Frontline Management Explain Why it

Frontline Management

Explain why it is important to actually ask your customers what they want from your organization.

The most important objective of companies is represented by increasing their profits. This objective can be reached by increasing their sales. Therefore, customer satisfaction is very important when trying to increase the sales and number of customers. This means that companies must focus their strategy on customer satisfaction. In order to ensure the satisfaction of customers, it is important to know what customers really want.

This refers to the types of products and services they need, but also to the benefits they expect to have from these products. In certain cases, companies think they know what their customers want. As a result, they develop their products and services based on this opinion that does not necessarily correspond to the needs of their customers. There are several strategies that companies can use in communicating with their customers on what they want, like secret shopping, customer surveys, and customer board of advisors.

Regarding secret shopping, specialists in the field recommend that companies invite their customers to become mystery shoppers. This can be performed on the company's website (McLellan, 2011). They can be invited to evaluate the performance of the company's employees, and other issues that influence customer satisfaction. They can be offered bonuses for this activity.

The most efficient way to identify customers' needs is represented by surveys. Therefore, it is important that companies develop customer surveys. In addition to determining customers' needs, there are also other advantages of these surveys. They help customers feel that they are important because the company wants to know their opinion. Customers that answer these surveys are interested in helping companies improve their performance. The customer board of advisors is intended to include some of the customers in the decision making process.

Explain the difference between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Customer satisfaction is an indicator that reveals how the products and services provided by companies are situated in comparison with customers' expectations. This is an important performance indicator. Customer satisfaction is used by most companies in their differentiation strategy. Therefore, companies are interested in increasing the satisfaction of their customers.

However, the importance of customer satisfaction varies in accordance with the characteristics of each business segment. In business industries characterized by increased competition between numerous providers customer satisfaction has a high level of importance (Hill & Alexander, 2006). This is because competitors in such industries must improve customer satisfaction in order to increase market share. In business sectors where companies have an increased bargaining power customer satisfaction has a lower level of importance. This is because customers must select from a reduced number of suppliers.

Customer loyalty refers to companies attracting the customers in their most important target segment, determining them to purchase their products and services often and in large amounts, and determining them to bring more customers to these companies (Customer Loyalty Institute, 2010). Customer satisfaction usually leads to customer loyalty. It would be difficult for these companies to develop customer loyalty with unsatisfied customers. In order to develop customer loyalty, most companies focus on improving communication with customers, improving employee satisfaction, because this determines employees to improve their relationships with customers, and providing certain bonuses to loyal customers. Companies also develop customer surveys in order to determine their needs and preferences, and ensure their customers that they are important for these companies. Therefore, it is important to focus on improving customer loyalty by developing strategies intended to increase their productivity.