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The World Wide Web (www), cloud technology, dot.com, hash tags (#) among others are modern technological developments that brought changes on how customers view service providers in todays global market. Just as we see in space war where supersonic, ultra-high-speed space crafts are deployed in warfare and aliens from outer space constantly devising better means of overcoming advances in technology so as to win the war of survival also is thefight to win more customers, gain more of customers patronage and loyalty in the face of overarching competition whose battle field is now in the cyberspace.

The cyberspace for the purpose of this write up shall be defined as the area where the marketing and customer service war takes place and where the battle could be won or lost. Marketing practitioners propounded the concept of segmentation to mean the space where a product would like to play in or what Philip Kotler properly defined as Market €“segment scope that is the type of market or customers a company will serve. However, in todays business the customer service war is in the cyberspace a borderless arena with no umpire or a referee hence the fight could be messy like a winner takes all kind of a fight.
The cyberspace provides liberty to the customer to air his views freely, space allows for freedom of expression much more than the Genevas Convention. The cyberspace gives the customer the opportunity to broadcast his opinion about service experience much more than the reach of CNN, Sky News, Channel TV, Sahara Reporters and Aljazeera all put together.

OPPORTUNITY IN THE CYBERSPACE

I would not want you to view the cyberspace as the harbinger of doom but to rather see it as a world of opportunity to reach the global market, expand your trade and gain continuous patronage. However, a lesson that should be taken seriously is to know that like every business opportunity there are rules that must be observed and taken cognizance of.
To gain from the cyberspace you must simply see it as fire. A common rule of thumb is that fire is good when handled properly at the same time fire can be brutally dangerous when handled carelessly.

MUST ALL BUSINESSES PLAY THEIR GAME IN THE CYBERSPACE?

Modern business does not allow for in-between, you are either in or you are out. In the cyberspace arena, the customers do not require your permission to tell their service story. In as much as you are dealing with a customer that has access to a mobile or cell phone in the least then you are playing in the cyberspace. If you fail to take cognizance of this then you are playing with fire and carelessly too. The cyberspace is an all comers market that allows customer to tell their story whether good or bad.

WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR CYBERSPACE CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGEMENT?

I will share five things that you need to know with respect to todays customer and the role of cyberspace in business promotion and effective customer service.

Do not under estimate the power of any customer. In the words of Chip R. Bell and John R. Patterson, todays customers are wired and dangerous hence under estimating what a customer that is dissatisfied could do is playing with fire and it is dangerous. A story was told of a pharmaceutical store in the US where a customer felt badly treated and went on to make a post on YouTube, the post as of today has been viewed by over 23,000 persons around the world with so much damage to the reputation of that store. A poorly trained staff that does not appreciate the value of customer might be sacked but in most cases, the dent on brand image and reputation would remain permanent.

Define your adaptive strategy in coping with Customers without a border. Most organizations stepped into the cyberspace without a specific strategy for adaptation thereby exposing their brands to cyber aliens, spam crawlers, cyber hawks and bad image amplifiers. A well-defined strategy would position an organization in areas of proactive customer service management, complaints resolution and managing negative emotion that could cause damage to the brand.

Invent, reinvent and promote a service covenant that brings joy to the customers. Have a sense of unbroken quality customer service at every point of engagement with the customer. Understand fully well that it is not a right to have the customer come to your business, it is a privilege to have him bring his custom to you hence such opportunity must be treasured and held in high esteem. Ironically too, todays customer who felt unjustly treated just dont walk away but would go with the duty of helping other customers not to fall into the same trap by broadcasting their unpalatable experience thereby damaging your brand reputation.

Train your front line staff and back line staff to have an owners mindset. We should come to term with the fact that customer service in the cyberspace is not the exclusive reserve of the front desk personnel that is programmed for the occasion but an organization-wide responsibility. From the gate attendants to the janitors they must have a good sense of customer service because a slip on their part might cause the organization an irreparable damage. They all need the basic understanding of the fact that it is the customers that pay their salaries at the end of each month.

Serve all customers with passion, with empathy, and with a high level of energy. We must understand that each customer has Zone of Tolerance ( ZOT) which can expand or contract depending on his or her service experience and state at a particular point in time. When we treat customer passionately well and with empathy, we tend to have the best of them. A customer with a contrasted ZOT would likely repeat his or her call and would most likely remain a loyal customer.

