While companies could be busy discounting prices – sometimes at unsustainable levels – they could be ignoring a very basic and perhaps most important aspect of their business – service delivery.
This is the opinion of Nico de Nysschen, a Cape Town based expert from Ovations Groups, who says: “Service delivery has become a hotly debated topic in South Africa, and we have seen frequent examples where customers have taken to airing their frustrations on public forums. There are numerous reasons companies fail to meet their service level agreements (SLAs) and it has a lot to do with the principles of the business in question.”
Nysschen argues that as, most of the times, many SMEs are often under pressure and driven to find money to pay the bills service excellence usually becomes the least of their priorities.
Sadly, this is not restricted to small businesses. Sometimes even larger corporates fail to find out what their customers’ needs really are.
“Competitiveness isn’t a battle that is fought in the price and product offering realms anymore. Realistically, there is not much separating most companies from each other in terms of those factors. The real differentiator is quickly becoming customer-centricity.
“The companies that put the customer experience at the top of the priority list are making the mark. Businesses that are wowing with superior service levels are finding their customers are more likely to return over and over again,” says Nysschen.