Why PR Strategists must Inculcate Customer Preferences, Says Ogunade
The aim of any business entity is to make profit. No business can however thrive in earning the expected profit without meeting it’s customers at their point of need. No matter how innovative the product/services or competitive is the pricing, the customer remains king and if he is not consistently satisfied, the business will struggle and eventually crash.
A survey by PwC, a research based -organisation stated that 59% of customers will leave a company after several bad experiences, and 17% after one bad customer experience. Meaning that 83% of customers will switch companies due to a poor customer experience.
As such, A dedication to customer experience allows clients to feel valued and supported through a smooth and straightforward construction process.
In a chat with spokesperson’s digest,Gabriel Ogunade, a Lead Strategist/CEO of the Witsforte Company, dissected how positive customer satisfaction can enhance the organization’s image with theme: Harnessing PR strategies for Consumer Satisfaction.
Meanwhile, to achieve customer satisfaction, Ogunade hints on how firms must integrate the customer’s opinions in their PR policy to capture the target market.
Spokesperson’s digest: What’s the connection between PR and consumer satisfaction?
Thank you. Public relations practice and consumer satisfaction relates in quite a lot of ways. Consumers are a varied critical publics, part of which PR seeks understanding through trend observing, counseling and deployment of other specialized processes with targets of securing understanding. Understanding in this context being consumer satisfaction.
Brands have assumed personality status whether products or services. It is PR, though it’s many processes that continuously shape the character of the brand in the minds of consumer to influence their buying decision. It’s proactive and sane PR practice to prevail on company’s management in ensuring internal quality standards is maintained for all products on an enduring basis. Its only here that it can be observed that a company launches a new product for instance in the FCMG category like a drink or biscuit. The trend has been for the product to thrive in sales within the early part of its launch given its inherent quality apart from the marketing stunt that usually accompany new product launch. Shortly after, its usually observed that the quality of the same product has adversely varied over time to the distaste of consumers who are usually familiar with this market trend and keep looking for similar new products because that’s the only guarantee for quality. I took ‘Okin Shortcake biscuit’ in my primary school and for that schooling season, the quality was consistent. Such reliability reinforces the brand’s character and any other PR work done around it is credibility all round. Bata was there and a lot more. We are almost tempted to assume that reliable product quality that can stand the test of time was largely in our past. Its good PR strategy to change the prices of goods if necessity demands and not the quality. Let Quality endure. Maintaining product quality with other marketing mix can guarantee customer satisfaction that compensates with sales and expansion into new markets than churning out products and more products of declining quality which makes populate the commodity market rather than brands. The ‘FCMG’ market is big and this is one PR strategy to contemplate if satisfying their customer is the target. We have a rainbow soft drinks markets today in Nigeria, so colorful and competitive to give foremost world drink brands operating locally, a run for their money but the simple observation is that many consumer patronize all these drinks because they are ones available, necessity, quantity, status and affordability and not because they are satisfied by most of the parading brands. Forget about the assumption of seating in a corner office to contemplate and create stories for your brand or initiate projects to give back to the society or crafting the best of dictions to describe or toy with the emotion of customers, if your product/service offering is not essentially qualitative, the customer knows and very well at that. They are the judges in this context and your brand is just an option waiting to be changed.
Spokesperson’s digest: How can PR focus on Customer Experience or Service rather than sales
Lid the mix: PR represented on any marketing communication mix team is the soul & conscience of the brand personae to be pushed. Thus PR must be creative to understand consumer character and ethics in offering guidance to other elements like texting of content for advert and choice of channel. Also it plays out in identifying and balancing views of celebrities that best suits products marketing in the event of considering the option and a whole lot. This active involvement and leadership of PR at the planning stage will mitigate crisis in customer experience that may arise later and position for an effective response in the case of crises eruption.