Utilize the CRM Tools. Whether they are suspects, prospects, disqualified prospects, first-time customers, repeat customers, converted clients, members, advocates or and ultimately partners it is of paramount importance that you keep the record of your customers. When such information is available it becomes a ready tool to track, update and follow up with all visitors to our business premises particularly as it gives us quick information on disaffected customers and how to quickly resolve their grievances before its degenerates.

Conclusion

The cyberspace has succeeded in bringing the global market to us offering better opportunity, increased sales, knowledge expansion, and product improvement strategies. Side by side with this is the fact that it has also offered customers the opportunity to become brand advocates and broadcasters of services with the use of simple and pocket-friendly gadgets.

While we look at the good sides of the cyberspace we should also take cognizance of the fact that a customer that is aggrieved with your service or with the way he or she is treated can cause your brand untoward damage without a blink. Ironically too, sometimes these customers are without face or name on the cyberspace.

I personally advocate for better awareness of the challenges of modern businesses in the face of change and ever increasing technology.Effective training, attitude modification and change in behavior pattern would support better customer service.

Thank you for permitting me to share my thoughts with you.

References

• H-CRM The key to Lifelong Business Relationship by Dallol Das 2004

• Marketing Management: Millennium Edition by Philip Kotler, Prentice €“ Hall of India, 2000

• Training and Development April 2014. A publication of Association of Talent Development.

Kayode Ibukunoluwa-Micah is the Managing Director of Rosk and Chene Consultants Limited and a Partner in Darach Associate and Marketing Consulting Nigeria Limited. He is a certified trainer with a penchant for Customer Service, Customer Relationship management, and HRM.

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Chip R. Bell and John R. Patterson postulated that todays customer is in a hurry, they wanted more for less, they love to be pampered and would like to be treated with courtesy no matter the situation or circumstances. They understand what quality service is, they had expectations of how they should be treated and when this is deficient they are not likely to give your organization a second chance.
More dangerously, todays customers have the liberty of broadcasting their stories good or bad to a global audience just by a click at a button or by typing on the internet enabled phone. The social media has so much empowered the customers that if care is not taken they could bring down a multinational corporation just within a minute.

The case of Dave Caroll is a good lesson at hand. He flew in a United Airline plane in 2008, after a stopover in Chicago he overheard a fellow passenger complaining about his guitar; how it was badly handled by a baggage handler. He sought for whom to talk to when he did not receive any positive response after a passage of over a year, he did a song expressing his frustration and posted it on YouTube on July 24, 2009. It was a song that was less than 20 minute in duration but it caused United Airline a whopping sum of $ 180 million in share value, loss of patronage and attracted a viewing audience of over a million in less than two months and by September 2013 the song had a viewing audience of 13.3 million.
Guess what? It was a Taylor 710cc guitar that costs $3,500
It is instructive to note that todays customers would not only talk but they talk so loudly that they could be heard in all the continents of the world. Understanding customer service requires a good knowledge of psychology, human relations, emotional intelligence and basic economics.

Coping with Today’s Customers

• The very first thing to note is that without the customer there is no business. Whether you are a nonprofit organization, a religious body, an SME or a multinational organization, when your customer is dissatisfied and you do nothing quickly about it you will close shop.

• Understand, find out and research into what is valuable to your customer. It is the customer that determines what value is, and this is what the customer pays for. You may produce a high-quality product when you failed to carry the customer along such product might not survive in the market.

• Partner with your customer in product design, quality assurance, service delivery and you will get the best of them.

• Resolve their queries with speed, live for the customers and exceed their expectations. Add the extra.

• Train your staff on customer service, relationship management and the psychology of todays customers.

• Take charge of your career, invest in self-development, be professional and get certification.

In closing, when the customer is pleased the business survives. It is worthy of note that customer satisfaction is not rocket science as the very successful businesses of this world are managed by human beings and not angels.
The writer is a certified International Professional Trainer and a certified International Customer Service Professional of the American Certification Institute. He is a member of the Association for Talent Development (ATD) and a member of the Institute of Directors Nigeria.

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WORST CASE SCENARIOS

A Verbally abusive customer.

A waitress in a prestigious hotel said she was called all sort of unprintable names. In her word The customer called me stupid, foolish and a liar, even when it was obviously his fault

A physically abusive customer

An airline attendant said he was slapped by a passenger but acted professionally without allowing the incident to bring out the other side of him. In his words, It was such a terrible experience but I had to manage it in a mature way

Time abusive Customer

A business developer complained of having had to wait for a pre- scheduled meeting for three hours later than the appointed time. In his word, the bad aspect was that there was no single word of apology after I finally met with the official. It what that bad

PRELUDE TO THE DISCUSSION: THE CUSTOMER AS KING

This write up was premised on the fact of my insistent that the customer is king. And I went further to likened the customer to the traditional Monarch. The king in ancient times was seen in some culture as the representative of the gods on earth and his words were laws or divinely inspired. Societies attribute uncommon intelligence and knowledge to the king. The notion of the customer as king was taken from this understanding of an all knowing and all powerful person.

