Other than advertising and marketing, products and services are how people experience your brand. It doesn’t matter how awesome your marketing and advertising is, if your products can’t live up to the hype, your brand is going to suffer. Communications with customers throughout the sales process (including post sales and customer service) is vital for meeting and molding expectations and can lead to much better products (and brand perception) in the future.
People Talk
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that people talk about what they buy and the service they receive. If they buy your product and it fails to perform as advertised, they’re probably going to complain. Hopefully they complain to you so you can fix it, but they may also complain to their family, friends and colleagues.
Fixing Problems
If you do receive complaints, addressing them quickly and professionally can really help your brand perception. Most people are reasonable and realize that things occasionally go wrong. If you can acknowledge that and fix things as best as possible, most people will give you the benefit of the doubt and will have a positive feeling towards your brand (even though something was wrong!).
Be Reasonable
No matter how awesome your product and customer service is, there are always people who like to make problems. They may invent issues or just never be satisfied with your solutions. As long as you try to treat these people the same as everyone else, use your judgement for how to proceed. While customers certainly have more power in terms of making problems known publicly, you also have a chance to tell your own side of the story and most people will respect reasonableness.
Going Forward
If you have good communication with your customers throughout your sales process, then you know what you can improve with your products going forward. Constantly improving your products will help you better meet the needs of your customers. Listening to your customers will increase your credibility and positively influence your brand perception.
Thoughts?
(photo by AndyRob, on Flickr)