 78.04% to 81.71% in the past year due to the good customer service rendered.

The edge in business is never necessarily being bigger than or more aggressive than your competition, actually, it is by knowing your customer really well. It’s your customers that keep you in business and KenTrade acknowledges this fact. The KenTrade Customer Satisfactory survey was vital in gauging the efforts made to better services. The results proved it worthwhile. Thus, it’s a precedence that all industry players ought to emulate and abide by in order to have an edge in whatever business they are involved.

Customer will therefore always be king, however, it is important as a service provider to give advise that is of the best interest to the customer. Kings do not always make the right decisions; once in a while they require guidance and advise from their advisors to show them a different perspective that would be of benefit to them.

WRITTEN BY LULU KIRITU