REASONS WHY THE CUSTOMER IS KING

The customer has power Purchasing and financial Power

He or she determines the fate of organizations- Organization without customer will die naturally

The customer is at liberty to decide where to spend her money- buy or not to buy is a decision that rests solely with the customer and not the organization?

The customer has expectations that must be met by service providers or else they move elsewhere

I went further to stressed that because businesses exist for the customer hence we need to accord him due respect. As expected some of the students shared this opinion but some disagreed and felt that some customers need to understand why they should accord the server some level of respect.

WHAT THIS ARTICLE INTEND TO ACHIEVE

1) To speak to the customers particularly those that would want to intentionally or unknowingly humiliate a service attendant. As a customer, you must understand clearly that you are dealing with human beings no matter his or her estate. You must come to term with the fact that these individuals have feelings and emotions, they feel happy and motivated when they are treated properly and they could also feel pained and emotionally depressed when treated sub-humanly. We must come to the realization that they can react positively as well as negatively. All human must be treated well to bring out the best in them. And, lastly, you must understand that the attendant has a right that is protected by the law.

2) I speak to the customer service providers to understand that people behave differently, personalities and traits differ and as such it should be expected that some customer will behave pleasantly while others will behave below par but still they are needed for the survival of the enterprise and must be handled professionally. You must also understand that knowledge of personality types and emotional intelligence will enable you to know the appropriate responses to each customer.

WHY DO DIFFERENT CUSTOMER BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY

Wikipedia defines behavior as the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with themselves or their environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the (inanimate) physical environment.

From the above, we can define behavior as an action or reaction of an organism, or person to an object or person provoked by internal and external stimuli. It then implies that peoples behaviors are sometimes intentionally or inadvertently instigated. By implication, it means that human behavior is influenced by certain hormones, chemical reaction and physiological factors that necessitated why people behave differently.

YOUR ROLE WHEN RELATING WITH DIFFICULT CUSTOMERS

You are trained to manage them

People are different and they should be managed differently

Ideally, customer should appreciate good and empathetic service

When you handled the overbearing customer professionally at their moment of soberness they tend to appreciate good service

You should be protected by your organization and the law against abusive and antisocial behavior by some customer.

PERSONALITY AND BEHAVIOUR

Research findings have proven that people can be classified into different personality types with their associated traits, temperament, and behavioral tendencies. To a very large extent, individual personality determines their approaches to issues including how they relate to others.

Personality was defined by Feist and Feist as a pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a persons behavior This means that customer behavior is a fallout of their personality or individuality, hence, personality accounts for individual thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

IMPLICATIONS OF PERSONALITY ON CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR

Personality is both physiological and psychological in nature. It is environmentally as well as biologically influenced.

It is consistent. It is a regular and recognized pattern of behavior

It is behavioral. It impacts how we behave and relates with people given certain conditions

It is multifaceted in its manifestation. We think, behave, feel, react and relates differently to different situations and circumstances.

Because specific traits are traceable to personality this will account for the reasons why some people are open, someconscientious, some extroverted, others agreeable and while some persons are neuroticisms.

So when a customer behaves below expectation know that you are seeing their true personality traits. Often times these cannot be concealed hence you need the knowledge to deal and resolve their needs or handle their behavioral tendencies more intelligently.

For example, the phlegmatic customer who behaves inappropriately would need a sympathetic, warm and caring service attitude to neutralize such behavioral tendency. On the other hand, a sanguine that is a highly motivated and adventurous would need a good listener who shares his sentiment and interest for things that appeal to his pleasure.

STRATEGY FOR HANDLING DIFFERENT PERSONALITY TYPES

KNOWLEDGE: Know yourself and know your customer

UNDERSTAND THE OTHER PERSON: Be interested in the customer; be passionate about meeting his or her need in a professional manner.

PASSION: Be passionate about what you do, enjoy your work, seek to feel good at all times and the customer will appreciate your effort and treat you right.

