Post Sales Service Strategy for Consumer Appliances Industry

This article gathers information and insight into current strategies and key objective in post sales area. I have divided the strategies followed by consumer manufactures into 4 parts

1) Customer Delight: With a focus on customer touch point and empowering customers for gaining better value and satisfaction from products and services. This will also contain strategy development for entire customer relation management practice.
2) Streamlining support processes: All the internal processes which provide support to customer service have been kept under support processes. With current economic environment and for better customer experience, it is extremely important to stream line support processes to gain maximum efficiency
3) Better Market coverage: Continuous product innovation also demands expansion of relevant services to the areas where products will be launched. Organizations are also determined to expand its service centers by various channels.
4) Common processes: These processes are common across all of the above three areas and used in all.

Customer Delight:
Organizations are continuously working for enhancing the customer experience in the areas of post sales support and services. One of the important outcomes being certification offered by Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA) for providing superior technical support and services

Predictable service delivery: With the help of excellence in operation companies would be able to provide services which give predictability to client resulting minimum distortion in their daily life. This predictability ranges from assurance of data security to the timely delivery of products and parts.

Standard and global customer interaction processes: The Key factor for predictability in services will be developing standard process maps for global operations which will ensure similar customer experience world wide.

Customer Education: Organizations have been reaching out to customers and educating them to gain maximum value out of products. Some companies offer customer self repair processes to empower customers to fix their products at their own convenience. One leading organization recently launched Power To Change campaign that encourages personal computer users around the world to make behavioral changes in support of the environment.


Streamlining and Cost Optimization of support processes:
For Repair parts forecasts, pricing, product portfolio, introductions, rollovers, competitive response, and supply in an integrated way to enable risk management of business plans at a worldwide level.

Co creation of value with Outsourcing: Developing an operating model based on sourcing strategies which can provide quality product and services at optimum cost. This will require managing interface with international vendors and developing a process leadership in partners to bring them to the same level of efficiency where manufacturer functions.

Better Management of channel partners and service support centers: It remains a key goal for all global players to better manage these partners across the globe as they are face for end customer.

Developing and sustaining Eco friendly practices: Players have been working towards reducing the impact on environment from last 50 years now which include developing more eco friendly products as well as creating better recycling and product disposal Practices.


Market coverage:

At one side companies have to penetrate further for providing services to existing products on the other side it also keeps its focus towards developing service strategies for new products

More Service Options for existing products: Provide customer more convenience in terms of preferred location , mode of shopping/replacing/repairing products : Dial-A-Cartridge service, which enables customers to order any part through a toll-free number as and when they have run out of supplies. The part can be delivered to the customer within hours of placing the order, at their door-step.

Developing service strategies for new products: Companies have to push themselves to become a leader in product innovation across the segments hence it becomes bed stone for success of any product to have a strong service network which can fulfill all requirements related to repair and parts replenishment for end customers.