Roll the Sleeves: further to answering this question, it is taken for granted, we are talking about intuitions that has come to place premium on the essential value that PR adds to processes and the bottom line, which is hard to quantify. The security that derives from this helps in deploying right PR tools in the pursuit of customer experience with a view to satisfaction in a manner devoid of any pressure. For example, a company can commit to a program sponsorship despite budget for advert will not be considered a waste because of the customer satisfaction it hopes to have. Beyond selling seasonings, most companies sponsor programs that details foods and how to prepare them in the process highlighting the unique benefit of their product and with the effect of repetition makes their brand the only one existing in their world of their customers on a satisfied basis. And the list is as endless as the environment dictates but essentially is one of influence.
Be Scientific: PR like other profession has evolved and more areas now captured in the sciences. There will be need to deploy measures to generate data about operations that can give clues on which areas to focus or deemphasize in maximizing customer experience. Feedbacks should be taken seriously. This days, its easiest to get a feel of the popular perception of your brand from social media platforms and engagements. They give it to you in a very direct way and in their numbers. In a world of a whole engaging people and disturbing, constantly seeking to ease their plight and not adding to it will endear them to you.
Spokesperson’s digest: Can you share your thoughts on Corporate organizations leveraging on customer experience for brand loyalty?
Everyone cares about those who care for them and will tend more towards that spot. Care is a universal language that the average normal person cannot but respond positively to. This factor with a view to securing brand loyalty is defining how organizations do their things and what they will add. The best thing about it is that competition keeps driving healthy rivalry among serious and top contenders that wants the attention and retention of clients. There must be a unit of that corporate organization dedicated to constant creativity. Even when your market segment is defined, there must be ways to keep wowing them. This us how consistency and tenacity in not relenting or resorting to indifference attracts even those who are not originally within your catchment focus and adds them to your client base. There are some banks today that set out in their operation outlook with bias for the youth. They well got the youth population and a whole lot of oldies that are young at heart feels cool with their services and they key in. The telecoms too have a lot of customer base with a very liberal operating environment. The average person has about 3 different lines of the major service providers because of service preference and quality of some offerings. Some are good for voice alone with generous bonus offers some are stable with data and competitive. Loyalty comes at a cost which a corporate organization must be willing to pay. It’s quite sad that our corporate environment mirrors the kind of environment or society we found ourselves where attention to detail in people handling leaves much to be desired. The institutions doing the biggest volumes of cash today are not necessarily the manufacturing but services industry. Its more of contact and a direct one at that, where impression at first instance determines to a large extent what you retain or deflect to your organization in terms of continued patronage or loyalty. The logic in this is that once the right factors are in place, loyalty to an organization is guaranteed.
Like we always say, that PR is a lifestyle that all staff member of an organization must culture.
Spokesperson’s digest: What are the techniques to deploy to turn an unsatisfied customer to a loyal customer?
Knowledge capturing: there has to be a robust and active feedback mechanism that guarantees that traits and incidence of service failure or dissatisfaction is well captured.
Feedback mechanism: Complementary to incidence capturing must be an effective and rapid response mechanism for feedback that a dissatisfied customer must explore. The system must be alluring enough to encourage report of complaint to concerned authorities that can act on it and not to potential customers.
Right motive: I have seen some institutions emplaced a good knowledge tracking of customer dissatisfaction only to the intent of defending their brand or exonerating it. This is not a game of law but winning all. No one reporting a perceived service failure should be re-criminated. You take a position of empathy and address it with all seriousness and sincerity it deserves.
Match words with action: there has to be transparency in handling issues of dis-satisfaction with service. Depending on the scale but usually the offended party must be carried along in internal processes to deal with such errant and reassure of no future repeat.
Compensate: at times it might mean more to go beyond just saying sorry to restitution. Recall a bad product and replace it at no extra cost to customer. Give a price discount for a service to a customer that was treated badly by a staff. Profit should not be expense of losing loyal customers
Say the truth: the truth is so beautiful and attractive that it remains the strength of PR. It has a liberating effort and a compelling magical force that can change a dissatisfied customer to an eternally loyal customer and brand evangelist forever.
Continuous improvement: times are evolving, so are people and systems. Competitiveness is the watchword. Retaining the loyalty of an aggrieved customer also hinges on improvement and development in terms of products and services s/he can source elsewhere.
