by Nancy Ernesto, founder of Avon Nancia Comércio Geral (SU) LDA (Angola)
The biggest problem facing any industry that is required to go to the customers’ location, is that people are becoming increasingly impatient. A survey sponsored by Interparcel out of the UK, found that 50% of Brits admitted to becoming more impatient in the past 5 years. While it’s no surprise that patience is waning in our society, there are ways to monitor and measure customer satisfaction, and also improve the accuracy of your daily schedules.
When you are a delivery company or a field service provider, you promise both to provide a quality service, but to also arrive in a timely fashion. The only thing worse than being late, is to not show up at all. According to business.com, failure to deliver goods or failure to perform the service are among the top 10 complaints for retails sales and service companies.
Being able to measure customer satisfaction gives you insight into trends, and your current performance amongst those people who are paying for your service. To a certain extent most customers are understanding that not everything can be perfect every single time. But as Warren Buffett once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” (Time) One mistake can create a ripple effect that can stifle growth and hinder marketing.
The bad news is that 95% of customers will tell at least one other person about a bad experience with a company. Worse news is that 54% of customers will tell more than 5 people. While marketing and customer acquisition is difficult, the cheapest and most beneficial remedy lies in the good news. That is, that 70% of customers will continue to do business with a company if an issue is resolved in their favour. (MarketingCharts)
There are a few different methods, and even some software that can help in measuring customer satisfaction, which in the end can create a better product and overall experience for the customer. The most common method though, is a simple survey. Software such as SurveryMonkey and Client Heartbeat make it easier to facilitate surveys that can help pinpoint the some of the successful aspects of your business as well as those areas requiring some improvement.
Creating routes and schedules that are both efficient and accurate is nearly impossible when done by hand. However OptimoRoute™ helps you easily plan accurate routes and schedules so you can provide a predictable and reliable service to your customers. You can further improve your service by providing customers with a selection of time windows – specific time slots which best suits your customers. These time windows can then be imported into OptimoRoute™ and will be adhered to during planning. OptimoRoute™’s planner not only simplifies the planning process, but results in the best possible routes being created.
Spend that time where it matters most, maintaining a quality product and looking after your customers.
To meet businesswoman Nancy Ernesto, founder of Avon Nancia Comércio Geral (SU) LDA, is to meet someone who is passionate about the business she is building and the industrial sector that wants to see it grow and prosper. She is a true supporter of other women entrepreneurs and is creating opportunities for others to train and follow in her footsteps.
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