MKT 500 Week 3 Discussion – Unhappy Customers

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/marketing-foundations-influencer-marketing-2016/unhappy-customers?u=57878161

• Did United Airlines do anything wrong? Was the customer’s reaction justified? Provide a rationale for your answer.

Imagine a similar scenario that would apply to your hypothetical company.

• Describe
  a potential social media complaint (including the platform) and how
  your company might respond. How would you maximize customer satisfaction
  and positively impact your brand visibility online?

Read and respond to your classmate’s post below:

Marketers –

The focus of this week’s discussion is on the unhappy customer video
and how situations such as this can impact the customer lifetime value
and a customer’s long-term relationship with a brand.

While we all need to acquire customers for our hypothetical
businesses, we also need to think about retaining these customers.
There is a significant cost in terms of both time and money in building a
customer base for our hypothetical businesses. If we are not able to
keep these customers we have worked so hard to get in the door in the
first place, a viable business will be challenging.

This presents a few interesting opportunities for a smart marketer to
build on the brand experience in planning their hypothetical business.

First, are you focusing all your communications efforts on the
appropriate target customer, with the right message delivered at the
time and place when your potential customer is ready to receive this
message? If we are not communicating with customers who may have a
long-term relationship with us, we are wasting our time and money. Is
the customer who buys something once and never returns worth all of our
efforts?

Second, we communicate our value and set customer expectations
through the marketing material that we create and control. We will be
creating this in our marketing plan throughout this quarter. That means
it is never too early to think about our message and how we use that to
establish meaningful and realistic expectations with our customers.

If we say that we have the best dog walking service with a 100% money
back guarantee if the customer is not satisfied, then we better deliver
on that promise! Do you, as the hypothetical business owner know the
core competency needed to stay in business? And, do you know how to add
value with something unique to your business? Now is the time to
think about this as you plan.

Experienced salespeople, and in some sense, we are all salespeople
for our hypothetical businesses, may have a tremendous impact on
customer service, customer satisfaction, and the customer’s continued
relationship with the brand (Smith, 1). No matter how convenient online
shopping may have been during the recent pandemic (and often this
appearance is very deceiving), there is little substitute for human
contact and human interaction in a shopping experience. Have we found
this already as consumers?

We may find a new opportunity to service customers and rebuild those
relationships that have been lost as we all stayed home to be safe. This
does, however, require skill that not every hypothetical business owner
has.

A professional salesperson, someone who truly has the customers best
interests in mind, is not simply an order taker. They provide a service
and support the brand. As many customers will come back to shopping for
that experience, this could be an unparalleled time to rebuild those
customer service relationships.

Business depends on repeat customers and the emotional connection
with the brand (Chou, 2). And clearly the business owner is part of
this equation as they are the business’s primary salesperson.

Dr. Amans

Sources

Sandy Smith. June 15, 2020. Through the Retail Lens: The Rise of the Sales Associate. https://nrf.com/blog/through-retail-lens-rise-sales-associateLinks to an external site..

Shihyu Chou. June 4, 2018. The Influences of Relational Benefits on
Repurchase Intention in Service Contexts: The Roles of Gratitude, Trust
and Commitment. p. 680-692. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JBIM-08-2017-0187/full/html?skipTracking=trueLinks to an external site..