NOTE THAT THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS YOU CANNOT CHANGE IN A CUSTOMER BECAUSE THEY ARE INNATE BUT YOU CAN TAKE CHARGE HOW YOU FEEL AND TAKE GOOD CONTROL OF YOUR EMOTION. Go on and enjoy your job.

REFERENCE

African Industrial and Organizational Psychology by Nwagbo Eze 2004

How to keep Customers and Win Back Lost Ones: Michelle Auda

Managing change in the workplace, Cooper, and Lybrand by Alan Cave

Marketing Management: Millennium edition by Philip Kotler

Sigmund Freuds Model of Anxiety

Why you Act the Way you Do by Tim Lahaye

Wikipedia on Personality

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In the words of Ivana Taylor

If we already know that a loyal customer is the most profitable customer and that a referred customer provides our best return on marketing€”then lost customers certainly have more value than stone cold prospects.

My experiences in prospecting for customers, in managing floor sales personnel for multinationals sales companies and in training front office staff shows a vacuum in customers retention strategy for most organizations. Amazingly too, research evidence shows that for any organization that is customer-centric and at the same time pay attention to product quality such will naturally attract customers patronage. However, the challenge for most organizations is their inability to sustain a good relationship with their customer over a period of time.

LEARNING FROM IYA MULIKA

Iya Mulika (Mulikas Mum) was a cooked rice seller somewhere in Lagos Nigeria. On a daily basis, she sold about one and a half bag of cooked rice to customers coming from different parts of the metropolis. However, one common characteristic of Iya Mulika was her noticeable bad attitude toward customers. She is not only overbearing but would often tell customers to their faces not to come near her stand to buy rice. Her calculation was whether you come or not after all the rice would still be sold out at the end of the day.

Truly her rice was the best in the neighborhood, but it wasnt too long that she ran out of business simply because of her negative attitude to customers. She suffered one of worst defection and low patronage that I had witnessed. Today Iya Mulika is no longer in business.

As mundane as the story would sound most customer service people are also cut in the web of improper attention to customer service and often treat the one customer so poorly thinking that one customer does not matter.

Your products may be the best but when you fail to pay attention to what truly matters to the customer, it is only a matter of time that your product or services would experience rejection.

WHAT DOES THE CUSTOMER WANT?

1) Every customer wants to be respected. Whether she is a girl of ten years old or a woman of 50 years of age we all wanted to be treated well and with some level of respect. In every culture, we have acceptable ways of greeting and when this is done with smiles the customer will feel excited and good.

2) A customer wants to be shown a simple courtesy in terms of greeting them appropriately and showing that they are welcome. Connecting personally with the customer offers a compelling reason why they should buy and remain loyal to you.

3) A customer expects to receive the right answers to the queries no matter how foolish you think they sound. A customer wants to engage with someone who can solve their problem and what sounds foolish and unreasonable to you is a pressing need that the customer is willing to pay for giving the right solution.

4) They want value for money. What the customer pays for is value. The totality of your service must add value to the customer. What the customer pays for is not a product but the value that they receive from the product.

5) A customer wants to relate with you on the basis of your ability to make them achieve success. A solution provider is the best friend of todays customer.

6) A customer wants to be heard out and be listened to. Not letting the customer talk is one major pitfall for most customer service practitioners. Every customer wants to express a need, a complaint or give a feedback that will ultimately help your organization. Listening and paying attention to them would promote better relationship and patronage. Someone once said that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we can listen more and talk less. Learn to listen to the customer, which might be feedback that your organization needs to break through.

7) They want your undivided attention no matter how busy you are. Never be too busy to attend to a customer. Excuse yourself by asking for their permission and always show that you care.

THE CONCEPT OF THE ONE CUSTOMER ORGANIZATION

Unlike Iya Mulika who thought wrongly that the defection of one customer would not affect bottom-line, we should be mindful of the fact that all organizations start with just one customer. To build a fortune 500 business you must be a one customer service organization and should see every customer as an asset.

Imbibing the one customer culture will systematically strengthen an organization customer retention strategy and develop a sense of urgency in front line personnel to quickly resolve queries and develop bonding with the customer.

HOW CAN I DEVELOP A ONE CUSTOMER CULTURE?

Understand that key accounts are sometimes not big at the beginning. The customer that ultimately contributes a chunk of your turnover or profit might not appear so at the beginning but are often nurtured through effective customer service and impeccable relationship management service and service delivery.

Have a well defined customer service philosophy that is communicated and shared by your staff. A written customer service memo placed in strategic point within the business premises and constantly taught to the staff will do the magic.

