The meaning of “customer service” brings together the idea of quality of a service as understood by the purchaser and the idea of “customer experience” also. The latter refers to the direct message the merchandise brings, while the former requires direct contact of the shopper with the dedicated departments of a business (i.e. marketing, PR, support).
The interaction between clients and a company may often be affected by a superior consumer experience. There are known cases where insufficient post-sales product support or an inadequately established promotional campaign or practice can determine a radical change in the clients view of a certain product or service.
The practice of marketing certain products has become a problem because most of the products, in fact 70 or 80 % as proved by different researches are very much similar to one another, making rival products to be seen as commodities. In their attempts to find solutions to this state of problem, marketers tried multiple methods like using brand names, merchandise delineation, marketplace subdivision and relationship marketing. The last of these practices manages the relationship between a business and its clients. This is done by loyalty programs, database marketing and the close management of clients and their interactions with the product or service.
Eventual incompatibilities between theory and practice are pointed out and filtered and the role of customer experience management as a methodology becomes more clear and significant. This in term acts on basic marketing principles, which leads to the underlining of three major aspects:
- the clients’ issues and requirements play an important role
- creativity and analysis must go hand in hand
- theory and actual response are to be carefully analyzed
Those who support customer experience management believe that this methodology is more efficient than marketing and strategic management, although they all do the things stated before. Although quite different from customer relationship management, which is focused especially in quantitative data, the marketing concept brings a new perspective on the relation between buyers and products or services. Because this new perception deals with the consumers and their experiences with the brand, attention is truly centered on the customer.
To better understand and manage the satisfaction a buyer manifests with a product or brand correlation is needed with the following guideline or similar frameworks
- careful scrutiny and analysis of different aspects that contribute to the buyers satisfaction, including cultural and social background and lifestyle factors and choices
- development and execution of stages meant to supplement requirements or improve a certain features
- constant contact with customers and continuously employing new ideas that address the improvements in customer satisfaction.