Keep your current customers happy by delighting them. When customers are delighted and happy about the way they are treated they will surely want to come back.

Promise less and do more than you promised. Once a promise is made to a customer it must be performed no matter how difficult it is. However, in a situation where you couldnt let live up to your promise be sincerely apologetic. Let it be from your heart that you truly care.

Train your employee to treat customers well. Let them know and appreciate the value of treating the customers well.

Make it your priority to quickly resolve customer complaint. Do not allow them to leave without settling the problem and if they left unhappy put a call across, if they refuse your call pay a visit to them with another colleague of yours or a more senior person. It is worth the hassle.

Understands your win-ratio-rate and communicate this to your staff. Let them understand what it cost the organization to win a single customer and what the loss would be if a customer is lost to competition.

HOW CAN I WIN BACK LOST CUSTOMER?

Thank you

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1) Who are my customers?

2) Who should our customer be?

3) What is value to the customers?

4) Where are they?

5) How do they buy?

6) How do they want to be served?

Whether your business is a newly conceived idea that is yet to be birthed or a business at an embryonic stage, or an existing organization the above questions must be earnestly answered or given thought to if you want the business to succeed and remain competitive.

Who are my customers? Or who should our customer be?

The first question addresses issues that bother on how to satisfactorily meet the needs of the customers. When you know your customers you will be able to decipher what they actually want and are willing to pay for. For example, segmenting a product market will give specific direction to your effort in deciding on the age of the consumers, their genders and product/service requirements. We know that what appeals to Gen X might not necessarily appeal to the millennial generation or Gen Y. To be a more specific product such as female sanitary towels are met for women of a particular age range so looking at ages outside the specific age might be wasteful and fruitless. Except where such effort is for future projection which supports the second arm of the question: who should our customers be?

What is value for our customer?

I did mention in a previous write up that customers dont pay for the product but rather they pay for the satisfaction or value that the product could offer them. A person who bought a car is not buying the car because it is a car, he or she bought the car simply because of the value that the car would render to him in terms of transportation, revenue generation or prestige. Your business cannot succeed until you have a proper understanding of the value that customers are looking for in a product or service. It is important to note here that no matter the resources put in the production of a product the final approval of your effort lays with the customers- the final judge.

Where are they?

Knowing the geographical location and demographics of your customers is a huge boost that will effectively position your services and products in the minds of the customers. It also has the advantages of efficient resource management and allocation for maximum impact. Markets must be effectively segmented and effort deployed to quickly and efficiently meet the needs of the customers. For instance, I have consulted for a couple of businesses whose coverage is limited to a small geographical space yet they have made so much impact by simply paying attention to their niche market. Every organization should determine where they want to play in and gradually move to a much larger market. This will enable them to learn the rope, use their resources for maximum benefits and expand subsequently.

How do they buy? Or how do they want to be served?

Interestingly we have come across individuals who despite the popularity of online stores would tell you that except they do a physical inspection or trial of the products they will never buy from an online store no matter the appeal. Knowing how your customer buys is very important. A study of Consumer Decision Journey and the Customer Purchasing Funnel will bring you to the understanding that an average customer pays attention to whether they should buy from you or not. It is just about 1 out of 5 that buys based purchase decision on impulse. In todays market consumers are specific about their decision giving the fact of scarcity of resources and the need to prioritize what to buy.

Purchases decisions are the exclusive reserves of the customer. They determine what to buy, when to buy, where to buy so it is within their prerogative to also determine how they wanted to be served.
One of the reasons why quality products fail in the market majorly has to do with lack of attention to customers needs. Mark my words, good products by the big organization with huge resources allocation to R&D sometimes fails. Let us look at some instances of such product failure or lack of commensurate impact in the markets.

AMAZON FIRE PHONE

In 2014, Amazon a leading online shopping company and one of the biggest internet based retail store failed in its attempt to effectively compete in the phone market with its Amazon Fire Phone. The fire phone had appealing features, it had over 240,000 apps, it was loaded with a flashy interface that creates a 3D effect on the home screen but yet it failed in customer reckoning.

Despite the slashed in the price of the phone from $ 199 to just $ 99, it ended up having about $ 83 million worth of unsold fire phone in October 2014.

Amazon has the money, posting $ 88.988 billion in Revenue in 2014, they have good and quality staff, the company invested a huge amount in R&D yet the phone did not succeed in the market. This gives credence to the fact that customers are to be taken seriously and their needs are taken into cognizance ab initio. You dont push a product into the markets thinking that it would sell itself without first asking the customers what they wanted.

GOOGLE GLASS

In 2013 Google Inc. came out with its prototype of Google Glass, a head-mounted wearable glass with a unique optical display, it is a pair of high-tech glasses that could scan wearer surrounding and beam information to the retina in visual or readable format. The glass could perform voice command instruction such as take a picture, Google give me a direction to the neighborhood supermarket record a video and the glass will do that automatically. In 2013 a pair of the glass was selling for $ 1,500 in the US. But today it has been withdrawn from the market because of series of opposition to the product by customers.

Most customers expressed reservation about violation of individuals privacy, the health hazard of wearing such glasses and safety challenges. The glass was criticized for its intrusiveness and the fact that it could expose organization private decision or strategy to unauthorized persons.

According to Richard Gray Google Glass has been hailed as the future of wearable technology and a possible replacement for the mobile phone, but even before its launch it has run into trouble

Of course, it is possible that Google glass will return to the consumer market soon but that will not be done without the customer issues being addressed and resolved. Mind you China has already produced its own version of Google glass taken into cognizance issues raised by consumers.

STRATEGIC APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMERS NEEDS

SCAN YOUR ENVIRONMENT FOR A NEED.

By nature humans are gregarious and because we live in a community and interact with one another it becomes easier to spot and identifies needs among members of your community. Human community has been further extended to the cyberspace thereby making it convenient to connect with people miles away from your immediate environment. If you look closely you will see needs that can be met. Needs will always arise among people across the globe and some of these are necessitated by the reasons of the scarcity of resources whether human or material. Also because of the need for specialization one individual cannot attend to all his or other peoples needs. Look closely and you will see a problem that you could solve.

IDENTIFY EXITING PRODUCT GAP AND MEET IT WITH THE CUSTOMERS IN MIND

Customers taste and interest are constantly changing, often times too, existing products and services find it difficult to cope with the rapidity of change. Human will always demand new solutions and news issues would arise that existing products or services could not solve. Through basic survey, questionnaires or observations you can see some of these gaps that you can close through a new product or modification of an existing product.

MAKE YOUR CUSTOMERS YOUR PARTNER

Making your customers partners based on trust, credibility, and confidence. A customer with which you have built the relationship overtimes will provide your organization with guided ideas that will be of mutual benefits. Customers inputs are invaluable and often times are seen as more reliable, why because you are hearing directly from your product or service end-users.

This day, forward-looking organization embraces the idea of customers feedback, customers opinion and criticism as very important input in decision making. It is highly recommended that feedback should be taken more seriously because it is a tool that can elicit information on customers needs.

WHAT ARE THE REAL NEEDS OF TODAY’S CUSTOMERS?

High Quality and Low Priced Product

In view of the high rate of competition, easy access to information and availability of product varieties; tomorrows customers will demand high-quality products and services at much lower prices. Tomorrows customers will not compromise on product or service quality, however; they will demand that it is delivered to them at cheaper prices.

In view of this demand organizations and businesses will have to constantly look for ways to meet customers needs at cheaper prices and at the best of quality. Google Glass at its launch was sold for $ 1,500 yet it was met with a lot of criticism but today China has produced a version of Google Glass at a cheaper price.

Give a Listening Ear

Customers feedbacks, criticisms, objections, and complaints are valuable tools that would make the organization better and at the same time delivering superior and acceptable products and services. The customer wanted to be listened to and hear out. Customers feel good when they know you give them the attention and time.

Speedy Response to queries

Tomorrow customer would love to receive speedy service delivery and quick response to their queries in a more professional and sound manner. Within an acceptable standard, tomorrows customer wants servers to be at their beck and call. For instance, we now have online stores that are willing to make their delivery to customer same day compared to some they will tell you that delivery will be made after seven days.

Effective after Sales Service

Today’s and tomorrows customer expects fast and efficient after-sales service. They lack the patience to entertain delay particularly when their complaints are genuine.

Availability

Tomorrows customer wants you to be available, they want to feel you and see that you are genuinely interested in their matters. You should be able to prove that what matters to them is important to you.

Conclusion

As the landscape of business is changing so also are the expectations of the customers. As a service provider, you must have an appreciable understanding of the needs and requirements of tomorrows customer so as not to be left behind. You must be proactive and adapt to the role of technologies and changes in tastes necessitated by progress in science and free trade.

Meeting the needs of tomorrows customers is not rocket science and it is within your capacity as a service provider.

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